What are we saying to our kids?
Don Quixote on Jul 21 2011 at 9:14 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
Danny and CM have been doing the heavy lifting today, so let me just jump in with a quick hit. I plan on doing a longer piece sometime on today’s song lyrics, but one current song worries me and I wonder if I worry needlessly. Picture a teenage girl who has just broken up with her boyfriend, is unpopular in school or whatever else makes a teenager wonder whether life is worth living. She cries out for help but it seems like no one is listening. She hears this lyric on the radio:
A penny for my thoughts, oh no, I’ll sell them for a dollar
They’re worth so much more after I’m a goner
And maybe then you’ll hear the words I been singin’
Funny when you’re dead how people start listenin’
The name of the song is “If I Die Young” by The Band Perry. The whole song is about a young girl dying and the thrust of the song seems to be that dying young is just fine. Another lyric: “The sharp knife of a short life, well
I’ve had just enough time.” Am I right to worry we are dressing up such a message in the clothes of pop music?
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15 Responses to “What are we saying to our kids?”
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DQ, I think you’re right to be worried. Teenagers are masters of histrionics to begin with, and when you add the immense pressures many of them are under these days—concerns about their sexual attractiveness and performance, their college worthiness, how to navigate among the shoals of an amoral culture, and the knowledge that they are essentially worthless economically—suicide can become an attractive option. When you dress it up, as you say, in a pop song, it becomes just that much more of a fascinating thing to hold in the hand, bauble-like, and examine.
For many teens , the struggle, paradoxically, is both to feel and to not feel. Perhaps the most brilliant thing the late Johnny Cash ever sang was his 2003 cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt,” a song about cutting oneself simply to see if one can still feel. Nine Inch Nails would never have written the song if there hadn’t been something terrible out there in the air. The phenomenon of cutting has become almost epidemic and it bespeaks a generation that is losing the ability to feel. When you cannot feel, cruelty and mayhem become that much easier to perform—on others, or on yourself.
I’m torn about how to comment on these lyrics. One part of me hates that they are a genuine manifestation of the vile culture of death that surrounds teens today. So I’m not surprised that they get said and sung. But another part of me understands the exploitive nature of pop culture, that there is nothing sacred to it, whether it be sex, love, honor, or in this case, life and death.
There are times I’m glad I’m 62 and not overly long for this world. God knows how much I fear for it.
I don’t know. I was going to weigh in, but the more I thought about it the less I knew what to say. We lived through all this stuff back in the TV days – does this show have this effect on the drama queens that all teenagers are (quite right, Charles) or is it okay because they’ll have the fundamental wit to recognize it’s drama, fiction, nonsense, entertainment – whatever. I would have said, “oh, BS” not so many years ago, but now I guess I don’t know. To be swayed by a lyric in a song is just extraordinarily witless – to me – but then witlessness (as I would define it – and I speak only for me) certainly seems to be on the upswing.
Harlan Ellison once told me, when I was pissed off, discouraged and struggling to say something in a piece we were working on: “anybody who can be discouraged from writing, should have been.” I guess a part of me – a big part of me – thinks that anyone who can have their life deflected, altered, adjusted, etc. by a lyric in a goddam song that’s manifestly witless to begin with, should have had their life deflected, altered, etc. What the hell, if their life is that susceptible to change then they weren’t living it anyway. Anybody who thinks killing themselves is the answer – to anything – is probably a loss anyway, and might as well do it.
Terrible, I know. But occasionally the touchy-feely aspect of the world as it seems currently to be just gets up my nose. I know, I know – I’m an awful person. But if you’re that fragile, well…. better find another world to live in, because it’s unlikely this one’s going to work out for you. I don’t think, at bottom, anything anybody does is influenced to that extent by a song, a book, a movie, or anything else. I’m probably wrong. But, how dumb do you have to be…? No, profitless to go there, I guess.
I can’t comment coherently on incoherent behavior, so I quit here.
The song is inspired by Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott, indirectly based on Elaine, the fair Maid of Astolat, from Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur.
http://charon.sfsu.edu/tennyson/tennlady.html
The poem can be interpreted as a choice between living immortally in dreams and living mortally in the real world, especially with regards to the artist’s relationship with the world.
Here’s an interview with the band, including the lyricist, Kimberly Perry.
“We loved the imagery in Tennyson ‘s ‘The Lady of Shalott.’ A few weeks before we sat down and wrote ‘If I Die Young,’ I read that poem over and over. It’s always been one of my favorites with really romantic but bittersweet imagery. It was more about the visuals in that poem than anything else.”
http://www.popeater.com/2011/01/10/the-band-perry-about-to-pop/
If anything, maybe it will get kids to read some Tennyson.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d;
On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow’d
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror,
“Tirra lirra,” by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
Ah, the Lady of Shalott–so gorgeously tragic, so suitable to the teenaged girl’s imagination. I remember it well (at least fractured phrases from it. The rest of my memory is taken up by the lyrics to Gilligan’s Island)
Yes, teenagers love and wallow in this stuff, and yes, if they’re basically sound, they come out of it feeling refreshed. The entertainment industry has been feeding this appetite for a long time.
They do grow up, and like the rest of us, seek more cheerful fare.
I had the same thought when I heard the song. It stands out because it’s played on Country music stations and it sounds like one of those sweet Taylor Swift songs. At least when you listen to the usual pop stars, such as Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, and Rihanna, you know what to expect.
Thanks for the link, Zach. If nothing else, it shows how much less literate we are than we used to be. To go from that imagery to “after I’m a goner” is sad. My concern, though, is that the song lyrics are much more direct and personal, and much more likely to result in an overwrought teenager takinig action. And I don’t read anything in the poem as quite matching the lyric I quoted. “And maybe then you’ll hear the words I been singin’” sounds like a very direct plea from one person to another.
>>“And maybe then you’ll hear the words I been singin’” sounds like a very direct plea from one person to another.>>
Also sounds like the “You’ll be so-rrry” approach.
This does support my venue that Z is from Britain and uses British politics to propound on American life.
Back when I was a teenager — the 70′s — we had Don’t Fear The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult. I don’t recall any instances of adolescent suicide inspired by that song.
jj, I was big Ellison fan back in the days when I ingested huge quantities of science fiction. Among the many things about him that impressed me was his ability to sit down at a typewriter—usually at a sci-fi convention—and write a short story in 15 minutes based on a plot angle that somebody would shout out from the crowd.
Then he’d publish the damn thing.
That man had incredible talent and a pair that left deep grooves in whatever floor or sidewalk he trod.
Adolescent angst is nothing new, of course…Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” published in 1774, was sort of the founding book of the genre. It is about a young man who ends up killing himself because the woman he loves has married someone else…partly based on Goethe’s own experiences and partly on those of a friend who *did* kill himself. It inspired many young men to see themselves as Werther…I understand that in a later edition, Goethe felt impelled to add a postscrip advising against suicide.
One difference, though….Goethe’s protagonist, like his creator, had the problem of feeling too deeply. I think many young people today have the problem of feeling too little, resulting in things like self-mutilation in an attempt to at least gain some sensation.
And he holds a grudge better than any human being who ever lived. He’s still pissed at my writing partner for not inviting him to a party in 1978! It gets brought up every single damn time there’s any interaction of any kind, on any level! We don’t talk for five years – it’s the first thing out of his mouth! If the co-writer dies before Harlan, he’ll sneak into the cemetery and carve it onto his tombstone – “He didn’t invite Harlan Ellison to a really good party at his house in August of 1978 – Harlan hopes he went to hell!”
I’ve spent almost half my life listening to this…
I don’t know. How many people who heard “Only the Good Die Young” went out and died? Lyrics may have some influence on overall attitudes, as my following story may indicate. Many moons ago I spent a month as a substitute teacher in an “alternative school,” the place where kids go when they are booted out of their home schools as incorrigible.
One time one of the students was chanting a piece of some hateful misogynistic rap song. I made some remark about the hateful, misogynistic lyrics- something along the line that girls/women/mothers should be treated with respect. My remark apparently had an effect, as it got mentioned more than once in the days that followed. ( I didn’t bring it up again. Students did. Nor did they recite those lyrics in my presence again.)
It seemed to me that the students had apparently imbibed some of the hateful, misogynistic spirit of the song, to the extent that it seemed normal to them. My suggesting to them that females should be treated with respect was a notion that at the time was apparently novel to them, or that had been long buried underneath an avalanche of rap lyrics. Which is why my suggestion apparently made an impression, albeit short-lived, on several students.
I am not about to spend time wading through pop songs to research the link between lyrics and adolescent behavior.
Here is one potential unintended effect of unhealthy lyrics. Tipper Gore went on a crusade against such lyrics. Perhaps Tipper’s crusade is what caused Al to go off the deep end and become Mr. Greenjeans.
Here are some songs about murder that sustained me during my childhood. I learned all of Tom Lehrer’s songs by heart. I haven’t yet gone out and done what the songs’ protagonists did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjPhFSlhOuQ Tom Lehrer: I Hold Your Hand in Mine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKbd_Ajkex0 Tom Lehrer: The Irish Ballad.
My first thought after reading DQ’s comment, was also about Don’t Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult. I knew a young woman who played it while doing sit ups, as part of her daily exercise routine. Try it – it’s a great song for sit ups.
My second thought was of Edgar Allan Poe. Often morbid, to say the least, but also enriching.
Like anything else, it depends on the individual.