Why are there so many pro-stalker pop songs, anyway?

[james_davis_nicoll]

I'll give old-timey folk music a pass because people were stupider and more brutal in the past and if a man went from sunrise to sundown without slaughtering the neighbors to steal their cattle, partaking in a mob attack on the local minorities, burning down the local distillery while stealing a barrel of hard liquor and murdering his entire family while recovering from a hangover, he [1] was probably due to be nominated as a saint.

Modern people don't have the same excuse for backing the wrong side in their songs, so why is it there are so many songs about obsessive stalkers that make the stalker out to be the protagonist? As someone on rasfw pointed out, even when songs are written by people who have been stalked, like McLachlan's Possession, the song is told from the stalker's point of view. Why?




1: Almost all old timey song murderers are guys.

Comments

[snippy]

The stalker is empowered, the victim is powerless: who wants to sing (or hear) a song about being powerless?

[montrealais.livejournal.com]

Tori Amos (numerous, of which the harshest is "Me and a Gun"), Pet Shop Boys ("Can You Forgive Her," "The Theatre"), Pulp ("Common People"), New Order ("1963"), Bronski Beat ("Small Town Boy"), Oysterband ("Our Lady of the Bottles"), are a few examples off the top of my head.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

Meh, plenty of people get off on the powerless victim perspective. There's an awful lot of porn out there that's all about displaying the woman's reactions without showing the man's face, and often her reactions are of pain rather than pleasure.

I think the question was more about why the stalker is a protagonist opposed to an antagonist (not why is the song about the stalker rather than the victim).

[ms-danson.livejournal.com]

Your Name (lyrics) by Meredith Brooks is from the point of view of the victim and it creeps me out.

Leader (lyrics) by Biff Naked is also from the point of view of the victim but I like it. I keep imagining her punching the asshole's lights out.

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

I find your analysis of people in the past to be incisive and profound. We're definitely much smarter here in the future.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

WIN.

[montrealais.livejournal.com]

As you know, the protagonist is not necessarily the hero. One can write from the point of view of protagonists, even in the first person, of whose actions one disapproves. The Pet Shop Boys do this frequently (e.g. "Opportunities," "Shameless," and "A different point of view", the latter of which is not quite about a stalker but rather a controlling lover.)

[tangaroa.livejournal.com]

I was going to mention the The Reel Big Fish's Skatanic and The Offspring's Special Delivery as two such songs mocking the first-person stalker, and hey, I just did. Both songs present the stalker as a dangerous nutcase.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, STP's Sex Type Thing goes past "stalker" and seems to be "yay for rape". I don't sense irony in that song when I listen to it. It's more like a slice of a rapist's mind presented as art without the kind of social commentary that the Fish and the Offspring like to do.

[radargrrl.livejournal.com]

The subject of 'Possession' was one Uwe Vandrei, who was a friend of mine. It was seriously painful watching him destroy himself.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Not just murderers. But just about every active person in songs more than a few decades old is male. Females are just objects to be acted upon.

Stalker is sometimes seen as "overactive romantic" which is creepy as all hell.

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

Indeed. It never fails to creep me out *deeply* when people use Every Breath You Take as their wedding song. I just want to smack them and ask if they've actually listened to it...

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

That's, er, wrong. I could believe that men have a slight majority, but many of the great ballads have women as active characters. They don't tend to come out of it terribly well, admittedly, but then, neither do the men.

[the-blue-fenix.livejournal.com]

Also the Beatles song which starts "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to see you with another man."

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

The Brown Girl. Maybe less active than defiant, but not acted upon.
The Two Sisters. This also gives a female murderer. (Well, she tried, anyway; miller succeeded.)
Tam Lin
Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight
The Cruel Mother (another murderer, or infanticider.)
Allison Gross
Lady Diamond. Defies her father.

The Fair Flower of Northumberland is acted upon, in being seduced, but she takes action in springing her false knight of a seducer.

Lord Thomas and Annet seems to have two active females, one killing the other.

The Knight and the Shepherd's Daughter is weird. Rape, but then she goes to the king despite hardship, to get marriage or revenge, and then a manwhat? ending.

[thesaucernews.livejournal.com]

The following occurs to me, and may or may not be a factor:

- young men can identify with a song about sexual obsession, frustration and aggression.

- young men can fantasize about the above, occurring from a female point of view.

- not a lot of men are likely to buy Sarah McLachlan or Tori Amos, but Michael Stipe sold a lot of Monster.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

From a narrative construction point of view, it might be the active antagonist has a wider POV on the events than a passive protagonist.

For instance, you wouldn't normally expect a slasher horror to focus on the passive "we don't know what's happening" characters.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

Or imagine if a murder mystery focused on a clueless protagonist who has to work out how the murder was committed rather than the traditional "killer who's done the deed in an elaborate way in act one and must now try to stifle the investigation" viewpoint of Columbo and... all those other ones.

Narratively only the effectively omniscient veiwpoint of the stalker/killer that knows how everything happened can work. *nods head authoritively*

Also: overpowered munchkin protagonists are the best kind of protagonists, as they are much nicer to read than some underdog character who must struggle against adversity.

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I think I want definitions nailed down a bit. Most of the "old-timey folk music" examples that you seem to be referring to are murder ballads, and the whole point of the song is the crime. And there get to be women murderers, usually when the serve something the diner really should have known not to eat.

Hmm, does Wikipedia have an entry? Why of course it does.

On the pop side of things, I think we also have to distinguish between the songs where the lyricist knows the subject is a stalker (Every Breath You Take) and those where the lyricist is clueless.

I presume Death Cab For Cutie's latest irritation is the first type.

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

Well, there were more than a few murderesses too, but I think most everyone had a story that went like this:

He had it comin'
He had it comin'
He only had himself to blame
If you'd've been there
If you'd've seen it
I think that you would have done the same


I suspect that these days it's just that people are less likely to accept this as an excuse. Look at all of those John Wayne movies, for example. And what eras does 'old timey' include anyway?

[summers-place.livejournal.com]

Not old-timey, but in Goodbye Earl, ol' Earl sure was portrayed as having "had it coming" to him.

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

There are plenty of female killers in song. Miss Otis Regrets for instance, being the tale of a wronged woman killing her lover. Or Weile Waile being one of many about a woman disposing of an unwanted baby.

[montrealais.livejournal.com]

And the very well known "Frankie and Johnny."

[alymid.livejournal.com]

I think that if you look at a LOT of modern media you'll find that current portrayals of love really tend towards unhealthy - but its okay "because they are in love".

Isn't it romantic when a guy won't leave a girl alone because he loves her SO much.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Paging Stephenie Meyer, will Ms. Meyer come to the creep-colored courtesy phone, please ...

(Since Twilight is an absolutely perfect example of that sort of thing that's becoming MASSIVELY popular and profitable ... there's some quite thinky discussion relevant to it here for those who've managed to avoid hearing about it before now)

[paraleipsis.livejournal.com]

Modern people don't have the same excuse for backing the wrong side in their songs, so why is it there are so many songs about obsessive stalkers that make the stalker out to be the protagonist?

Because fictional narrative in pop culture as a whole rewards stalker tactics; cf., like, the romantic comedy genre.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

I blame this guy:



And all the others like him.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Where is that from?

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

Maybe because TPTB won't play victim/survivor songs unless they're depressing: http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/75463717/on-abortion-rape-art-and-humor