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

[barberio.livejournal.com]

Except that the detective in a murder mystery is an active protagonist, not a passive one. Imagine a murder mystery where the central protagonist character makes no steps to solve a murder, and doesn't know there's been a murder at all until the last chapter. It might work, but it's certainly not the normal narrative.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

This is almost but not quite Gosford Park, or at least the bit centered on Inspector Thomson.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

While yet again, the focus of the story was on the Active Protagonists and Antagonists, albeit more of them, and split into two groups. Except for the bit where one of... Well, yes, you get what I mean tho.

Altho, I do find it a rather good example of non-standard spin on the "Country house murder mystery", by having the Detective be an outsider who arrives for a short time, and does nothing of consequence.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Much of classic Sherlock Holmes is that way. The narrator/protagonist is Watson and half the time he doesn't even know exactly what crime was committed until after he is pointing his service revolver at someone.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

Except the Protagonist in most Sherlock Holmes stories is Holmes, while Watson is the point of view. And times where Holmes is absent, Watson does take on the role of an active protagonist.

Protagonist, and point-of-view, are not the exact same things in terms of narrative. It is possible for the PoV character not to be the Protagonist.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Ah. Interesting, I hadn't considered that a story with a first person POV could have a protagonist who wasn't the POV. Makes sense.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

It's actually a very common device in Detective fiction, as an excuse for why the Grand Solution isn't immediately presented as the character discovers it. For instance, many Sherlock Holmes stories would have had the mystery revealed far too early had the PoV been with Holmes and not Watson.

[jwgh]

Kinky Friedman's mysteries can sort of approach this, in a Big Lebowski kind of way.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

I was actually trying to find an example of a passive protagonist, and you just reminded me of Big Lebowski. Yes, passive protagonists happen, but they're comparative rare, and by nature tricky to write well.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Tanith Lee has a number. It is part of why I can't read her writing much of the time.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

I'd never quite figured out why I can't stand reading her, but you've hit the nail on the head.