For those of you who haven't seen it (or need a refresher course): Eminem's single featuring Rihanna, "Love the Way You Lie."
I realize I'm a bit late in responding to this video, as it came out a couple months ago. This is partially because the first time I watched it, I was bawling so hard I couldn't breathe, and to write about it would mean having to watch it again. Heck, I can't even hear the song in a restaurant or bar without either tearing up or just getting the hell out of dodge, and so I resent the fact that it's such a popular single and that I have to hear a song about domestic abuse when I'm just trying to get a bagel.
In other words, the song has done its job.
I found myself thinking of this video because one of my favorite bloggers, Tom Matlack, waxed poetic a few weeks ago about how Eminem sounds like "raw unfiltered manhood" to him.
Now, Tom: I love you. I love your HuffPo posts (HuffPosts?). I love The Good Men Project (seriously, everyone, check out Good Men Project). But when I hear Eminem, I hear (along with UNBELIEVABLE talent and occasional humor) hate and rage. That's why the song is so effective. Perhaps what you're trying to tell me, by equating Eminem's hate and rage with "manhood," is that every man is suppressing hate and rage. Sure, that's probably true - most of us are suppressing hate and rage, but I don't know very many women who would express it the way Eminem expresses it (then again I don't know very many men who would either). So, OK. But you go on to celebrate how "Eminem's opus is about the fundamental disconnect between a man and a woman: about the way we lie to each other."
Is it? Really? Because in "Love the Way You Lie," as you so eloquently point out, the lie is that "this time will be different" when it comes to beating up your girlfriend. Is that really fundamental? I'm personally skeptical of any claim of a "fundamental disconnect" between men and women, as that assumes that there is some "essence" of men and some "essence" of women that are at odds with each other and that lead to some universal disconnect. Frankly, I think that's bullshit, and that most of our disconnects are socialized. But, let's assume for the sake of argument that there is such thing as a fundamental disconnect between a man and a woman. Is it really outlined in this song? Are all men and women in coupledom together going through some version of this relationship?
My guess is no. But, the song also wouldn't affect me so deeply if I couldn't relate to it somehow. No, I've never been in a domestic abuse situation. But I think most of us know what it's like to promise, or have someone else promise, to change. And then not change. Or not change enough. Not even a lover, necessarily - friends, family members, colleagues. I think most of us know what it's like for things to get better and then worse. I think most of us know what it's like to get mad and act on it, and to have someone get mad right back. I'm pretty sure that's universal. Most of my plays have at least one moment of violence, often more. I once had a teacher ask me after reading one of these scenes, "Do you want to hit people?" Yes, I responded - doesn't everyone?
So perhaps there is some universality here. Some fundamental something. Just not in the way that Tom meant it.
Some people have accused the video of glorifying domestic abuse. What's glorified about it? Because it shows that people in abusive relationships have sex? Because it acknowledges that abusers do something besides abuse? Because the people in the relationship are good-looking and well-lit? Please. If that's "glorifying," then any honest discussion of domestic violence will "glorify" it to a degree, because the very problem is that abusers don't act like abusers 24/7 - they have good days like anyone else, which from what I understand is often the whole draw for their partners sticking through the abuse in the first place. Perhaps I can't comment, not having been in an abusive relationship, but I will forever be haunted by the words of a domestic violence shelter worker who came and spoke to the cast of "The Vagina Monologues" the year I performed in it. She said (and I paraphrase), "The most common reason women in abusive relationships don't leave their abusers is, quite frankly, because they love them. And yeah, it gets bad sometimes, but it gets better eventually so they just wait it out until it does." Which is an attitude that many people who are NOT in abusive relationships take every day - just not taken to that extreme.
The most important thing is to discourage domestic violence. If this video in any way counteracts that, then yes, we should be concerned. But I'm not so sure that's the case. After watching this video for the first time, sobbing uncontrollably, I didn't feel turned on or excited by the sexuality. I felt terror, rage, "oh fuck it happened again." That's not a sexy feeling. It's awful.
What do people think? Does it glorify? Is it pure raw manhood? Something else?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
For the record, I am the publisher of The Good Men Project magazine (thanks for the shoutout) and work with Tom Matlack.
ReplyDeleteI want to first echo your words with the experience of my sister, who ran a shelter for women who were victims of domestic violence for over a decade. She told me once, “The media would have you believe that women stay in abusive relationships because they are afraid to leave. That’s bullshit. Women stay in abusive relationships because the good times are so damn good.”
Thursday night, I was at a hockey game watching my teenage daughter lose a game in sudden death overtime. While there, an email comes across my iphone – it is breaking news from some at Yale describing an incident where DKE frat pledges were parading around campus chanting “No means yes. Yes means anal”. I immediately forward the email to Tom and three editors of the magazine with a “hey guys, what do you think?” Tom is the first to reply: “Run it. It’s an important story.” Five minutes later, Cooper concurs; volunteers to write it. Our editor-in-chief makes sure we fact check. The story -- with video, eye-witness interviews, and fact-checked -- is up by 9 am the next morning. 12 hours later 10,000 people have read the article. Salon, Jezebel, and blogs like your own link to it, talk about it. People comment with every point of view imaginable.
It strikes me as the same thing – here are guys from Yale -- guys who are “good looking and well lit”, who probably have very real, very good sexual relationships with women * most * of the time. Do we forgive them this one indiscretion? Laugh it off as, “Those college kids – joking about rape again. Boys will be boys.” Those are questions The Good Men Project – with Tom Matlack as the founder, seek to answer. His story about “Love the Way You Lie” came about because that’s one way into the conversation.
The important thing is to see it – and allow people to have conversations about these very real, very difficult-to-talk about issues that acknowledge all those different viewpoints. The important thing about a video like the one with Rihanna and Eminem is that it lets us see this, too -– “hey, sometimes people who are in abusive relationships are sexy.” And some people stay in those relationships because the good times are so damn good. And yes, it’s possible to love someone who abuses you.
As an aside, when I first got involved in The Good Men Project, I had felt a “fundamental disconnect” from men most of my life. But a funny thing happened -- by discovering what it is that makes men and women different, I finally discovered all that is that makes us the same.
Mariah:
ReplyDeleteThank you for this amazingly thought-provoking piece. I actually think we agree on more than perhaps you know. Let me try to explain, in light of your piece, a bit more about why I am moved by this song.
You are of course right that there is no universal essence of manhood or coupledom. I have only my own experience as do all the other contributors to our Project, male and female. We work very hard not to define goodness for anyone else but ask readers and writers to think about it as broadly and personally as possible.
In my own experience, as a recovering addict, I know all about making promises that are not kept. The core of addiction is promising to change and being unable to do so. This applies to putting down the drink in my case but on a much deeper level to telling the truth about myself and being willing to try change those patterns of behavior which don't serve me and my loved ones. The crux of "recovery," which happens to be the name of Eminem's album from which this song is taken, is the part where you have figured out all the shit you do wrong and you stand before the God of your understanding and ask for assistance to change. My motivation to attempt to find goodness in myself, and inspire others to try to do the same, comes from that moment of humility in my own life and the powerful results it has had to make me a better father, husband and man.
So when I think about goodness I think fundamentally about telling the truth. And when I think about the things I have done most wrong in my life, the times when I have hurt people I love beyond anything that I can repair now with anything other than right action, it comes down to be a liar and a cheat. And yes I am talking about my inability to love in an honest way.
Eminem hasn't been a role model of a guy, that is for sure. But to me that is what he too is talking about here too. His own understanding of the need to get honest with himself if he is going to get anywhere. And he is holding up the mirror for the rest of us guys to look at. What lie are you still telling yourself?
Now we get to his duet partner. Honestly the sound of Rihanna's voice is what brings tears to my eyes every time I hear this song. Her voice is so beautiful and yet she is the one who was beaten savagely by her boyfriend Chris Brown. I don't think there is any accident that Eminem asked her and she had the courage to sing this song.
Rihanna too, it seems to me, is singing about her own struggles here, about what it is to be lied to, about being stuck in a destructive connection to someone who is lying to themselves and to her about changing, about the gut-wrenching pain of loving and hating at the same time. It is about her moment of truth too, about getting honest with herself about what is really going on in her life. The only way she can sing a song explicitly about her abuse is if she sees it for what it really was and has been able to move onto a better place. Of all the things in the song that is what I find the most moving. A woman who has being beaten singing with courage about what it was like to love the lie that was being told to her and allowing us all into that world to see the seduction but pain it caused.
Those are the reasons I can't seem to get enough of the song: because to me it gets at something that most artists, and we as a culture, shy away from and resonate deeply with my own experience and the issues that I care about most.
Thank you so much, Lisa and Tom, for weighing in here. I don't think we actually disagree about anything! I think we all can agree that these dialogues are necessary, and that they need to allow room for the gray, the complicated, the millions of different ways that people experience femininity, masculinity, abuse, love, addiction. Keep up the good work, both of you.
ReplyDelete