Let's just sing along to lyrics that promote abuse...

So, this will have to be a short post, but has anyone really listened to the lyrics of Matchbox 20's "Push"?

It came on Pandora at work the other day, and I sat there singing along to the song that I had heard for years on a family-friendly radio station, and then it dawned on me: This song is a big, vicious cycle of emotional abuse! Both parties have been in bad, emotionally abusive relationships, and the girl is trying to hold on to their relationship.

If Good Guy Greg were to step in having the same feelings as the guy (what I take from it-- he's been hurt and he thinks she's kind of nonsense for trying to start things up), he would just tell the girl that he's sorry she feels hurt in the relationship, but he thinks she could find happiness elsewhere. She would feel hurt, but maybe both of them could find their way out of emotional abuse and away from their addiction to it.

On the contrary, Scumbag Steve appears here, and he starts talking about how he wants to push the girl around, push the girl down, and take her for granted, and then states a verbal commitment to follow through. Are you kidding me? Fighting emotional abuse with physical and more emotional abuse is a horrible idea! I don't care how much hurt you are in-- you do not commit to perpetuate hurt.

I know we all have times where we feel like we want to get back at someone for this, that, or the other, but when you border on abuse is where a line must be drawn as a strict, "NO." Looking at Wikipedia now, according to Rob Thomas (when fending off feminist groups when the song came out in 1997) it was the guy being abused the whole time, which, when you look closely, this could be the case (if you stick with him narrating for the girl the entire song), but I don't think that was widely known. If we stick with the latter idea of it, we still see an emotionally confused and abused man who won't get away from this abuse, and there is no resolution of the abuse stopping.

When we had our music lecture in my media class, we talked about how lyrics have more of an affect than we think on our lives. I didn't think I had heard enough songs about abuse to really say that that was true, but now I'm realizing just how much I don't know what lyrics I'm singing half the time. I can sing the lyrics to many songs, but I have no idea what kind of meaning is behind the words most of the time (as evident.) How does the music industry get away with this? Isn't this a blatant stance saying that physical and emotional abuse is culturally accepted, creating more personal fables and false realities for abusers and abuse-es?  How do we sing along with this song, as well as "Pumped Up Kicks" (a bright-sounding song about someone threatening to shoot kids who have nice things), and "Eyes on Fire" (a techno song sung by a girl with a soothing voice singing "I'll seek you out, flay you alive, one more word and you won't survive")? Why are we addicted to whatever has a catchy beat and a happy tone? Does this disconcert anyone else?

Social Science Perspective on Les Mis

Amongst the craziness of life, the universe, and everything (specifically a 25 point project taking 10 hours to do right (see this video) and the ups and downs of midterms) I was able to finally see Les Misérables a couple weeks ago when a friend invited a group of people to go. This means I am somewhat qualified (at least capable) of giving an opinion about the movie. On BYU Memes, there was a meme/comment thread that described reasons why certain people didn't like Les Misérables for several different reasons. Being an admin for the page, I felt like I needed to watch the movie to truly understand why the movie was or was not the greatest thing since Wicked to adequately give an opinion. Among the sea of opinions about why or why not Les Misérables is a good musical or a good movie, mine is of the positive, and (because it is me) comes from a perspective of a social scientist.

I think the reason why we generally like Les Misérables so much is because we can connect to each character emotionally in some way, whether we have experienced similar emotions or we know someone who has. We develop a deep connection with the characters, and when they lead intertwining lives where one good or bad intention affects the others around them for good or for bad (and, in most cases, it is for the worse), it is heart-wrenching. The musical or movie does a really good job at making you deeply study the characters' lives for yourself and see the complexity of each individual human's thoughts and how much interdependence is portrayed with actions. In a nutshell, here are some examples:

• You can't see Cosette and Eponine fully happy at the same time because they like the same man (and what girl has not been on both sides of that coin, I ask you.) 
• The good intentions of Jean Valjean get besmirched by a complicated mess of gossip, pride, lust, resentment of rejection, Javert's insatiable sense of false justice and mistrust of full repentance (because of the cynicism that has grown inside him from criminals not changing), and the context of government hostility and economic depression. 
• The girl saved from hard labor and child abuse (Cosette) grows up isolated and horribly naïve and somewhat resents her rescuer and only father she's really known who has only tried to keep her safe the best way he knew how. Perhaps he was a helicopter parent, but perhaps a little paranoia, considering Javert's history, was what was needed.
• All of these events (and more) happen while Jean Valjean has a horrible guilt complex and build up of anxiety about being a changed man, and he is encouraged to have low self-esteem until his dying day, by Javert's false sense of justice. 
• Ironically enough, the battle scenes at the bunkers, where half of the people worth noting die, have some of the least amount of effect on the interdependence of individual story lines we see in the whole movie (at least if we compare the on-screen time of different events.) We see the end of a lot of people, but the only one the deaths really affect is Marius (and, perhaps, Javert, depending on your perspective, but it is more psychological warfare with Jean Valjean to me, and somewhat detached to the battle scene at hand.) I guess I'm also not including the audience being affected, as we bawled through the innocent deaths that were for naught, but you must remember that we aren't really in the movie, even though it may seem like that emotionally.

In the end, the more I think of it tonight, I think we can also see our daily conundrums and faults embodied within the characters. We know the difficulty of making hard decisions in our lives, and know that agony. We see ourselves in Javert's battle with what is justice and mercy, and knowing who to trust, what things are going with the letter and spirit of the law, and how much we fully believe in repentance for others and ourselves. I'm going to generalize this next bit to everyone, though I'm not sure how far the reach of this is, so bear with me.  We also can see ourselves through Jean Valjean, as much as we hate to admit it, because we also can't let our former actions go sometimes when evaluating ourselves as a person. We see ourselves as broken, even if we say we believe in entire repentance. When people tell us that we are wonderful, we can't accept that because of our glaring past, present faults, and we hold on to negative opinions of ourselves like a pair of old duct-taped, tattered, and ill-functioning shoes instead of letting ourselves break-in the nice ones because we're afraid of dirtying them. We believe the man saying he's fighting for justice is telling the truth; perhaps because he personally believes that is what is happening helps convince ourselves, even if we know that he won't win in the end. We need to realize that the conviction of negative forces does not make them right, and our self doubts and secret stashes of self-resentment can be taken away by hope and trust in the atonement of Christ. He bore all things (not just our sins), and he did it so we could change for good, not just erase our mistakes or duct tape the holes. Believe it as much as He does: let's all learn a lesson or two from some of the unnecessary self-deprecation and let's be a little more whole.