Bader's writing made me instantly remember Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats," a music video I had watched a long time ago and still harbored unsettling feelings about. It's like they couldn't even wait for the music to start before the gender bashing. But then the real bashing begins, with Carrie baseball batting her boyfriend's car from hood to trunk with anger fueled by her thoughts about her boyfriend flirting with another girl. "Maybe next time he will think before he cheats," she says. "Yes he will think of how much a psycho his ex was," I think. While the song comes to a close, I am filled with so many questions. Why does this song exist? Why is this song so popular? Oh my god, this song won a Grammy. I had always thought of the Grammys as an insignificant trophy factory where someone not getting a Grammy would be the real surprise, but this has disappointed me further. I scroll through the comments and I see many, not a majority,thankfully, basically saying that men should beware if they cheat and that getting their car broken is the least of their worries. A song like this does not need to be reinforced in any way. People should not be validated when they think of doing awful things to a cheating partner. And Study Question 1 brings up a good point. A song showing a man destroying a women's possessions would probably face industry wide backlash.
But the nightmare only started there. One of the comments had a link to another Carrie Underwood song, "Two Black Cadillacs." Again, the song centered around an adulterous man who had just died. The preacher and brother both paid their respects at the funeral saying, "he was a good man." But the two women who had been cheated on "didn't bother to cry." Apparently, they also didn't bother to brake before committing homicide on the cheating man by running him over with Cadillacs. I couldn't believe it. How had this song escaped any form of media coverage criticizing its ridiculous ethical fallacies and reinforcement of psychotic behavior? Why did this song have so many likes? If Study Question 1 applied well to the first song, it must have been created for this song because there is no way any music video of a man murdering any women for any reason is being released without that record company immediately becoming an industry leper. In a society of political correctness and carefully polished media messages, how was a music video like this able to emerge unscathed? And even if the obvious male outrage is suppressed, aren't there women that should be protesting against the release of these toxic messages? Of course, of course, I understand that this is only a song and it cannot be taken seriously, but is that really a sufficient response? Younger and younger children are tuning into these sources of entertainment, and surely you would not want Little Tom or Sally to think that their future feelings of jealousy and rage should be vented through homicide or any sort of violence? I see a lot of comments saying how the Carrie's songs describe their lives perfectly and I don't doubt that those same people extract scripts from the songs to learn how to live their own lives. Apparently Carrie Underwood has more of these ridiculous songs like "Blown Away" where she basically indirectly kills her father by not waking him up before a tornado hits, and "Good Girl," where she tells girls they should leave their boyfriend now even if it is going well to ensure that the relationship can't turn sour. And the worst thing about all of this is that she is ALWAYS portrayed as the victim. Yes even when she is murdering someone.
As Bader says, "Some messages in popular songs are not necessarily healthy ones for youth who are in the process of trying to sort out sex, love, and romance," and these songs are wildly popular. Cultivation theory, social learning theory, and scripting theory would also all argue that continued and consistent exposure to this kind of media would have a very real influence on its viewers most notably big Carrie fans and the people commenting on how Carrie's songs describe their lives perfectly. Carrie is also a very popular singer with all of the mentioned songs exceeding 10 million views on Youtube with one winning a Grammy. Maybe our society, in an attempt to become too politically correct, has swayed too far and allowed for the traditionally "minority voice" too much leeway.
Bader, A. (2007). "Love will steer the stars" and other improbable feats: Media
myths in popular love songs. In M.-L. Galician & D. L. Merskin (Eds.), Critical thinking
about sex, love, and romance in the mass media (pp. 141-160). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
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Bandura, A. (2002). Social cognitive theory of mass communication. In J. Bryant & D. Zillman(Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
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(2007). From sex to sexuality: Exposing the heterosexual script on primetime
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While I thought John brought up really interesting ideas and different perspectives to Carrie Underwood songs that I have truly never considered before, I would love some clarification about which Study Question 1 he is referring to. The first study question I found that Anne Bader asked was, "does the song concern romantic love?" (Bader, 2007, pp. 143). While "Before He Cheats" and "Two Black Cadillacs" both concern romantic love in a certain way, it was in a way that Bader did not really code for in her article. Bader, to me, was coding for "Galician's 12 Major Mass Media Myths of sex, love and romance" (Bader, 2007, pp. 147). These myths did not really concern cheating or revenge in love, but positive myths about relationships. With that aside, I do think John brought up an interesting idea your blog post presented was that maybe they should code for these portrayals about romantic love if they truly want to asses what popular music looks like today.
ReplyDeleteThere are many songs like the songs Carrie Underwood sings above present in media today, written by both female and male artists. One song that comes to mind is Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me," which was released fourteen years ago in 2000, but is still played a little today. This song is all about being caught cheating with the girl next door, but with no remorse. I'll post a link to the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g5Hz17C4is. Another song that comes to mind is the Dixie Chicks,"Goodbye Earl," which contains a very similar message to the songs written by Carrie Underwood. Just this time, Earl was domestically abusing the female and her friends sought out physical revenge. Here is a link to the Dixie Chicks song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw7gNf_9njs. Both of these examples are not applicable to the codes in Anne Bader's article, but were wildly popular when they were released.
While Bader's codes were not necessarily prevalent in the examples you and I both gave, I think one code that could apply to the songs from Bader's article is, "the love of a good and faithful woman can change a man from a 'beast' into a 'prince'" (Bader, 2007, pp. 149). While this code would not have been supported, the opposite of this code seems to be prevalent in both of Carrie Underwoods' songs and my songs. They sing about men cheating on or abusing women in all of the songs, even when the women were faithful to them. The men clearly ended up "beasts" and not "princes."
I do believe both of our examples present possibly negative messages to their listeners, who may leave the song believing that physical revenge is an acceptable way to combat cheaters and domestic abuse. I think this means that there is room for improvement in terms of future research being done. This research should expand on the codes about romantic relationships and maybe account for the negative aspects of relationships as well.
References:
Bader, A. (2007). "Love will steer the stars" and other improbable feats: Media myths in popular love songs. In M.-L. Galician & D. L. Merskin (Eds.), Critical thinking about sex, love, and romance in the mass media (pp. 141-160). Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Hi sorry I did not respond earlier. I wish there was a better way to communicate and get notifications. Study Question 1 for me asked me to consider a role reversal, if the characters in the songs had swapped genders.
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