This article is a large part of the reason that so little gets done about global warming.
Emimen and Rihanna's brutality chic is a bit beyond me - Telegraph
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I'm beginning to feel a little bit behind the times, a touch stuck in the 1990s. You see, I'm just not getting the new domestic violence chic. Eminem and Rihanna are at the top of the American charts with a song called "Love The Way You Lie", about a couple locked in a violent love-hate relationship. The woman shown fighting with the actor Dominic Monaghan in the video is Megan Fox, widely considered one of the sexiest actresses in films today.
Eminem's voice describes how he has hit his girlfriend, and feels ashamed: he woos her back with promises of change, but remarks to himself that "if she ever tries to f---ing leave again, I'm gonna tie her to the bed and set this house on fire." At which point, the lip-glossed Rihanna (who has herself been the victim of domestic violence) sings the languorous chorus: "Just gonna stand there and watch me burn / But that's all right because I like the way it hurts." Given the specificity of the Eminem persona's plans, the burning doesn't sound too metaphorical to me.
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Sorry, I don't speak Starbucks The reception has been split between those who have criticised Eminem for romanticising domestic violence, and those who applaud him for raising the "difficult issue" at all. I don't get the latter argument. Of course he's raising it: the problem is what he does with it. The rather brutal love glamorised here is intensely passionate and fated to end in destruction: specifically, that of the woman.
I had much the same difficulty with Michael Winterbottom's recent film The Killer Inside Me, whose psychopathic protagonist slowly beats a prostitute, played by Jessica Alba, to a literal pulp. As he does it, he says "I love you", and she gargles back "I love you", before slipping into unconsciousness. Here's another startlingly beautiful woman who seems to interpret being mashed almost to death as a sign of authentic passion.
What truly astonished me, however, were the numbers of critics and commentators who piously lined up to thank Winterbottom for showing them just how nasty domestic violence could be. It never occurred to them to ask why the woman involved was so improbably complicit in her fate.
Unfortunately, someone hadn't handed the script marked "The More Sophisticated Interpretation" to Jessica Alba, who said in an interview that her character "had provoked" her killer. She had a "death wish", Alba said, and she "finally found a man who was man enough to go through with it". Her immediate forgiveness depicted "the reality of being in love with someone". Frankly, one might have received more progressive views on the topic from Raoul Moat.
It is true that some violent relationships are forged from a kind of sexual tension, and that violence can be reciprocal. In the early days, jealousy can be mistaken for flattering attentiveness, and rows for exciting drama. The reason women stay in abusive relationships, both Eminem and Winterbottom suggest, is because they get an enormous sexual and emotional kick out of it. But in real life, there are many more complicated reasons: the woman may have children, and be struggling to keep a family together. She may have nowhere else to go, or little money, or be frightened of reprisals. She may feel that with time her partner will stop what he is doing, or she may come from a culture that strongly encourages her to sacrifice almost anything to present the illusion of a functioning marriage.
I was travelling on the Tube recently when I became aware of a young couple having an argument. As he protested, she repeated gently: "But it isn't all right for you to punch me", as if pleading for agreement. Beside her, a sweet-faced boy of about two sat in his buggy, smiling broadly. It made me sad, because it seemed to me that soon he would understand things that would dull his smile.
I would have spoken to her if she had been on her own, but the man didn't get off until the same stop as I did. I looked back through the window at her and the boy. She had her head tilted down to one side, and she was weeping. From where I was standing, it didn't look as though she liked the way it hurt.
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I'm not posting this for the domestic violence angle (we had a thread about that just recently) but for what it says about modern society's victim complex. Specifically, this paragraph:
"The reason women stay in abusive relationships, both Eminem and Winterbottom suggest, is because they get an enormous sexual and emotional kick out of it. But in real life, there are many more complicated reasons: the woman may have children, and be struggling to keep a family together. She may have nowhere else to go, or little money, or be frightened of reprisals. She may feel that with time her partner will stop what he is doing, or she may come from a culture that strongly encourages her to sacrifice almost anything to present the illusion of a functioning marriage."
So then think about all the opinions you've ever head about domestic violence in your life. If my experience is representative then latter point of view makes up about 95% of them, with the "they enjoy it reallys" making up the other 5% (and most of them were me). Nevertheless, by some wierd leap of the imagination McCartney's managing to write as though she's a lone voice in the wilderness, the only one standing up for justice in a society that's more or less entirely dedicated to domestic violence.
There's an excellent passage in a book by Philip Hamilton (
Media, War and Postmodernity - it's grate) where he describes the victory of the right wing in the US during the Reagan years - communism is defeated and they're on top of the world and should be putting all their energy into celebrating the victory, yet suddenly they decide they're the victims, standing up for the poor little ordinary Joe against the overwhelming forces of elitism, Washington, liberalism etc. Of course, the left has pretty much always been all about the victims, so it effectively meant that you had a whole society of people whose legitimacy was derived from their mniority/victim status, and no oppressors.
Hamilton presents it as a recent thing, though I think we've seen it occasionally in the past. Often within Christianity. You had this huge monolithic, omnipotent organisation that had people killed and tortured and dictated reality for more or less a millennium and a half, but which still managed to persuade itself that it was constantly on the point of being overwhelmed by heretics or infidels or witches, whatever the villain
du jour happened to be.
Because (whisper it, because it gets a little too close to the romanitc vision of domestic violence to be permissible) being a victim makes life so much easier. You'd do all sorts of stuff otherwise, but you can't because you're a victim so you might as well just stay in and watch
Strictly Come Dancing. In other words, "Thank heavens, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and enjoy it."
And that's the reason so little gets done about global warming, even when greens are in power.
Emimen and Rihanna's brutality chic is a bit beyond me
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