Wake up!
Yes, I caught you. Web-surfing in a dream. Staring at the screen in
a trance. We all do it.
Ever had the experience of searching for your car keys then suddenly
realising that you were looking right at them but didn’t see them?
Or, ever suddenly caught yourself daydreaming behind the wheel and
realised that you just drove for the last five minutes without paying
any conscious attention to it?
These are everyday examples of hypnotic trances. Those hypnotist shows
where a group of people on a stage are made to do silly things with
apparently no realisation of what they’re doing is just an extreme
example of a natural state that we are in for a lot of the day. “In
one sense,” writes British hypnotist Paul McKenna, “we are in a profound
trance all day long.”
Trouble is, while our conscious mind is daydreaming or in a trance
our unconscious mind is left wide open to attack. Information received
while in a trance is uncritically accepted. Hypnotists know this.
This is how they are able to take an ordinarily quiet, shy accountant
and successfully install such a command as “After you wake up, every
time I click my fingers you will jump up and dance like Michael Jackson.”
Advertisers and retailers know this too. As McKenna says, “Supermarkets
are such hypnotic environments - the fluorescent lights, the inane
background music and the colourful packaging. All these things alter
your consciousness and put you in a more suggestible state. I am always
seeing people in a supermarket trance.”
And now, music producers have realised it. Man-bashing music has become
big business. We let it wash over us without pausing to think what
the lyrics are really saying.
Pop songs used to be, mainly, love songs. Over the last few years
there has been a shift towards ‘hate-songs’ in the mainstream music
industry - and the targets are men. Take a look at this -
"I am, I feel, like
I wanna smash his face in
Yeah! That’d be fun
Coz I sure got a fist for a fight.”
You’d think such a nasty sentiment would be from an essay by an insane
radical feminist, but in actual fact it’s a lyric from a popular mainstream
song by British girl-group Alisha’s Attic. A song played over
and over on the radio for the last few years.
It’s an extreme example of the kind of pop lyric that is constantly
repeated but rarely registers with us at a conscious level. Therefore
we don’t even think about it, we just absorb it. Over the last few
years there has been an absolute deluge of these songs.
There are three main types -
The sneering song
An example of this kind of chirpy, ‘man-bashing with a smirk on their
face’ is Shania Twain’s song “That don’t impress me much”.
We hear about how, even though a guy is a rocket scientist, has a
car, or looks like Brad Pitt she still is not impressed. At the end
of the song you’re left wondering what the bloody hell would impress
you Shania? The girl-group TLC are also masters at this
type of man-bashing tune.
The ‘we don’t need you’ song
An example of this is “Independent Woman” by Destiny’s Child.
It’s your typical song of women bragging that they don’t need a man,
and even when they spend time with one, it’s purely on their own terms.
They aren’t enjoying his company, they’re just using him -
“(I) only ring your celly when I’m feeling lonely, when it’s all
over please get up and leave.”
(For non-American readers, ‘celly’ means cellphone)
Notice also that there’s no coherent philosophy that links these songs
other than man-bashing, because while the likes of TLC put
down men who are poor, saying that they won’t date them, Destiny’s
Child in the song mentioned above put down men who have resources,
saying that they don’t need them. Poor men aren’t wanted. Rich men
aren’t wanted. In fact, in one song Destiny’s Child drone on
about how they are independent women, then in another (‘bills, bills,
bills’) they sing: “Can you pay my bills? Can you pay my telephone
bills? Can you pay my automo’ bills? If you can then maybe we could
chill.” Are these the telephone bills from her ‘celly’ that she will
use to call you only at those times she requires you?
Silly girls.
The ‘you are worthless’ song
A good example of this is the song “Goodbye Earl” by the Dixie
Chicks. The song starts off describing the typical bad-guy who
beats his wife up. Then the wife and her best friend kill and dispose
of him and get away with it. They coldly sing:
“You're feeling weak, why don’t you lay down, and sleep Earl,
Ain’t it dark, wrapped up in that tarp Earl.”
Sickening.
Over and over the message is that men are worthless. Relationships
with men aren’t worth it. Men are abusive. Women don’t need men. Kids,
teenagers and adults alike have the lyrics of these catchy tunes playing
over and over in their minds. It truly is hypnotic brainwashing.
You see, there are three keys to the success of pop music in putting
across a message:
1. It’s repetitive in terms of style (certain words or phrases are
repeated over and over) and also in the fact that a popular song is
played repeatedly on the radio and TV.
2. The lyrics are coupled with catchy tunes, so we grow accustomed
to hearing man-bashing lyrics at the same time as hearing music that
makes us feel good. Result: we start to associate man-bashing with
pleasant feelings. This is a basic, time-tested psychological technique.
3. Similarly, the lyrics are coupled with images of fashionable, young,
rich and sexy singers. Resulting in the same positive-feeling associations
as in 2 above.
So, is there actually some kind of agenda or conspiracy on behalf
of female singers to produce this kind of music? Yes and no.
The women themselves write some of these songs, but others are just
given to the girls who are no-doubt pleased to even have a record
contract. The vast majority of this music is probably masterminded
by a very small number of music producers who have caught the scent
of millions to be made out of whipping-up hatred of men. Conflict
always brings attention, especially these days. And men generally
don’t complain very much about being the target of such media attacks.
The producers themselves don’t care; it’s just a new, and profitable,
trend to them.
One such producer is Kevin ‘She’kspere’ Briggs, who is the
creep behind man-bashing hits from TLC, Destiny’s Child,
and Pink. He describes his lack of concern about man-bashing
music in the November 2000 edition of Arena magazine: “We caught
onto a niche and it was working, so we kept working it, making more
songs, like adding episodes to a soap opera,” He’s not exactly enriched
the lives of us men, although he’s certainly enriched his own pockets,
and all without having to stand up and take responsibility for it.
“The truth is, most people don’t know it’s me behind those songs,”
he said.
Feminists make a big fuss about the obscure rap acts that produce
supposedly misogynistic tunes, but these aren’t the records that the
music industry is putting its full multi-million-dollar marketing
weight behind. They aren’t the records in the top ten. They aren’t
the records repeatedly played again and again on mainstream radio.
Any song on its own is a pretty harmless thing. But when you have
an ongoing theme of degrading men that occurs in countless songs,
it starts to de-sensitise everyone to man-bashing. It’s a cheap trick
making men into easy targets.
These record producers and other multi-millionaire music insiders
are growing fat out of making you and I look stupid and worthless.
And they only get away with it because they think we are too apathetic
to fight back. Now really is the time for all us men to... Wake
up!
