Carrie Underwood, Sing a Different Tune!

Recently, I accidentally listened to Carrie Underwood's new single, Church Bells.

I generally feel like I have a bias against Underwood. Ever since Jesus Take The Wheel, I have felt like her style just always seems a little too dramatic and heart-wrenched for me.  So when I hear a new song from her, I try to give her the benefit of the doubt--- that if I don't like her song, it's because of my unique preferences, not because it's mediocre music.  Perhaps this is why I left the radio on when Church Bells came on.

However, once again, I was left extremely unimpressed and peevish.  "Why the heck does Underwood keep singing about these violent revenge fantasies?" I wondered.

You see, the plot of Church Bells revolves around Jenny, a beautiful poor girl who marries rich, and discovers the marriage isn't working and that she's married to an abusive alcoholic.  After praying for help and listening to the church bells, Jenny poisons her husband--- and then goes on to listen to the church bells once again at hubby's funeral (unfortunately a verse where her ghost listens to church bells at her own funeral after she gets her lethal injection is missing).  This song has much in common with another Underwood hit, Blown Away.  While arguably a better song, Blown Away again tells the story of a young woman getting deadly revenge on a man (drunken father) who has abused her (death by tornado this time).

These songs tap into a tedious trope of romanticizing the abuse of women for dramatic affect.  This trope is overly and woefully familiar throughout the country genre, and art in general, and now also in the work of Carrie Underwood apparently!  As Underwood is a bright, cheery personality with a relatively happy public biography, these murderous tales always seemed like a strange subject for her to keep harping on about to me.

While I understand the cheap appeal of these stories, and the easy emotion one can tap into to create a compelling song, these just leave me with an overwhelming sense of not just their unoriginality but their inertia.  Do we really need more songs telling the sad tales of birds in gilded cages who have to resort to violence and death (whether murder or suicide, or both) to end their suffering?  Do we need to continue to romanticize the tragic downfall women commodified and beaten by men?  Can we stop waxing lyrical about drunk, violent men as if they are an inevitable fact of life, and who can only be stopped by poetic justice?  The sad consequences of drunkenness are a hugely popular subject in country music (just behind broken hearts, teenage pregnancy and well, drinking)--- perhaps we can find a new way of broaching the subject.  Haven't we been singing about these things for literally centuries?  Maybe we can find a different way for the stories to end--- murder and suicide are not the only two options here!

Do you know what song I would love to hear?  A song where Jenny gets the resources together to get a divorce and get out of a relationship she got into for all the wrong reasons.  A song where Jenny finds a local support network--- a sister, a friend, a doctor, a helpline volunteer--- who help her find a place in a shelter or file charges against her abusive husband.  A song where Jenny gets her GED and finds a rewarding job, realizing that she can be valued for more than her body and can contribute meaningfully to her community.  A song that tells women that there are other ways out of abuse and unhappiness other than violence or self-harm.  A song where Jenny's abuser goes to therapy and comes back to her years later and apologizes for his behavior.  A song that tells men that they too can get help, can break cycles of violence and sexism, and can be a part of the healing process.

There you go, Carrie Underwood, there is your next song!  There is a lot more to sing about than those sad church bells!

Conan the Sexist Creep

Anita Sarkeesian and her team at Feminist Frequency have spent the last few years discussing "representations of women in pop culture narratives,"  particularly through a series of great videos documenting a range of tropes and other sexist trends, particularly in video games.  I love these videos and, while they are very compelling, somehow I always thought "yeah, there are some creeps out there, but most people aren't THAT bad."

Then I found myself watching Conan.

I don't usually watch Conan, but the rabbit hole that is YouTube led me to the show's "Clueless Gamer" segments.  In these segments, the show's host Conan O'Brien "reviews" new video games with a friend/staffer and occasionally a special guest or two.  The segments are basically product placements, but since Conan isn't a gamer, his reactions to the games add a "humorous" entertainment factor.  Unfortunately, what was intended as light entertainment left me feeling very creeped out as a female viewer.  After pretending that the segments' rampant sexist comedy was fine, I have decided to  document the phenomenon in damning detail.  I have included YouTube links (with start times) for nearly all my examples, so enjoy the creepy sexism in full!

Documenting the Sexism

As of this writing, there are 29 Clueless Gamer segments.   Not all games lend themselves to sexist comedy and (thankfully) 13 of the segments (Michael Phelps: Push the Limit, Atari 2600, PC Horror Games, WWE 2K14, AT&T Stadium, Watch Dogs, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, Mortal Kombat X, Halo 5: Guardians, Doom, Far Cry Primal, UFC 2, and Mario Kart 8) are basically free of sexist material (but not free of sickly violent material).  Keeping the Mario Kart 8 review free from sexism is a low standard however.  Actually, the Mario Kart review involved the losers having penises drawn on their faces, so fail I guess. . .  Penis-drawing aside, Conan still managed to introduce sexist material into reviews for several games you'd think would be safe: 

• Conan finds a female non-player character (NPC) in a leadership role intriguingly attractive but "a little bitchy" in his Kinect Star Wars review.
• Conan closes out the Minecraft review with some homophobic humor.
• Conan suggests that Batman would be emasculated by his loss to Wonder Woman in the Injustice: Gods Among Us review. (Bonus points for feminizing the co-host with a lacy satin eye mask for comic effect).
• Conan finds humor in invading women's personal space in the Resident Evil 6 review.

While I might describe these preceding examples as casual sexism, Conan's video game reviews also demonstrate larger trends discussed by Anita Sarkeesian and Feminist Frequency.  For example, several of the reviews demonstrate the Women as Reward trope when Conan expects to earn sexual rewards after completing in-game tasks.  After killing a bunch of zombies surrounding the female NPC in Resident Evil 6, he argues, "I just saved her life, right?  You'd think she'd sleep with me."  Similarly, in the Skyrim Elder Scrolls review, he starts a quest hoping for a sexual rewards and is clearly disappointed when the NPC doesn't lead him to the bedroom.  When she offers to teach him about trading instead (the point of the quest) his crestfallen response is, "That's not what I wanted."  He then complains about how unreasonable and unfair women are when it comes to providing sex.  Finally, after spending most of his The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt review trying to have in-game sex (more on this below), he is practically orgasmic when finally winning graphic sexual rewards for in-game quest and boss-battle successes.