Listening to the Rolling Stones’ “Mother’s Little Helper” the other day, I was struck by how much the lyrics resembled a misogynistic MRA rant. Ostensibly a song pointing out the hypocrisy of suburban squares attacking the drug culture whilst themselves popping prescription pills, the song extends its “critique” to cover such subjects as the evil of women making cakes from mixes instead of from scratch. (See below for videos of all the songs mentioned in this post.)
So you go from this bit of, ahem, social criticism:
“Things are different today,”
I hear ev’ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she’s not really ill
There’s a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of her mother’s little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day.
To this:
“Things are different today,”
I hear ev’ry mother say
Cooking fresh food for a husband’s just a drag
So she buys an instant cake and she buys a frozen steak
And goes running for the shelter etc etc
Yep, that’s right. Mick’s as bothered by the frozen steak as he is by the dangers of tranquilizer abuse. By the end of the song, the hypothetical freezer-and-cake-mix-using mother has died of an overdose. Told you so!
Misogynistic rock songs aren’t exactly a rarity – hell, “Mother’s Little Helper” isn’t even the worst offender in the Rolling Stones’ disography.
But unlike more straightforward outbursts of misogynistic nastiness like, say, “Under My Thumb,” “Mother’s Little Helper” pretends to be something nobler: a social critique.
The blogger behind the wonderfully arch I Hate the New York Times blog pointed out to me in a tweet that a surprising number of old rock lyrics play this little trick. Taking the form of a “critique of today’s inauthentic & hedonistic society” they are in fact “directed at [a] specific shallow hussy.”
Along with Mother’s Little Helper, IHateNYT suggested I take another look at the lyrics to Paul Revere and the Raiders’ “Kicks.” And, yep, it’s basically the same thing: a critique of drug use in the form of a patronizing lecture to a young woman in search of “kicks,” starting out with this little bit of I-told-you-so, delivered with a sneer:
Girl, you thought you found the answer on that magic carpet ride last night
But when you wake up in the mornin’ the world still gets you uptight
It turns out that the song, written by the songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, was inspired by the drug use of a male friend of theirs – though somehow in the song this specific man became a hypothetical “girl.”
And then of course there is the Guess Who’s American Woman, a sort-of critique of America’s “war machines” and “ghetto scenes” in the form of a long, sneering diatribe against a hypothetical woman:
Now woman, I said stay away
American woman, listen what I say
American woman, get away from me
American woman, mama let me be
Don’t come knockin’ around my door
Don’t wanna see your shadow no more
And on and on and on for a very long five minutes and nine seconds.
One of the reasons these songs sound so much like MRA rants is that MRAs like to play the same little game, dressing up their misogynistic sentiments in the form of “social critique.” Thus Paul Elam’s faux-environmentalist attack on female consumers, and all that talk about how single mothers and/or “picky women” are going to bring about the end of civilization. Heck, some manosphere fat-gal-bashers even pretend they fat-bash out of concern for the well-being of the women they’re ridiculing.
It might be entertaining to transform some of these old woman-hating songs into critiques of woman-haters. “Stupid Girl” by the Rolling Stones might be a good place to start. I mean, seriously?
Like a lady in waiting to a virgin queen
Look at that stupid girl
She bitches ’bout things that she’s never seen
Look at that stupid girl
Those are real Rolling Stone lyrics, not a comment from NWOslave. Have at it.
Here are videos of all the songs I mention above:
great, examples from fifty years ago! very relevant! check this one out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-daPmzKLKNU, how about beyonce’s obvious hatred of men?? wake up dudes, society hates you!! don’t listen to MaNbOObS! he’s so strange!!
@ clairedammit
Exactly. I could talk your ear off about how much I hate numetal, but that’s because I love metal, not because numetal is objectively any shittier than a bunch of other music that’s played on stations that I don’t listen to all the time.
Does that Joe guy count as my troll? I mean, he was so terrified of me he never used my name, so that probably doesn’t count.
CassandraSays, I am agreeing SO HARD with everything you write ITT, and it’s almost embarassing having to type out a fawning little thankyou everytime I see you commenting here. Thanks for generally being cool.
@ClaireDammit
I lol’d.
Yeah. I came from the South, and was raised on some of the more old-fashioned country, so I definitely have more of a wince reaction to pop country. (While Good Charlotte, since I’m not from the punk scene, I can laugh and enjoy, while acknowledging the silly posturing.)
Yeah, and I’ve noticed, sadly, that I’m moving further and further away from superhero comics. 🙁 Now that there’s so much BETTER shit around, like Anya’s Ghost and Hereville and Doug TenNapel’s stuff, and Grease Monkey, even my old favorite D-listers don’t grip me like they used to. These days, the only superhero stuff I can read that isn’t satirical is… well. *silence* OH GOD I’VE LOST THEM.
Well, Says, I was merely trying to clear up what I perceived as some confusion; if you’re more interested in being a supercilious holier-than-thou, that’s your perogative.
Oh, damn. I am a member of the fucked up blockquotes club.
@ lowquacks
Aw!
@ LBT
I think it’s natural to find your taste drifting away from stuff that you liked at a younger age as your ideas sort of firm up, and you get more confident in them. Also, with comics, I’m not into that stuff but I think there’s been a lot more interesting stuff happening lately in general?
RE: feminizm rulez bro
Bless your soul.
Seriously, these guys have to turn to Beyonce? I already gave “Dead Men Don’t Rape.” I was hoping some trolls would take advantage of it! I mean, Jesus, I go through all the trouble…
Varpole: Cloudiah – Share? It’s common knowledge. Please. I’m not going to do your Googling for you! Hah!
Um…. whut? There are examples of the opposite. You made the claim. If you can’t back it up, that’s your problem.
Hanging your ass out where everone can see it seems a strange hobby. There must be something in it, since so many come here to engage in the practice, you, Bob, Spoos, Mary Sunshine, JudgyBitch, Tom Martin, etc.
Says, there are two options here:
Nope… you forgot option 3: Your teacher tried, but you are, in fact, piss-poor in your use and understanding of English.
That’s cruisin’ for a metaphorical brusin’. I’d advise Mr. Futrelle to check himself before he wrecks himself.
Then Dude… bring it! I mean it. You ought to be pounding the keys; not only would you get to count coup on Dave (making you the first, think of what that would do for your standing in, “The Movement”), but you’d make all of us look like prats, AND you’d get to stick it in the eye of that teacher who recognised, at an early age, the stellar ineptitude you had for language.
But no! You are too lazy (or is it fear?) to do that. You can’t be arsed to stand up for men.
Pitiful to see what the once Mighty MRM has come to.
RE: CassandraSays
Most definitely! Comics is really starting to diversify again, in part due to manga coming over and becoming popular, and also due to the webcomics movement. As a result, in the USA we’re seeing way more diverse comics and styles and subject matter than we have in ages. (I have a whole long blather about the Comics Code and how that axed a bunch of popular genres and leaving the sanitized superhero stuff, but that’s neither here nor there.) I mean, jesus, I make EDUCATIONAL MENTAL HEALTH comics, and I actually manage to sell them! That would’ve been a much harder row to hoe ten years ago.
Well, that’s a well-worn argument among nutjobs and cranks everywhere: “There’s plenty of evidence out there, you just refuse to see it!!1!!!”
Yup. For me, it’s less about a specific genre as about singing, because singing is what I do and I’m pretty damn passionate about it, and so people who get famous for singing despite not being very good at singing drive me up the wall a little bit.
(And yet, to be clear, I can have Strong Opinions about music without feeling like other people need to share my Strong Opinions. My boyfriend, whom I adore, has, by my standards, roughly the worst taste in music of anyone I’ve ever met. I just ask him not to put on his CDs when I’m in the car, and we’re cool. 🙂 )
Actually that could be a fun blog post – how to maintain a relationship with someone whose taste in music you despise. Part one – the car.
Oh man, I’m currently writing a 1200-word paper for English on piracy. I’d love to just write “It’s obvious why people should be allowed to pirate. Just do your own damn searching.”
Mr C likes a lot of stuff that I collectively refer to as “hippie shit”, I like a lot of stuff that’s much too heavy for him. We’ve learned to compromise.
Not worth it. Just don’t do it.
The car’s not a problem: any tape left in a car for long enough transmogrifies into Queen’s Greatest Hits.
I had plenty of practice in compromise when my parents were going through their unfortunate country music phase. Oddly enough the solution was The Black Crowes.
Manboobz: Misandry. It Don’t Real.
How the hell does someone “destroy your reading comprehension”? Or does Steele mean his teacher told him “Sorry, kid, writing just isn’t your thing” and his brain imploded?
Compromise is good. 🙂 The boyfriend and I have a general car ride policy of “let’s just find a classic rock station,” because while it’s not either person’s favorite genre, neither of us generally mind it.
My other strategy is, I admit, kind of teaching a miniature music course within our relationship, though the goal there isn’t so much getting him to like my sorts of music but rather just helping him understand what it is his musician girlfriend actually does. (When we met, he would ask me questions when I was talking about work like, “Wait, what’s a ‘chord’?” or “So what does ‘harmony’ actually mean?”) Getting him to like my sorts of music a bit more has been a pleasant side-effect, though. 🙂
Ah, but you see, the first one was not a possibility in any case. He merely wanted to “catch” someone in a convenient double bind. Of course, his ego far outpaces his meager logic skills, so naturally he tripped over his own feet immediately.
That, or his english teacher also destroyed his logic skills.
These are the only two options.
¡Taylor Swift is Misandry!
True story: a friend of mine was riding with someone not so long ago and looking for something under the seat of the car, when he found an unlabeled, home-burned CD that was dusty enough that it appeared to have been down there for some time. Both riders in the car being geeky types, my friend promptly quipped, “Well, I don’t know what this was, but by now, it’s probably Queen’s Greatest Hits, hahaha.” As he said this, he stuck it in the CD player, and on came “We Will Rock You.”
The driver apparently very nearly crashed the car from laughing so hard.