Never liked the song. Wrote a little piece about it a ways back. Figured I'd at to this blog. Enjoy.
"Before He Cheats" and American Values
So, I heard Carrie Underwood's latest song the other day and, quite catchy, I dare say. It's a tale of love, a tale of betrayal, a tale of low standards and seedy behavior and, ultimately, a tale of revenge. A woman scorned, a woman who's love has been disrespected, who's trust has been betrayed, exacts revenge on her ex by trashing his beloved 4x4:
"I dug my key into the side of his pretty little suped up 4 wheel drive,
carved my name into his leather seat...
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires...
And maybe next time he'll think before he cheats."
Questions abound when reading the lyrics of this song. The big question, the main one that I come up asking, is, when did destroying someone else's property become an encouraged way of dealing with infidelity? Just a song, you say? Just a song? I think our songs, like our movies, our video games and, well, pretty much everything our culture produces is much more than what it seems to be. Any artistic effort that does well and is successful is basically being voted on and approved by society at large. The values, the messages, the themes of that artistic work, whatever they are, are basically rubber stamped by the public who spends money on that particular work of art, be it a song, a TV show, a YouTube video, or a feature film. In this case, it's interesting to examine what sort of values Carrie Underwood's song is promoting to society at large.
Basically, the message being portrayed in "Before He Cheats" is, if you get cheated on by a lover, it's okay to go out and trash there stuff. Now, I'm not here to defend cheating, but, I have to wonder as to when it became okay to destroy property in response to someone hurting your feelings? Because, any way you cut it, being cheated on only involves a betrayal of trust and a hurting of feelings.
Hurting of feelings, I say, am I trying to minimize the pain, the doubt, the despair that a woman who's been cheated on must be feeling? No. Not at all. Get betrayed, have your trust violated, it's powerful, visceral stuff. Getting cheated on by a man you've given you're whole heart to has to be utterly devastating. That said, is going out and destroying someone's car a fair trade?
One can argue that having a deep emotional hurt is something impossible to assign a dollar value on. How does one calculate, in dollars and cents, pain, emotional, gut-wrenching, soul killing, misery inducing pain? Destruction of a 4x4, in contrast, is easily calculated, money-wise. Each thing destroyed in the song, from the paint job to the headlights to the leather seats, has a real world dollar value that can be calculated. Is, at the end of the day, the misery a cheated on woman feels, worth the same as the sum of the repairs on a 4x4?
If it is, are we then saying that a woman's feelings are equal to the cost of repairing a truck? How insulting to a woman and her feelings. Sure, this is an expensive repair job for cheater guy, but, really, after a few thousand bucks, he's good to go. Will a woman, a woman who's been cheated on, betrayed, trust violated, feel better after a few thousand dollars of, say, shopping? Or, will it depend on where she goes and what she buys?
One of the troubling issues the song brings up is the issue of consequences. For the cheating man, the consequences of his actions are quite clear. Fuck with some women, get your 4x4 jacked all to hell. But, what for the song's main character, what are the consequences for the woman involved, if any? She sings the song with a carefree spirit that seems to indicate that she will get away with her actions. Criminally, she's likely to go scot-free. Yeah, she's carved her name into the leather seats and all, but property crimes usually have to have witnesses to get prosecuted. Assuming there was no parking lot camera to capture her vandalism, our betrayed lady in despair is not likely to face criminal charges. The name in the seats makes for great circumstantial evidence, but, a prosecution is probably not worth the cost. That said, the burden of proof in civil court is much lower than in criminal court. It's conceivable, though, doubtful, that our cheating man in the song may slap a lawsuit on his destructive ex for the cost of repairs. In a small town, where a civil trial would be the water cooler talk of the year, we can pretty much expect our cheating man to take his lumps quietly. Besides, why advertise any more than necessary that he's a cheater to any potential women he may be trying to hook up with later on down the road?
So, it looks pretty good for our scornful, vengeful woman, as far as being able to get away with her actions. Will trashing her cheating ex's truck really bring some level of satisfaction to her? Did she "win"? Good question. Her anger, her hurt, her despair, all probably got worked out of her on some level as she trashed her man's truck. But what next? What then? When she gets home and her endorphins stop pumping through her blood stream, what will she feel? Will she feel better? Will she feel somehow vindicated? I have to wonder. Do we ever really feel good after destroying someone else's stuff? Sure, maybe in the heat of the moment and the warm afterglow but, when tempers cool, when we get some time and space to think things over, I'm not so sure we feel that satisfied, and, thus, I doubt that our scorned woman will feel that great about herself in a week's time either. To be sure, she may convince herself that what she did was justified and maybe, maybe even pat herself on the back for her efforts. Does the pain, the confusion and the betrayal go away though? Is it somehow lessened because she trashed a 4x4? I doubt it. I expect our scorned woman is going to take a while to get over being cheated on. It's probably going to be some time before she feels comfortable enough trusting again and is willing to try getting into another relationship. I don't think trashing a truck is a panacea for what ails or main character in the song.
One thing I have to wonder about, in context of the song, is the state of the main character's self esteem. How good is it? On the one hand, it looks good enough to acknowledge that she's not going to stand for being cheated on and she's going to move on. But,if it was that good, why bother with trashing the guy's truck? I mean, if you believe in yourself, feel you're worthy of being loved and you're not going to stand for being lied to and deceived, why not just be rid of the guy and see him as so totally not worthy of your time in the first place? Why trash his stuff? Who needs that? He certainly isn't worthy of you in the first place, so, why stoop to being destructive? By questioning the main characters self-esteem, it's easy to question everything she says about her ex and what he may or may not be doing. Is she really, accurately describing her ex, or is she merely describing him the way she wants him to be, now that she's hurting, deceived and angry? Is he really into tramps? If so, what does that say about her? I mean, he was with her, wasn't he? Does that mean she is a tramp too? And if she isn't, and he's just suddenly acquired a taste for tramps, then, again, why destroy his truck? Obviously he's not "the one" with such low standards, you'd think the main character singing would be glad to be rid of the loser and see this as a real positive thing for her. If the guy's into tramps, and she's not one, he's certainly not worth her time.
We Americans don't like thinking much. Not our style, really. Good guys and bad guys, black and white, right and wrong. That's what it's all about. Yeah, our main character is "wrong" to destroy someone else's property, but, she's "right" to get back at the cheating, lying son-of-a-bitch that cheated on her. I can imagine a lot of people saying just that. Revenge, is good. We like revenge. It helps us not feel so powerless in our lives. When someone else does something that hurts us, something we don't like, it's frustrating since we have no power to keep them from doing it. But, we don have the power to strike back, to take revenge. In America, it's a beautiful thing. We like getting even, even if the feelings we have after often leave us hollow.
As an Atheist, I'm amused by the fact that this is a #1 song on the Country charts. Country music fans are often very religious, very Christian folk. America, like it or not, is a very Christian nation. That said, I wonder what Jesus of Nazareth's take on all this would be? I often wonder this, where my religious countrymen and women are concerned. He'd not be happy at cheating guy, I'm sure of that. Cheating is bad. But, I rather doubt that Jesus would be too down for trashing a guy's truck either. Not really a Christian thing to do, I'm thinking.
In America, in the 21st Century, one of the most important values we have is instant satisfaction. We want to be happy, and, we want it now. Doesn't matter if the happiness is temporary, if it is elusive, we want it just the same. Trashing a truck may not solve our scorned woman's problems, and, very well may leave her feeling lousy still in a week's time. But, for now, in the heated afterglow of revenge, she feels good, she feels powerful, she feels as if she's done the right thing. In American, feeling great, if even for just a second, is reason enough to do just about anything, even trash another person's stuff because, really, it's now that matters.
