Ethnography Fieldwork - Part 2

This time around, I have focused on a book I am reading about emo music and teenage culture, as well as looking more closely at the lyrics of Paramore, Brand New, and Fall Out Boy to see if there are similarities between female and male fronted bands and mark where there are differences.

I read parts of the book I was looking for: Nothing Feels Good - Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo. The author, Andy Greenwald, is a senior contributing writer at Spin and has written this book to look at emo culture as a youth right of passage. The intro talks about the various stages emo has gone through over the years and how confusing and convoluted the term is. It means different things to different people and even when it is a cherished type of music, the term is mildly derisive. As Greenwald puts it, “It’s been the next big thing twice, the current big thing once, and so totally over millions of times.” (Pg.2)

In his chapter on chapter on women and emo, Sad Girl Stories, he talks about the content of songs and how it can range from antifemale and violent to a more simple sexism that looks at women in very static ways. Girls are either the object of desire, that make boys pine and feel pathetic; or they are heart breakers who they wish did not exist because they want them to hurt like they do because of them. It seems that regardless of the role women play, the boys wear their love, devotion, and pain on their sleeve as if they are the victims of their own emotions toward girls.

There is a huge lack of female viewpoint in these songs, so while these images are very polar, there is no response that girls care about boys too. Or that they are distraught about the break up, or wishes he was dead for cheating on her. They are emotionless shrews while the boys are full to the brim with emotional angst due to the actions of girls.

If there were more female emo band members, it is possible this would be countered, since they would have the chance to respond. They could note that they too feel that way when a relationship goes sour, or pine for that popular boy who will never notice them. Emo music is notorious for ripping on girls as much as themselves, and I think that is why many teenage girls relate to the music. But if they were given a mic, would they respond?

He references this mysterious Jessica Hopper a lot, and so far I've found she is a blogger who made a splash with the post she wrote that I referenced in part 1 of my fieldwork. She is outspoken on her feminist views in the music industry and I've found only one other post in which she laid out evidence for the lack of female perspective in the music world, specifically in zines. She is apparently noted as the authority though.

In looking at band lyrics, I tried to pick earlier songs from Paramore, Brand New, and Fall Out Boy(lyrics and analysis posted in each link). I did look at Paramore's I Caught Myself since Anit had mentioned it in our interview as an example of a more introverted, thoughtful song by a female emo singer. I also looked at Paramore's Misery Business and FOB's Sugar, We're Going Down, which were both later but were the first massive hits for each band.

I found that Paramore's lyrics were different in that I came upon different types of topics more frequently. I Caught Myself seemed to be about an inner struggle, figuring out what Hayley Williams wants and whether or not it is right. She wants to figure out what she wants and should want. This type of soul search can be found in male emo bands, but it seems to be much more like they are trapped in some type of forced decision - the girl is making him want her, the media is trying to hate on them, etc. Emergency is about bad relationships and the death of love, but it turns out the song is external to the singer: it's about her parents' divorce.

Misery Business poses an interesting contrast. The song is reminiscent of a usual male emo song - two girls both want the same boy, and the girl has felt stabbed in the back and blames the other girls sexual tempting to creating a false relationship that the boy inevitably gets trapped by. But the moral of the song is that the singer gets him in the end, and she feels great bragging about her victory. The boy is an unemotional prop, like women in many male emo songs, but I think it is less common to find a celebration of victory in the usual male emo song.

To compare, I looked at Brand New's Seventy Times 7, which was written about Jesse Lacey's feelings after his friend basically stole his girl. There is no storyline or action to the plot in the song. Instead, Jesse sees his friend for what he really is and hopes that he crashes his car on the way home and thinks of him as his "head goes through the windshield." This song seems much more about instantaneous emotion than about the results.

The examples I chose to look at for Brand New and Fall Out Boy exhibit the views on women I expected to see based on Greenwald's book. They demonize women by treating them as sirens who constantly command boys attention while not giving a thought to whether the boys are idolizing them or heartbroken by them. Magazines is a crucial example of idolatry, about some famous woman from a magazine and how the boy agonizes over this perfection even though he knows he can never have her. FOB's Sugar, We're Going Down is much more active on the part of the boy. In part, he has dominated her by having sex with her and reducing her to "a line in a song." At the same time, he is the victim because he was "just a notch in your bedpost" who still wishes to "be the friction in your jeans." The girl does have more personality in that he addresses her directly and they are both experiencing the tumultuous ending, but in the end, the boy is still the martyr and the dominant male.

Moving forward, I hope to put together my analysis of lyrics with the presence of women in this scene - in both the bands and in the crowd. I will address why this appeals to young girls and how that shapes the fan base. Also, I hope to address that fact that I don't think this means women should turn away from emo. If they can find a way to become active respondents and participants in the lyrics, music, and scene.