Introduction
But what does me being from Hawaii have to do with me acting like an emo chick on her period? (South Park; Parker and Stone Reference Parker and Stone2012)
In April 2013 a 16-year-old male was assaulted in Manchester, UK. This led to two arrests on the grounds of hate crime directed at a member of the ‘emo subculture’, the first of its kind in the UK (Pidd Reference Pidd2013). ‘Emo’, a term originating in the 1980s, firstly to describe ‘emotional hardcore punk’ (Greenwald Reference Greenwald2003; Williams Reference Williams and Jarman-Ivens2007) and latterly considered a pejorative slang term, applicable to fans of a diverse range of music, has received little sociological focus. Given that the term has been around for at least the last 20 years, sociologists have remained largely quiet on its relationship to society, especially with regards to its representations of gender.
Notably, emo has been brought into focus in the Western media for its stress on ‘gender bending’ and ‘identity queering’ (ABC4 2007; Sands Reference Sands2006). Often at the heart of these moral panics are its ‘effeminising’ effects on (predominantly) young males. Where emo has received some academic focus there is a similar tendency to see it as a form of resistance to ‘typical’ masculine traits (Anastasi Reference Anastasi2005; Peters Reference Peters2010) or a product of a ‘crisis of masculinity’ (Williams Reference Williams and Jarman-Ivens2007) because of its stress on emotional expression. Its relationship to cis-male bodies, particularly, and therefore its potential to illustrate malleable gender performance (Butler Reference Butler1998a, Reference Butler1998b; Halberstam Reference Halberstam and Jarman-Ivens2007), may suggest, then, that the males who listen to the music construct their identities in opposition to a ‘mainstream’, ‘dominant’ or ‘hegemonic’ masculinity (Connell Reference Connell1995). This in turn is taken as indicative of shifting gendered power relations.
The problems in taking a subcultural approach to music listening aside (discussed briefly below), this article suggests that emo's stress on overt, introspective emotional expression has a much longer history in relation to the male body than is often acknowledged, although the timing of its formulation (late 1980s) is no coincidence. It therefore locates emo within a broader strategy of male power, or more properly within a reconfigured continuation of gender inequality. Emo has been chosen as the focus of this article for two main reasons. Firstly it has become a pejorative term because of its stress on a particular discursive construction of emotional openness; this highlights the structurally Cartesian view of masculinities as socially enforced through a policing of emotions (Segal Reference Segal1993; Seidler Reference Seidler1994, Reference Seidler2006a, Reference Seidler2006b, Reference Seidler2007; Connell Reference Connell1995). As a result, very few people identify with the label. However, its visibility in media moral panics, arguably for its links to self-harm and ‘self-pity’ (Hill Reference Hill, McKinnon, Scott and Sollee2011), make it difficult to ignore even if there is little ‘subcultural’ affirmation of the term. Secondly, the audiences and performers are largely white, middle-class males – this raises the assumption that the kind of emotional expression that emo encourages, directly or indirectly, suggests a reworking of powerful ‘masculinity’. Nevertheless, this is based on a misunderstanding of ‘masculinity’ as singular rather than multiple and a misreading of emotions as incompatible with masculinity.
Beginning with a brief outline of what emo is, the paper moves on to discuss how masculinities have been theorised in relation to the suppression of emotion, characteristic of the Cartesian subject. It demonstrates the intersections between emo and masculinities with reference to Williams’ (Reference Williams and Jarman-Ivens2007) piece around emo as indicative of a ‘crisis in masculinity’. It finally discursively analyses the lyrics from a variety of emo bands, selected due to their popularity and influence, in order to sociologically illustrate several discourses in emo, grouped around three themes: emotional expression and relationships, overt chauvinism and ‘beta male misogyny’ (Kennedy Reference Kennedy2012). These demonstrate how emo and genres with similar lyrical focuses cannot always be considered a progressive re-working of gendered power relations or a crisis of masculinity.
What is emo?
While The Get Up Kids apologised for ‘inventing’ it in the mid 1990s (Michaels Reference Michaels2009), emo, as Greenwald (Reference Greenwald2003, p. 2) notes, was initially:
… short for ‘emocore’, a strain of hardcore punk that was notable for its obsession with feelings (as opposed to politics, anger and smashing stuff up). Then it started to be applied to bands that weren't punk, to fashion trends, to sad-eyed kids in the back of class. It's always been mildly derisive … [and] every generation that loves emo bands simultaneously rejects the term while claiming ownership of it. (Greenwald Reference Greenwald2003, p. 2)
The term was first applied to bands such as Minor Threat, Embrace, Rites of Spring and the Promise Ring, who were part of the Washington, DC hardcore scene in the mid to late 1980s (Greenwald Reference Greenwald2003; Kuhn Reference Kuhn2010). More notably the case with Minor Threat, their music was frequently characterised by distorted guitars, 4/8 or 4/16 signatures, simplistic power chord progressions, often along a minor scale, with shouted, screamed or strained vocals laid over.
American hardcore, taking inspiration from British punk, was a reaction to the economic and political conditions of the Reagan/Thatcher era in which many disenfranchised young people found themselves at odds with the perceived political establishment. It emerged from the American suburbs, areas of varying white middle-class affluence, and articulated an aggressive opposition to the middle-class conservatism of the parent generation, both lyrically and sonically. As Blush's (Reference Blush2001) history of hardcore argues, hardcore retained core elements of punk (anti-establishment lyrics, loud distorted guitars, short three-chord songs, simple and fast rhythms) and rejected New Wave bands’ ‘art-school baggage’. Instead he suggests that it fulfilled a need for ‘something more primal and immediate’ (Blush Reference Blush2001, p. 13). Hardcore shows were typically male dominated and involved ritual physical violence, with many of the young men engaging in intensely homosocial, ‘hypermasculine’ displays. This tended to exclude women from the spaces, despite an avowedly egalitarian ethos (Blush Reference Blush2001, pp. 34–8).
While emo was inspired by hardcore and emanated from similar suburban areas, bands like Sunny Day Real Estate and Jawbreaker were slower and more melodic than hardcore and made greater use of vocal and instrumental dynamic range. Later bands, such Weezer, TGUK and Brand New and Taking Back Sunday, also experimented with different chord progressions (there was a widespread use of minor seventh chords) and a greater variety of rhythms, frequently involving half-time ‘breakdowns’. In contrast to punk's aversion to musical ‘pretentiousness’ (Hebdige Reference Hebdige1979) musicians were often more unashamedly technically adept and did not rely almost exclusively on basic I, IV, V ‘power-chord’ patterns.
Significantly there is also a direct link between 1990s emo bands and 1980s post punk bands such as the Cure, the Smiths and Joy Division,Footnote 1 both musically and lyrically. Emo bands of the 1990s, like post-punk groups, also tended to place more emphasis on vocal harmonies and melody. The vocal qualities of singers in emo bands echo ‘a slightly prepubescent nasal quality with a diaphragmatic push that resembles the arrogant vocalizations of British punk’ (Williams Reference Williams and Jarman-Ivens2007, p. 153), but there is generally much less emphasis on shouting and much more on singing; typically considered ‘feminine’ due to its links with embodiment (Green Reference Green1993; Armstrong Reference Armstrong2008).
There are few obvious similarities between Minor Threat and Taking Back Sunday. While undoubtedly all of these bands owed an allegiance to punk, particularly in the use of heavily distorted guitars, the main commonality between them is the lyrical focus on individual, subjective feelings of insecurity or hurt. As Greenwald (Reference Greenwald2003, p. 15) notes, the shift from hardcore to emo marked a significant move from ‘extroverted rage to internal turmoil’ and as Kuhn (Reference Kuhn2010, p. 16) suggests, emo/emocore initially emerged out of the DC hardcore scene as ‘a conscious attempt to go beyond the hardcore tough guy image, musically, lyrically and image wise’.
Lyrically in emo there is usually reference to (heterosexual) relationships which tend to focus on existing, unrequited or lost love, as well as other personal relationship anxieties. While emo is obviously not the first genre to focus largely on these issues, there is a marked emphasis on how specific circumstances make the (almost exclusively) male lyricists feel. This particular aspect of the range of music which has been termed ‘emo’, is markedly different from many Anglophone punk bands who tended to (and still do) focus on ‘political’ as opposed to ‘personal’ issues.Footnote 2 This is also what sets it apart from ‘hypermasculinist’ hardcore.
There are undoubtedly problems with analysing music using genre-based taxonomies (Savage Reference Savage2006; Warde et al. Reference Warde, Wright and Gayo-Cal2007) or subcultural affiliation (Bennett Reference Bennett1999; Blackman Reference Blackman2005; Hesmondhalgh Reference Hesmondhalgh2005; Moore Reference Moore2005). As already highlighted, what is labelled ‘emo’ has differed in construction, style and tone of the music and the fashions attributed to emo ‘fans’ over time. This is further complicated by the notion that, because of its pejorative undertones, few bands or fans actually identify with the label (Hill Reference Hill, McKinnon, Scott and Sollee2011, p. 144). Therefore it does not represent a coherent style or genre (Greenwald Reference Greenwald2003, p. 4). Peters (Reference Peters2010), for example, focuses on the queering of gender through the appropriation of makeup and ‘peacockish’, flamboyant or dandy-esque style. However, few, if any, of the bands already mentioned dress in this way. Nevertheless, the term emo has been applied to all of them and a variety of others, both in the UK and the US.
Aside from the problems in defining subcultures, the focus on ‘subcultural style’ as indicative of shifting relations ignores the fact that males listening to glam rock (Auslander Reference Auslander2006; Branch Reference Branch2012), goth (Brill Reference Brill2008) and punk (Hebdige Reference Hebdige1979) utilised similar standards of dress as ‘contemporary’ emo, yet gendered behaviour did not necessarily change as a result of these fashions; this was especially the case with punk (Miles Reference Miles, Redhead, O'Connor and Wynne1997; O'Brien Reference O'Brien and Sabin1999; Reddington Reference Reddington2007; Downes Reference Downes2012). ‘Subcultural style’ may be more of a marketing strategy to perpetuate consumer choice (Adorno and Horkheimer Reference Adorno and Horkheimer1997 [1947], p. 123; Hesmondhalgh Reference Hesmondhalgh2007)Footnote 3 rather than a manifestation of anticapitalist (see Moore Reference Moore2005) or antisexist (see Frith and McRobbie Reference Frith and McRobbie1978; Leonard Reference Leonard2007) politics. This article is, therefore, less concerned with focussing on the issue of ‘subcultural’ style and more on how emo can be understood as a locus of competing temporal and gendered discourse.
Hegemonic masculinity, emotions, music
Cultural texts are an important tool of analysis inasmuch as they reveal something of the structure of power relations in society (Adorno Reference Adorno1945, Reference Adorno1975, Reference Adorno1976, Reference Adorno1981, Reference Adorno2004; McClary Reference McClary1991; Adorno and Horkheimer Reference Adorno and Horkheimer1997 [1947]; DeNora Reference DeNora2003a, Reference DeNora2003b). Culture is also integral to work around masculinities, which has emphasised how it ‘naturalises’ certain socially produced values and behaviours, leading to the structural reinforcement of gendered inequalities (Carrigan et al. Reference Carrigan, Connell and Lee1985; Connell Reference Connell1987, Reference Connell1995; Horrocks Reference Horrocks1995; Edwards Reference Edwards2006). As Connell (Reference Connell1995) and others utilising Connell have argued (see Messerschmidt Reference Messerschmidt2012), when cultural texts correspond to institutional power they work to perpetuate and legitimate gendered privilege.
Connell termed the strategy by which men retain power through gender as ‘hegemonic masculinity’, defined as:
The configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women. (Connell Reference Connell1995, p. 77)
While the concept has been revisited and reformulated in recent years (Connell and Messerschmidt Reference Connell and Messerschmidt2005; Aboim Reference Aboim2010; Messerschmidt Reference Messerschmidt2012), its central component remains that representations and performances of gender (for a definition of the difference between sex and gender see Rubin Reference Rubin and Reiter1975) are themselves configurations of power, which guarantee the position of some men, predominantly those who identify as white, heterosexual and middle class. Masculinities in Connell's view are constructed in relation to femininities and ‘other’ masculinities (for example gay masculinities), which cultural representations and texts help to ‘naturalise’ as the ‘currently accepted answer’, constructed in line with particular historic and spatial factors.
One of the core ways in which hegemonic masculinity was historically legitimated, according to Connell, was a disavowal of emotional expression:
Classical philosophy from Descartes to Kant … constructed reason and science through oppositions with the natural world and with emotions. With masculinity defined as a character structure marked by rationality, and Western civilization, defined as the bearer of reason to a benighted world, a cultural link between the legitimation of patriarchy and the legitimation of empire was forged. (Connell Reference Connell1995, pp. 186–7)
The influence of Cartesianism, splitting the ‘rational mind’ from the ‘emotional body’ (Barbalet Reference Barbalet2001, p. 34), has characterised emotions as animalistic tendencies which have to be controlled in order to assert a specifically Westernised notion of ‘masculinity’ (Petersen Reference Petersen1998, Reference Petersen2004). Thus, because music is the ‘cultural material par excellence of emotion’ (DeNora Reference DeNora2000, p. 46) to a certain extent, as McClary (Reference McClary1991) notes, most music has been historically ‘feminised’ (particularly, she highlights, in Anglophone countries).
Similarly, as Biddle and Gibson's (Reference Biddle and Gibson2009) collection of essaysFootnote 4 demonstrates, music has tended to occupy an uneasy place alongside Western conceptions of masculinity. As Castiglione in Il Cortegiano, a key text in the formulation of Western ideals of masculinity (Forth Reference Forth2008), explicitly stated:
I think that music, along with many other vanities, is indeed well suited to women, and perhaps also to others who have the appearance of men, but not to real men; for the latter ought not to render their minds effeminate and afraid of death. (Castiglione 1528, cited in Weiss and Taruskin Reference Weiss and Taruskin1984, p. 80, emphasis added)
Male musicians and composers have therefore arguably tended to emphasise rational detachment from mere ‘sensuous experience’ as integral to ‘formal’ aesthetic critique and musical production (McClary Reference McClary1991, p. 17), as a means of distancing themselves from ‘femininity’. This undoubtedly has mediated how texts are embedded and understood within the Western musical canon (Biddle and Gibson Reference Biddle and Gibson2009).
As McClary (Reference McClary1991, p. 55) also observes, ‘constructions of gender and sexuality in music vary widely from time to time and from place to place’. Feminist musicologists have therefore pointed out that music is gendered inasmuch as ideas around music and specific sounds are constructed in line with, and help to construct, ideas around gender. To a certain extent this means that cultural constructions of gender have also been sustained through the proliferation of different musical genres. For example, metal, hard rock, rap and hardcore have all been accused of embodying ‘hypermasculinity’ (Frith and McRobbie Reference Frith and McRobbie1978; Blush Reference Blush2001; Jarman-Ivens Reference Jarman-Ivens2007) and certain genres are considered more or less ‘authentic’ due to discursive gendering (see Davies Reference Davies2001; Railton Reference Railton2001; Leonard Reference Leonard2007). Exploring music as a consequence of and contributor to gender relations therefore helps us to understand sexual inequalities in any given society.
Emo as a crisis of masculinity
As pointed out, emo has been accused of encouraging ‘gender bending’. What this critique actually centres on are young men who listen to the music perceptibly behaving in more ‘feminine’ ways. As Gibson (Reference Gibson, Biddle and Gibson2009, p. 52) notes, in early modern England there was a belief that without conscious regulation, listening to certain kinds of music could induce the humour of melancholy and that music could have ‘the same effeminizing effects on men as real women’. It is interesting, then, to note that the moral panics around emo share obvious similarities with the idea of the music encouraging a form of (problematic) melancholic behaviour. Yet, unlike early modern music, emo actively espouses personal anxieties and emotions, embracing the ‘embodied feminine’ and distancing itself both from the ‘tough guy’ image (Kuhn Reference Kuhn2010, p. 16) and from the ‘rational’ composer.
This fits with arguments that suggest that we are witnessing a crisis (Bly Reference Bly1990; Horrocks Reference Horrocks1994; Faludi Reference Faludi1999; Benatar Reference Benatar2012) and/or softening of ‘masculinity’ (Forrest Reference Forrest2010; McCormack and Anderson Reference McCormack and Anderson2010; Roberts Reference Roberts2012). As proponents of these positions have suggested, due to large-scale political and economic changes, male power is in decline and this has caused a ‘loss’ of masculine identity leading to a reworking of gender power dynamics. These changes include the gains made by feminist activists and scholars, the increase of women into the labour market, rising family separation rates, ‘absent’ fathers and a decline in manual labour and ‘breadwinner’ jobs (McDowell Reference McDowell2000; Edwards Reference Edwards2006).
Central to this is also the idea that men have become more emotionally sensitive which, as Illouz (Reference Illouz2007) has suggested, was one of the main impacts of feminism. Through the feminist aphorism of ‘the personal is political’ she notes that:
[extracting] emotions from the realm of inner life … put[s] them at the center of selfhood and sociability in the form of a cultural model that has become widely pervasive … Under the aegis of a psychological model of ‘communication’, emotions have become objects to be thought of, expressed, talked about, argued over, negotiated and justified. (Illouz Reference Illouz2007, pp. 36–7)
Academic arguments around the ‘pure’ relationship (Giddens Reference Giddens1992) or desire for more egalitarian partnerships (Bauman Reference Bauman2003) also suggest that women's increasing economic independence has caused fundamental shifts in the organisation of men's emotional life. This may explain then why emo emerges in the mid to late 1980s; as a response to changes in gender relations which sees the apparent erosion of ‘traditional’ male bases of power and increasing demands directed at men to ‘get in touch with their sensitive sides’.
Williams (Reference Williams and Jarman-Ivens2007) has made this link directly, stating that ‘in many ways, current emo rock embodies what journalists and sociologists have referred to as a so-called crisis of masculinity’ (Williams Reference Williams and Jarman-Ivens2007, p. 146). This is because, she argues, ‘emo captures the changes in cultural attitudes about masculinity [through] the musical signifiers of emotional weakness – that is, such ‘undesirable’ qualities like vulnerability, femininity, weakness – while attempting to retain the musical signifiers of aggression that are the bedrock of the punk/hardcore musical style’ (Williams Reference Williams and Jarman-Ivens2007, p. 152). The juxtaposition between ‘aggressive’ and ‘soft’ instrumentation, vocal timbre, and the lyrical content, she opines, seem to suggest the tensions between historic expectations placed on males to be emotionally inexpressive and new expectations to be ‘more emotionally’ forthcoming (Williams Reference Williams and Jarman-Ivens2007, p. 146).
Crucially, Williams argues, ‘the expansion of musical ideas, lyrics, and instrumentation [in emo] are slowly becoming acceptable as an indicator of emotional turmoil, insecurities, vulnerability, and other emotions beyond one-dimensional stereotypes of men's experiences’ (Williams Reference Williams and Jarman-Ivens2007, p. 157). In this way, the musical characteristics that emo adopts are indicative of changing structures and discourses around how males ‘should’ behave, while representing a temporal lag in the uncertainties associated with performing ‘masculinity’. Emo therefore both gives a voice to those insecurities and provides a cathartic function in exposing feelings of isolation and angst (Hill Reference Hill, McKinnon, Scott and Sollee2011, p. 148). In this way emo could be explained entirely within the framework of a crisis of masculinity.
While music in general need not be considered ‘feminine’, emo arguably sonically communicates a loss of emotional control and because its lyrical content especially is so concerned with displaying emotional vulnerability and dependency, it presents an important case for exploring a re-working of ‘masculinity’. If the performance of gender is crucial to its structural integrity (West and Zimmerman Reference West and Zimmerman1987; Simpson Reference Simpson1994; Butler Reference Butler1998b; McNay Reference McNay, Adkins and Skeggs2004), then emo's popularity may be symptomatic of a decline in the historical legitimacy of emotional suppression linked to gendered male power.
Emo as a reconfiguration of gendered power
Whilst Williams’ argument is compelling, I want to suggest that, far from indicating a crisis in masculinity, emo embodies certain dialectical tensions which were always historically present in ‘masculinity’ (Hitchcock and Cohen Reference Hitchcock and Cohen1999; Aboim Reference Aboim2010). These tensions are therefore symptomatic of a reconfiguration and a continuation of unequal gender relations, rather than a decline in male hegemonic power. To illustrate this, this article now turns to providing a discursive reading of emo lyrics, taken from several influential emo bands. Drawing inspiration from Rogers’ (Reference Rogers2005) work, which adopts a discursive approach to ‘lads’ mags’, I want to offer a more nuanced understanding of how multiple discourses are propagated through emo, in order to illustrate a number of gendered power dynamics.
As Rogers highlights, conventional feminist readings of lads’ mags tend to emphasise how they encourage a ‘nakedly’ [sic] misogynistic attitude to women as an expression of patriarchal dominance. She however observes several tensions between discourses of certainty, uncertainty and danger, present in the magazines, that ‘allow men to take intimate relationships seriously while maintaining a version of traditional masculinity’ leading to a ‘masculinisation of intimacy’ (Rogers Reference Rogers2005, p. 192); therefore intimacy is not necessarily ‘feminine’ even if it is precariously balanced alongside other, more visible discourses.Footnote 5
This suggests that, as Foucault (Reference Foucault1979, p. 100) argues, power should not be understood as ‘accepted discourse and excluded discourse, or between the dominant discourse and the dominated one; but as a multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various strategies’. We therefore need to focus on nonlinear readings of music and gender in order to illustrate how gender in music entails multiple strategies of domination and consent. What a similar reading of emo song lyrics reveals is that, far from destabilising gendered assumptions, there are in fact also numerous historical continuities with cultural constructions of masculinities as frameworks of power.
While there are solid arguments about interpreting gender through ‘acousmètres or beings in sound’ (Biddle and Gibson Reference Biddle and Gibson2009, p. 227) rather than lyrics, as already noted it is lyrical rather than stylistic homogeneity that has defined what has been labelled as emo over the course of the past 20 years. It is also problematic to suggest, for example, that ‘loud’ sounds are de facto ‘masculine’ and soft sounds are ‘feminine’, as this tends toward an ahistorical framework, emphasising singular conceptions of gender as conflated with male or female bodies. As outlined later there are multiple masculinities and numerous contradictions inherent within a seemingly coherent performance of gender in music (Jarman-Ivens Reference Jarman-Ivens2007, p. 5). This problematises gendering a sound or genre as ‘masculine’. For these reasons I am focussing entirely on lyrics in order to elaborate competing discourses.
Emotional expression and relationships
As noted earlier, the most consistent characteristic of what is labelled emo is a focus on feelings of anxiety and insecurity as a result of relationships. A cursory glance at song titles also reveals a strong heteronormative bias. She Drove me to Daytime Television, Her Words Destroyed my Planet, Lying is the Most Fun a Girl can Have with her Clothes on, Sugar We're going Down and Hey Girl are all prime candidates. The lyrics and videos are often focused on monogamous, heterosexual relationships and the problems that these entail. The homogeneity in subject matter is a particularly striking feature and emo songs are usually concerned with unrequited or lost affection from the male perspective. In one respect they do little to disrupt any gendered assumptions around sexual or romantic desire, as the ‘object’ of affection is almost always female. This has the effect of naturalising a ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (Rich Reference Rich1980) which is integral to constructions of hegemonic gender relations (Connell Reference Connell1995).
Nevertheless, a greater willingness to discuss emotions in or through relationships has often been viewed as an indication of changing masculinities because of the historic stress on dominant forms of ‘masculinity’ as autonomous from emotional ‘dependency’ (Seidler Reference Seidler1994, p. 149). Allen's (Reference Allen2007) research, beginning from this premise, notes that:
Because romantic masculinities can be characterized by a softer, more sensitive expression of male sexual subjectivity, they appear to offer an alternative to hegemonic forms of masculinity. Their nonhegemonic potential also seems to stem from the way that romantic masculinities appear to contest aspects of hegemonic masculinity such as emotional remoteness. (Allen Reference Allen2007, p. 147)
What is particularly noticeable in many emo song lyrics are the links between love as a physical survival need and the affective pain of being in love. The metaphors invoked here are often linked to physical harm, suggesting that emotions are painful but that love in particular is a necessary source of pain:
But I'm lying awake now and I'm holding your picture. It's so cold here without you. And I need you now, cause it's killing me. And I wish somehow, you were here with me. (Blessthefall, 40 Days, 2011)
So cut my wrists and black my eyes. So I can fall asleep tonight, or die. Because you killed me. (Hawthorne Heights, Ohio is for Lovers, 2004)
I drop down onto my knees, the sun is hanging low through leaves. I know my love I drove you away. I'm dying, trying to change. (Saves the Day, Deranged and Desperate; Conley 2011)
Ever since this began, I was blessed with a curse. And for better or for worse I was born into a hearse. I know I said my heart beats for you. I was lying girl, it beats for two. (Bring me the Horizon, Blessed with a Curse; Sykes 2011).
This demonstrates a certain ambivalence toward masculinities (Rogers Reference Rogers2005) through an almost masochistic desire to engage in practices which encourage ‘negative’ emotions. The admission of hurt or distress here indicates dependency on the other, which may be considered part of a ‘previously subordinated romantic masculinity’ (Allen Reference Allen2007), because self-worth is derived from the other's recognition of the individual as an object of sexual or romantic desire (Illouz Reference Illouz2012, p. 130). In this respect, it appears as if males are submitting themselves to situations which destabilise a powerful sense of self; in explicitly equating their very existence (living as opposed to dying) with validation by a female other.
Because the idea of love as ‘madness’ undermines the capacity for rational judgment and is therefore experienced as a lack of freedom, there is an assumption that the type of anxiety caused by love necessarily transforms gender relations. However, love in the fragments outlined below is actually often painted as constraining rather than enabling:
There's not a lot that I feel obliged to share or talk about … You hold me down. (Motion City Soundtrack, Hold Me Down, 2005)
Isn't this messed up how I'm just dying to be him. (Fall Out Boy, Sugar We're Going Down; Wentz 2005)
Anything is better than the time you spent hoping I'd get it sorted out … If we'd only stayed together I might not have fallen apart. (Motion City Soundtrack, Her Words Destroyed my Planet; Pierre 2010)
And will you tell all your friends, you've got your gun to my head? (Taking Back Sunday, Cute Without the E (Cut from the Team), 2002)
The idea of emotions as constraints then is a specifically gendered discourse entirely congruent with a Cartesian mistrust of emotions as unanticipated consequences of the natural body (Seidler Reference Seidler1994, Reference Seidler2007; Gibson Reference Gibson, Biddle and Gibson2009), one which has precedents which stretch back further emo's genesis. In this respect, then, emotions do not compromise a Cartesian masculinity because, as Barbalet (Reference Barbalet2001, p. 34) argues, according to Descartes, ‘persons can take no responsibility for their feelings and emotions. This is because these are not things that persons do, but what their bodies do to them’. Men cannot help experiencing ‘negative’ emotions but nor do they celebrate them, leaving the rational Cartesian subject intact.
More than young men being just victims of their ‘unanticipated’ emotions, however, there is also the idea that women are deliberately cruel or vindictive, that they are to blame for causing emotional anxieties:
You know you do, you kill me well. You like it too, and I can tell. You never stop until my final breath is gone. (Hawthorne Heights, Ohio is for Lovers, 2004)
I'll slit my throat with the knife I pulled out of my spine. Maybe when you find out that I'm dead. You'll realize what you did to me. And if my lungs still let me breathe. Would you be there for me? (Silverstein, Smashed into Pieces, 2003)
Tied to the testing of wills. When my heart breaks and spills. Left to the sight of the sky. In your arms I'm defined. … Yet I'm nothing more than a line in your book. (Funeral for a Friend, Juneau, 2003)
What are we doing? I am so in love with you. I forgot what I wanted to say … You won't change your ways in time. If I just save you, you could save me too. (You Me at Six, No One Does it Better; Franceschi 2011)
At the heart of your convictions sits a broken man, that needs to understand. I am owed this now. This is, all I ever ask from you. The only thing you couldn't to do. Tell me the whole truth. You don't know, yourself. How can I know you? (Taking Back Sunday, This is All Now, 2011)
And isn't this, exactly where you'd like me? I'm exactly where you like me you know, pray for love in a lap dance and paying in naivety. (Panic! at the Disco, But it's Better if You do; Ross 2005)
Males are not just slaves to their emotions, then, but their emotional anxiety is the result of female connivance. This links to a ‘backlash’ against the gains made by women's liberation movements, whereby men tend portray themselves as victims (Faludi Reference Faludi1992; Banyard Reference Banyard2010). They are therefore not necessarily responsible for their emotions but have their ‘natural’ emotions used against them by women.
The notion that expressions of love indicate a crisis of masculinity is predicated on the idea that giving control of oneself to the other interferes with emotional self-governance and thus autonomy. However, the idea that romantic or sexual relationships are fraught with insecurities for men does not necessarily challenge hegemonic male power, as these public declarations are also not particularly new. Patriarchal relationships have historically been sustained through normative narratives of romantic love and intimacy (see Duncombe and Marsden Reference Duncombe and Marsden1993; Jackson Reference Jackson1993; Wouters Reference Wouters1998; Ahmed Reference Ahmed2010; Illouz Reference Illouz2012). Therefore ‘emotional intimacy’ or ‘sensitivity’ in and of itself may not have been as antithetical to the construction of masculinities through music in the way that other authors suggest.
On this point, Illouz (Reference Illouz2012, pp. 12, 34–5) identifies how in Western, heterosexual courtship practices during the 18th and 19th centuries, men were always required to win women's affection. As women ultimately made the final decision, Illouz argues, this caused a degree of anxiety and uncertainty for male suitors. Yet despite having a form of personal power over men in this respect, the structure of female choice in pre-modern societies was fundamentally unegalitarian. These observations also resonate with McClary's analysis of sexual politics in classical music where she explicitly states that late 19th century classical music was ‘rife with portraits of hapless men who are seduced from their transcendental quest by feminine sensuality’ (McClary Reference McClary1991, p. 55). Just as Rousseau was bemoaning a ‘crisis of masculinity’ in the 18th century (Forth Reference Forth2008), the narratives McClary identifies in 19th century music are more of an expression of the fact that masculinities do not always rely on personal expressions of power to legitimate them as forms of power (Hearn Reference Hearn2004). Men's personal anxieties either support the social order or do little to disrupt it, and arguments around male emotional insecurity, implicated in the crisis of masculinity, are not historically novel.
Overt chauvinism
Greenwald (Reference Greenwald2003) notes that:
though they may disagree on almost everything else, one characteristic shared by Vagrant, Drive-Thru, and Deep Elm [emo record labels] is that none of the labels has a single female artist signed to its roster … though Vagrant and Drive-Thru's emo acts are a long way from the naked misogyny of hair-metal or some hip-hop, there is something equally disturbing in their one-sided fury at all of the females who did them wrong. (Greenwald Reference Greenwald2003, p. 133)
His brief chapter on this issue highlights that the lyrics of early 2000s emo particularly, contained explicit and often violent references to taking revenge on women. He makes special mention of lyrics in songs by Brand New (Greenwald Reference Greenwald2003, p. 136) and Saves the Day (Greenwald Reference Greenwald2003, p. 135), demonstrating a disturbing, often not-so-thinly veiled, misogyny at work in the lyrics of emo songs. Take also, for example, Funeral for a Friend's (2003) She Drove me to Daytime Television, where vocalist Matthew Davies-Kreye declares that:
I like the way you cry. Break my heart and break my hands and let me down. I want to snap your neck in two. And leave you for dead, you are so dead
Taking Back Sunday's (2006) Makedamnsure underscores ‘romantic’ affection with sinister threats:
I just wanna break you down so badly, In the worst way. … I'm gonna make damn sure that you can't ever leave. No, you won't ever get too far from me
While the Used (2002) make explicit reference to physical violence against partners in Buried Myself Alive:
My foot on your neck and I finally have you right where I want you
These quite explicit references to violence as a means of working out the types of feelings of anxiety and insecurity already outlined are hardly emblematic of a softer, more emotionally attuned masculinity. They instead rely on more ‘conventional’ form of masculine domination (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu2001), namely the use or threat of physical force to guarantee consent.
A subsequently troubling aspect of emo is how women are often labelled as promiscuous and this is identified as a source of male pain. There is both the sense that the male protagonists make demands for greater emotional intimacy or that they are being ‘used’ for sex. Here the separation between sex and love is invoked, with the lyricists usually privileging the latter. This could be taken to undermine a normative definition of masculinity, because the separation of emotions from sex are presumed to be a key characteristic of male gendered practice (Illouz Reference Illouz2012, pp. 103–4). Thus it appears to go against the notion that sexual ‘conquests’ with numerous partners are a core tenet of male identities (see Simpson Reference Simpson1994; Flood Reference Flood2008). For example:
I'm a screw up of epic proportions . ..Hypermatic and dime store dramatic; a conduit for pain. She said don't speak don't think just take it off. I said don't speak don't think just mess me up. (Motion City Soundtrack, True Romance; Pierre 2012)
I'm just a notch in your bedpost but you're just a line in a song. (Fall Out Boy, Sugar We're Going Down; Wentz 2005)
Please make the technology. So I can turn up your love like some cold machine. Don't feed me scraps from your bed. I won't be the stray coming back just to be fed. (Brand New, Not the Sun; Lacey 2006)
‘This is the first and last time’, he said. She fakes a smile and presses her hips into his. He keeps his hands pinned down at his sides. He's holding back from telling her exactly what it really feels … like. He is the lamb, she is the slaughter. She's moving way too fast and all he wanted was to hold her. (Brand New, Sic Transit Gloria … Glory Fades; Lacey 2003)
Alas but what a shame, what a shame the poor groom's bride is a whore.Footnote 6 (Panic! At the Disco, I Write Sins not Tragedies; Ross 2005)
If I could take you somewhere. I'd take you to the darkest place. Scatter you in art forms. Admire the whore. (Escape the Fate, Cellar Door, 2006)
You slut me into this decision. (Taking Back Sunday, Semi Automatic, 2011)
Women here are depicted as the more emotionally detached in sexual encounters, reversing the cultural trope that men should be ‘naturally’ more interested in sex in order to be considered masculine (see Petersen Reference Petersen1998). In the lines ‘don't feed me scraps from your bed, I won't be the stray coming back just to be fed’ and ‘she's moving way too fast and all he wanted was to hold her’, women are depicted as more interested in casual sex than men. Men are, in turn, portrayed as victims of female sexuality. In one respect this may be taken as a marker of a ‘softer masculinity’, one which does not reduce women to sexual objects and craves ‘real’ intimacy or it could also be suggested that female sexual liberation has caused a crisis of male security in stable relationships (Giddens Reference Giddens1992).
However, what is also clear is that despite ‘only’ infrequent, overtly misogynistic overtones (‘what a shame the poor groom's bride is a whore’) the sexual promiscuity that men tend to emphasise as integral to their gender identities (Flood Reference Flood2008) is still stigmatized in women as a by-product of their heartlessness or ‘unfemininity’ (see Skeggs Reference Skeggs1997; Adkins and Skeggs Reference Adkins and Skeggs2004). The ‘cruel girl’ is demonised as an aberration from the ‘good girl’ and is chastised as a ‘whore’ for enjoying sex for its own sake or having sex with multiple sexual partners. Bourgeois ideals of virginity as essential to female respectability have a very long history and it is clear that the double standard around female sexuality still resonates (Kreager and Staff Reference Kreager and Staff2009; Reid et al. Reference Reid, Elliott and Webber2011). Emo therefore also imposes a dubious puritanical moralism on women and equates romantic desirability with sexual exclusivity.
As the possessive pronouns below indicate, the ideal relationship is one based on ownership, where the female devotes herself entirely to the male singer/lyricist. Thus there is very little in these narratives that suggests a reworking of patriarchal gender relations:
I want a girl who will laugh for no one else. When I'm away she puts her makeup on the shelf. When I'm away she never leaves the house. I want a girl who laughs for no one else. (Weezer, No One Else; Cuomo 1994)
Don't ever forget. My only, you own me, if you'd only see … promise me you'll still be mine. (The Get up Kids, Central Standard Time, 2001)
As Jessica Hopper has suggested, emo in this respect ‘relegates [females] to the role of muse or heartbreaker, an object of either misery or desire. Emo just builds a cathedral of man pain and then celebrates its validation’ (cited in Greenwald Reference Greenwald2003, p. 134). Thus female sexuality in emo is subject to disciplining, regulatory mechanisms around appropriate and inappropriate sexual conduct, framed largely in terms of what males consider as romantically desirable, that is, a stable, heterosexual, monogamous relationship with an idealised version of chaste femininity and of patrimonial ownership.
‘Beta male misogyny’
As Kennedy (Reference Kennedy2012) commented with regards to ‘twee’ (a genre which shares much of the same lyrical subject matter as emo) ‘[there is] an implication that men can – and perhaps even should … feign sympathy with feminist anger about institutionalised, “traditional” misogyny in order to pull’. What he brilliantly coins as ‘beta male misogyny’ implies resistance to ‘traditional’ (some may say hegemonic) forms of behaviour, in order to achieve the same desired outcomes as those perceived as ‘traditionally’ masculine.
Beta male misogyny foregrounds competition for female affection and, more importantly, possession as a means of asserting moral superiority over other men. Therefore, as Kennedy notes, this is an attempt to:
heal old playground wounds, and there's certainly no desire for gender equality behind it … the new man, apparently, will gradually come to assert his authority over the Neanderthals of days gone by, wielding his intellect and therapeutic literacy as, once upon a time, white-shirted archetypes splashed on the Brut and flexed their biceps.
There are, in accounts which stress a ‘crisis’ or ‘softening’ of masculinity, often fundamental misreadings of ‘masculinity’ as singular rather than plural (see Hitchcock and Cohen Reference Hitchcock and Cohen1999). For example, Williams (Reference Williams and Jarman-Ivens2007) stresses that emo enables men to enact less ‘one-dimensional stereotypes’, yet Connell's key insight is that male gender identities have historically not only been constructed in opposition to femininity but also in relation to ‘other’ forms of masculinities. Crucially this means that there could be no crisis of a singular, authentic masculinity to deviate from in the first place. As both Aboim (Reference Aboim2010) and Coles (Reference Coles2009) have also noted, there may be multiple hegemonic masculinities within societies. Therefore the idea that (hegemonic) masculinity is a fixed type of individual or social group, rather than a series of interrelations between institutions, representations and actors is mistaken (Connell and Messerschmidt Reference Connell and Messerschmidt2005).
In emo, as in ‘twee’, the apparent reworking of a masculinist aesthetic is underpinned by patrimonial chivalry and male competition. The idea that the female needs to be ‘saved’ from making the wrong romantic choice undermines her agency and autonomy, indicating that the protagonist, arrogantly, believes he knows what is best for her. As Halberstam (Reference Halberstam1998, p. 17) has suggested, this view relies on ‘a slightly old fashioned feminism that understands women as endlessly victimized within systems of male power’; in short, ‘chivalry’ is comparable to chauvinism. It becomes the lyricist's ‘duty’ to point out that she is making the wrong choice, while at the same time portraying himself as the more appropriate suitor and emphasising his qualities over more ‘traditional’ stereotypes.
I'm looking down on you from above … Loverboy, you're playing those hearts like toys. Don't you feel bad … Feel bad for them? (You Me At Six, Loverboy; Franceschi 2011)
You hate him more than I know, yes I wrote this for you. You need him, I could be him, I could be an incident but I'm still trying and that's more than I can say for him … Where is your boy tonight, I hope he is a gentleman. (Fall Out Boy, Grand Theft Autumn/Where is your Boy; Wentz and Stump 2003)
Then think of what you did and how I hope to God he was worth it. When the lights are dim and your heart is racing as your fingers touch his skin. I've got more wit, a better kiss, a hotter touch, a better fuck, than any boy you'll ever meet, sweetie you had me … you know it will always just be me. (Panic! At the Disco, Lying is the Most Fun a Girl can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off; Ross 2005)
In the last case, Brendon Urie's/Ryan Ross’ declaration that they are a ‘better fuck than any boy you'll ever meet’ directly espouses the same logic of heteronormative competition that is a cornerstone of hegemonic masculinity. In this case, as Lovell (Reference Lovell2000, p. 20) has noted with regard to malestream approaches, ‘women tend to circulate as repositories of social value’. Thus the logic of competition for (hetero)sexual partners by being more emotionally open asserts autonomy from rational, ‘mainstream’ masculinity (Forth Reference Forth2008, p. 28) and superiority over other ‘Neanderthal’ men, while reducing women to objects in order to gain advantage over other men. This is entirely congruent with a notion of hegemonic masculinity or masculinities (Coles Reference Coles2009).
As Connell clearly states, ‘I stress that hegemonic masculinity embodies “a currently accepted strategy”. When conditions for the defence of patriarchy change, the bases of dominance of a particular masculinity are eroded … Hegemony then, is a historically mobile relation’ (Connell Reference Connell1995, p. 77, emphasis added). This suggests that what is labelled as a crisis of masculinity, observed through emo's ‘inner turmoil’, may actually be an ideological reworking of male power which positions ‘sensitive’ men above ‘Neanderthal’ men in light of economic, social and political change (see Edwards Reference Edwards2006). In this way, emo is indicative of societal shifts which guarantee the dominant position of some males rather than a crisis of masculinity. Far from destabilising many of the core tenets of ‘masculinity’, ideas of chivalry and beta male misogyny, prevalent in emo, are superficial alterations of previous performances of masculinities. Again, they represent continuities rather than challenges to traditional forms of gendered practice.
Conclusions
This article has demonstrated that to see emo as evidence of softening masculinities, or to see contemporary ‘masculinity’ in crisis is problematic. While a focus on overt emotional expression appears to be indicative of a destabilising oppressive gender practices I would suggest that this is not the case. This article has demonstrated that many of the arguments made around the crisis or softening of ‘masculinity’ fail to draw historic comparisons which support the contradictory practices involved in maintaining gendered privilege. The intensely homosocial composition of the bands aside, the embracing of heteronormative relationships as a cornerstone of the music, the frequent underlying misogyny, the unease with which love compromises individual autonomy and the way in which males are perceived as the victims of female sexuality, all suggest that emo is merely an aesthetic reworking of gendered power dynamics.
Songwriters write what they know about and what their audiences can relate to. However, cultural narratives also construct ideas around gender relations. Much American emo emanated (and still does) from suburbia – areas of distinctly white, middle-class privilege. The lyrics undoubtedly reflect the fact that the bands are young males with very few economic problems or barriers to participation in public life. The lyrics are self-directed because they stem from musicians’ experiences so it is unsurprising then that the main problems tend usually to be (heterosexual) relationships. However, it is how these personal experiences are framed as male victimisation and come to be seen as progressive that is especially problematic.
I write as someone who grew up listening to what has been labelled emo. I also identified with the same premise critiqued here: that emotional openness and being ‘more emotional’ than the ‘average’ guy represented a progressive stance toward masculinity. If there is anything to be rescued from music that focuses so singularly on cis-male relationship experience, it is that lyrically the focus needs to move from narcissistic ideas of personal pain toward awareness of systemic privilege. Rather than apportioning blame to women, more emphasis needs to be placed on how emotional experience can be a way of producing new identities and new forms of gender consciousness. It is only through actively resisting lazy lyrical clichés around gender difference that music can help to enable more egalitarian form of masculinities.
