My Childhood Media Trauma

This post may sound like a joke, but it’s not. It’s about a song that has given me very bad feelings and sometimes nightmares for 27 years. But I deal with trauma through sarcasm. I recommend the practice to anyone.

I heard the song dozens of times when I was about 10. You know how it is: you learn the lyrics because the tune is catchy, or because it’s always on the family cassette player, and only later do you reflect on what the lyrics actually mean.

It took me a while to realize that the song was just plain evil. It’s about a country boy whose father is in prison, presumably for interpersonal violence of some sort. They boy grows up avoiding violence as a result. This pacifism leads his wholesome country neighbors to think he’s weak, and they can’t have that. So, they solve their sissy-neighbor problem by gang-raping his wife. This is apparently the solution suggested by the down-home family values imparted by growing up as men of the soil in the heartland. Naturally, this drives the boy straight to Stone Cold Killaville in a pimped-out revengemobile. He locks himself in the local bar, where the local sexual predators are having a celebratory beer. On account of all the years of bottled-up rage, plus the unforgivable things done to his wife, he finds superhuman strength and severely beats (and possibly kills) the good ol’ boys.
Glorification of violence. Women as sexual objects for men’s aggression. Assault on the weak by the strong. Denigration of pacifism. Some bizarre rural variant of gangsta rap? No. Kenny Frickin’ Rogers.

The images associated with this song have haunted me for the majority of my life. This is not a song a 10-year-old should hear (but in my parents’ defense, I’m not sure they knew we listened to the whole album; I think they assumed we were rewinding The Gambler and Lady over and over again).Rape, assault and intimidation, fueled by (and enforcing conformity to) screwed-up community values and renewed through personal trauma and revenge. The song’s final line, “sometimes you have to fight when you’re a man,” brings the boy back to his father’s lifestyle. Silly dad, thinking you could get by without fighting. For that matter, now he’s more like the good ol’ boys, too. Now he is an active participant in the culture of violence, and therefore finally acceptable to the rest of the community. He has learned that violence is your only defense, and that very bad things happen to your family when you don’t fight enough. Even the narrator stands by and watches as this all happens, and seems to approve of the outcome (at least the fact that Tommy knocks some heads, and possibly murders some of his townsfolk).Nobody’s escaping this cycle. Nobody’s getting out of the little cornfield ghetto.

Maybe some of those federal dollars spent on modifying the deviant culture of inner-city gang members might be best redirected to podunk farm towns. Songs like this are just one of the many reasons why I never bought into the “rural = good” meme that clings to American culture. Not that there’s anything inherently corrupting in farming, ranching, etc.; but there’s nothing about it that necessarily makes people into good humans, either.
I don’t know about you, but I have several mental areas of media trauma from childhood. This song. The Wizard of Oz, That episode of Scooby Doo with the Headless Horseman, Friday the 13th Part 2 (unwisely witnessed at a friend’s sleepover when I was 13)… I would prefer to have experienced this junk much later or, in some cases (such as the song in question, or the movie Natural Born Killers), not at all.

Anyone else?