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Gender Bending
Posted on 06 July 2010
This post comes courtesy of the very interesting rendition of Alanis Morrisette’s “You Oughta Know” by Jonathan Coulton, seen here.
It is hardly a new thing for members of another gender to sing gender charged songs. Tori Amos did it quite a bit with one of her albums, and listening to her rendition of ’97 Bonnie and Clyde is creepy. But I have to wonder, why not bend the lyrics? I mean, I can see the “you are covering a song, dip-weed, you don’t change it,” but both in the case of Tori and of Jonathan, it feels like they are trying to bring the other genders take and feel to the song. So why not a song about the mother killing the father, and why not a song from a guy who was cheated on and dumped? And this isn’t me trying to be all hetro-normative either. I’d be fine if the singers were going for non hetro-normative takes, but at least in these two cases (and likely in others), it just doesn’t seem like what they were doing. Iunno, thoughts?
1 comment to Gender Bending
Thought:
this is gender bending at its finest. Homonormative or heteronormative, “normative” is key, and not very bendy. Singing a song in another gender is saying: it’s the humanity in the song that matters. It’s the humanity in the story that matters. Gender is only language “he”/”she”, but being human, being human transcends gender. “Human” means male/female both at the same time. They’re all OUR stories.
Does anyone get this? it’s a distinction that requires a bit of mind stretchiness. But so many of y’all under 40 or so seem to be getting the hang of a certain amount of gender thought yoga–it’s worth a try.
Patty Griffin does this too. I think we’re more used to women “getting” it because we live in a world where “mankind” means a species of which 51% of the members are not men. So we’re used to ALWAYS hearing our humanity in another gender.