The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
Willie Nelson's Lost Highway
Lynne:
--- Quote from: milomorris on November 10, 2009, 12:21:05 am ---People are listening to this song in more places than just Tennessee. No doubt, different people in different places, and in different circumstances will interpret the song differently. Living in Philadelphia, I know how the average city boy is going to hear these lyrics. To them, this song will have the effect of a Saturday Night Live skit.
The idea that this song (with or without the ketchup) will incite gay-bashing is about as valid an argument as the one that goes: gangsta rap makes poor, young, black men violent.
--- End quote ---
We're not going to agree, Milo, and we don't need to. Remember the point of this website?
"It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read, and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience, prejudices, world view and thoughts." - Annie Proulx
We bring our own life experiences to Brokeback Mountain, and it changed all of us in some way; otherwise, I doubt we'd still be interested in being here. Everything we see is viewed through the lens of our own experiences. This is just another example of that.
Let be.
milomorris:
--- Quote from: Lynne on November 10, 2009, 12:29:06 am ---We're not going to agree, Milo, and we don't need to.
(snip)
Let be.
--- End quote ---
Agreed.
Marge_Innavera:
--- Quote from: bailey1205 on November 10, 2009, 12:20:04 am ---Well, the majority of people posting on this thread see it as what it is.
--- End quote ---
People sometimes see this kind of thing through a prism of fear as well: 'if I don't see it, it will all go away or at least not get near me.'
--- Quote from: Lynne on November 09, 2009, 11:53:13 pm ---For those who don't see threats in these lyrics:
"That shit ain't right" --creates a mood of hate/moral condemnation against homosexuals
"Don't go reachin' for my rope" --implies a threat if an overture is made
"You can buy me a beer, then fuck off" --disrespectful and rude, as if it's OK to use a gay man for your own purposes, lead him on, then blow him off
--- End quote ---
If homophobia was basically just a matter of rudeness, it would be easy to dismiss those lyrics, even in a context where they're sung against a backdrop of a red spatter with a ketchup label conspicuously included (to make it less likely that YouTube will pull it). But as we all know, they're not. "He made a pass at me" is a familiar "gay panic" excuse for anything from a bloodied nose to being beaten to human hamburger. Gay men in particular share at least one deadly racial stereotype: that of the out-of-control sexual predator; and that song plays right into that mentality.
Marge_Innavera:
--- Quote from: garycottle on November 10, 2009, 12:57:19 am ---It's not cute. It's not funny. And the rednecks who hear this crap will take it as an endorsement of their homophobia.
--- End quote ---
Not to mention expressing it in the way they know best.
Lynne:
--- Quote from: garycottle on November 10, 2009, 12:57:19 am ---I'm with you, Lynn. A lot of people seem to think that if a gay man hits on a straight man, the straight man is pretty much obligated to physically assault the gay man in order to prove his manhood. This shitty song speaks directly to that attitude. I have heard many men talk exactly this way back where I come from.
It's not cute. It's not funny. And the rednecks who hear this crap will take it as an endorsement of their homophobia.
--- End quote ---
I believe you're right, Gary. We're from near the same sort of places - the rural southeast. And tell you what, things are different in downtown Boston, San Francisco, New York, other cities....but you don't have to get very far outside of Boston before you get to say...Fall River, MA or Quincy, MA...not to give these places a bad name, but Boston-suburbs are not cosmopolitan in the same way Boston-city is. And it's the rural people and the suburban-rural want-to-be's that provide the market for Nelson's music.
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