I like Janet Jackson. Listening to her songs is like being winded with the realization that your parents are cool. It hits you out of nowhere: you grew up with them, couldn't bare publicly being beside them, and then one night you smell pot in the hallway, and hear the Zombie's "Time of the Season" emanating from their bedroom.
Even casually listening to Janet's stuff will sway your opinion of her. Take the song "That's the Way Love Goes", an infectious number from 1993's self-titled janet. Under the pretense of a song about the way love 'goes' (works?), what we get instead is a lesson about the way a successful seduction works, with the female vocalist literally seducing another party to the point of physical contact and (presumably) climax. No, I'm not making this up. Read on, dear reader!
But more than that, Janet's portrayal of the whole liaison is absolutely unflinching in its explicitness. By god, who would have thought she could be so naughty, so attractive in her naughtiness, and so unabashedly awesome about the whole thing?
Consider the lyrical content.
The chorus, which begins the song and is repeatedly after each verse and pre-chorus goes:
Like a moth to a flame
Burned by the fire
My love is blind
Can't you see my desire?
So love is "blind" here: exactly like a moth compelled to a flame, only to be burnt by its core. Therefore, the moth itself, being the vehicle of love, is also blind: otherwise why would it go to the flame? ...The lesson (and it is a true one, at least in theory) is that love is outside of the jurisdiction of reason. It is unconditional. To mix reason with love would be to condition, or to limit it, to give it form and compass. But already that would not be love: it would be something reduced in scope, something close, but no cigar. It would be like paradise or heaven with gates (why does heaven have gates? isn't this self-defeating?).
The way to think about love is to see it as governed by desire, which is explicitly unreasonable. Love is blind; it will hurt you, it hurts the moth; but the moth is still thrust irrationally towards the flame. In other words, Janet's philosophy on love is that it is fundamentally masochistic. It hurts, we will hurt, and nevertheless. It is like the wistful dictum John Cougar Mellancamp coined with his popular song, "Hurt so Good."
And so Janet's seduction ensues, when she sings:
Come with me
Don't you worry
I'm gonna make you crazy
I'll give you the time of your life
and:
I'm gonna take you places
You've never been before and
You'll be so happy that you came
I won't get in the way of a liberal interpretation of the word "came" here. But given consequent lyrics, it seems more and more probable. The explicitness of the liaison comes to a head when Janet sings:
Come closer
Baby closer
Reach out and feel my body
I'm gonna give you all my love
Oh sugar don't you hurry
You've got me here all night
Just close your eyes and hold on tight
Oh baby
Don't stop, don't stop
Go deeper, baby deeper
You feel so good I want to cry
After hearing those words lodged into a catchy pop song, one is apt to reevaluate. Again, the penetrating masochism (pun intended). But how to evaluate this clear coital scene? Why do I find myself admiring, appreciating Janet's words?
The answer, I want to propose, is that it is almost as if (in this moment) Janet Jackson, or the female voice-character of the song, stands in for the everyman's perfect woman. What man wouldn't want to hear this at the moment of absolute commune with eros? With the body of another? But the more disturbing question: what about its violence, the self-confessed pleasure of the violence, stirs? How is this pleasure the same or different from other kinds of pleasure? What does this indicate about gender relations?
By golly, who would have thought Janet could offer so much in a single song!
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3 comments:
I think you've neglected to consider her target audience! Not men, but women, mostly young. To me if that song represents anything, it probably has to do with over-sexualising children and teenagers in a bizarre (probably subconscious) reversal of feminism. I find the idea of nothing more than a willing sexual partner as the perfect woman, for either a female or male audience, a bit disturbing. I don't think the song can be considered divorced from context.
Also consider:
How can a moth find a flame if it is blind? It would have to be right next to flame. That metaphor was stretched a bit too far.
Heaven has gates because that makes it a more effective symbol. It doesn't motivate if anyone can get in.
Thank you for your comments Thomas. They help me to clarify my own position. I would only add that I definitely didn't mean to depict the perfect woman as simply "nothing more than a willing sexual partner". On the contrary; what I find interesting here is that the speaker renders herself so much more than a passive sexual object. This is in turn what allows her to embody some notion of the 'perfect', in the sense of being extraordinary, even impossibly so. The phrase is an incredible compliment, and also a means of describing her own subjectivity in the moment of absolute bodily union. She seems to be saying: this is cathartic for me; beyond the helm of ordinary emotion; beautifully devastating. Isn't there something overwhelming about this outpouring from the perspective of the other party?
If my argument does little to distinguish why I offer her as a 'perfect woman' as oppose to just a 'perfect' person, it is because I think gender in this case adds further complexity. I don't have time to sketch this out, but I think it could be argued that the speaker lends herself (by mouthing the phrase) to an entire history of female representation (for better or worse).
Lastly, I like your question, "how can a moth find a flame if it's blind?", and so I'll answer with another, though related. How can a love be love if it's blind?
And yet-- do we not say that only the best, only the truest love is blind? (Blind to the outside world, etc.) Weren't Romeo and Juliet blind, in this case blind to the lifestyles and conventions of their families, and didn't they have to be, to find each other?
This is André, by the way! The only reason I use a pseudonym is that I'm the only person in the world who seems to have my full name. You can understand why it's convenient to keep my blog out of cursory google searches. Sorry though, I sometimes assume people know who I am.
On the contrary; what I find interesting here is that the speaker renders herself so much more than a passive sexual object.
What I don't see is the evidence of this? As far as I can tell she's just someone who wants to have sex. That's about it, from my perspective. That she's a willing partner is great, but what more can we really get from lines like "reach out and feel my body / I'm gonna give you all my love"? In context it's just a woman promising an intimate sexual encounter. It doesn't even strike me as particularly sincere, though it might be.
The "catharsis" involved even seems trivial: what painful experience is she relieving, besides desire? Similarly, when I'm hungry I eat... even if I'm really hungry I wouldn't describe the experience as cathartic! Though both situations are, by their nature, satisfying.
The point of clarifying the moth metaphor is this: love can't be totally blind. Just as the blind moth really wouldn't be able to find the flame, Janet's song would be completely meaningless if she were singing it to just anybody. It would be an interesting avenue to explore artistically, but could you imagine her singing the song sincerely to a homeless person she just met on the street? It would undermine the entire song. Therefore, love must have conditions, and I don't think the textual evidence supports any suggestion otherwise. She's just describing intense passion.
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