Glory or Criticism?: Music and Violence

I was listening to "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People, a song I have heard a couple of times and generally enjoyed, when I decided to pay attention to the lyrics: "All the other kids with the pumped up kicks, you'd better run, better run, outrun my gun. All the other kids with the pumped up kicks, you'd better run, better run, faster than my bullet."

I immediately wished I hadn't paid attention. Ignorance is bliss, after all. But as someone who claims to be so very against the glorification of violence in our media and culture, could I willingly listen to a song that glorifies violence? Of course not.

Except there is a very big difference between talking about violence in a way that glorifies it versus talking about violence in a way that addresses the issue. Where is that line? Listening to the song, it felt satirical. The dark lyrics seemed to be ironically juxtaposed against a cheerful and bright melody and beat. Could the artist have intended to use that juxtaposition as social commentary on our glorification of violence? Or was it simply a glorification of violence?

Said Mark Foster of Foster the People on the song:

'Pumped Up Kicks' is about a kid that basically is losing his mind and is plotting revenge. He's an outcast. I feel like the youth in our culture are becoming more and more isolated. It's kind of an epidemic. Instead of writing about victims and some tragedy, I wanted to get into the killer's mind, like Truman Capote did in 'In Cold Blood.' I love to write about characters. That's my style. I really like to get inside the heads of other people and try to walk in their shoes.

Even reading what he thinks of the song, however, doesn't seem to settle the question for me. Would I accept any song just because the artist thought what they were creating was social commentary? I could easily agree with the commentary that isolation among our youth can certainly lead to horrible violence—it's happened many times, most recently when a young teenager took his own life—but what does listening to this song and songs like it actually do for me?

I don't want to listen to only cheerful songs. That's surely not my point. Listening only to cheerful music would be like sticking my fingers in my ears, shutting my eyes, and hoping that if I simply am never exposed to unpleasantness, it will cease to exist. That's not how it works.

I want to be critical and aware of what media I allow myself to take in. Just like I don't want to fill my body with junk food, neither do I want to fill my soul with "junk food" like the glorification of violence. Neither provides real nourishment. But denial of the existence of junk is not only ignorant, but dangerous. If I don't even acknowledge the issues in our society, how can I work to fix them?

I don't know what my decision about "Pumped Up Kicks" is right now. I won't protest the song, nor will I tell anyone not to listen to it. But it is a song about something ugly in our society; it requires that I think critically about it, that I decided for myself what this song is really about and what it means to me.

What is clear to me is that kids should never feel so isolated that they are driven to the violence expressed in this song. Regardless of what the artist meant, this song's violent themes are a reminder of all the work that still remains to be done in our society and a reminder of what I am supposed to be doing with my life: working to put an end to all of the violence, hatred, and isolation in our world and fill it instead with love.

When Ceilings Collapse

I remember being shaken awake, urged out of bed, and told not to worry—everything was going to be okay, I was going to be okay.

It was June. The sunny skies of Southern California unexpectedly turned to grey, and torrents of rain began to fall over night.

And then the ceiling collapsed at 5AM—directly over my parent's bed—destroying the entire room as water and debris flooded in. My parents were lucky—they had been up all night trying to keep up with all of the water which was leaking into our home through the exposed ceiling. We had just begun construction on our house, and we had no roof. No one had expected rain in sunny California, especially not in June.

When their ceiling collapsed, my parents shook my sister and I awake. We were soon out of the house and safe from being crushed by debris. We, too, were lucky: the ceiling directly over our bunk beds collapsed shortly after we left.

But everything was okay. Our ceilings collapsed, but no one was hurt, and our house was put back together again.

Two years later, on September 11th, 2001, I was shaken awake with the same fearful urgency and reassured that everything was going to be okay. I watched in horror as the ceiling of our entire country collapsed and those mighty buildings fell. I watched the planes crash, the flames consume, the bodies leap.

But I trusted my parents. I was nine; of course I trusted them. Everything was going to be okay. I was going to be okay.

I still believe them: everything is going to be okay. Our house is not the same as it was before the ceilings collapsed. There are still a couple of cracked windows all these years later, reminders of the terror of that June morning when my whole world caved in. Furniture was destroyed and never restored. When our ceiling leaked in last year's huge rain storms, the fear of the memory sent shockwaves of panic through us. But everything is okay. Our house still stands. Though earthquake or fire or storm or violence could strike at any moment and bring my house down once more, destruction does not have the last word.

But the destruction of 9/11 was much worse than physical destruction, much more than an attack on a building. It was an emotional and spiritual destruction, violence which pierced through our very souls. It was, and still is, unfathomable.

Yet our reaction to the unfathomable violence of 9/11 has been just as unfathomable. Like repairing our collapsed ceilings by destroying our neighbour's, our violent reaction does nothing to heal our wounded souls. We will never bring back the lost lives, and the towers, even if they were to be rebuilt, would never quite stand as they once stood.

But our souls can heal. We have witnessed violence beyond what any of us could have ever imagined, but witnessing does not require mimicry. Witnessing demands action, but the action we choose is up to us. Lessons can be learned from Norway's reaction to the terrorism in their own country.

"I think July 22 will be a very strong symbol of the Norwegian people's wish to be united in our fight against violence, and will be a symbol of how the nation can answer with love," said Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

The Amish, too, could teach us something about how we react to senseless violence. Writes Donald B. Kraybill:

Amish faith is grounded in the teachings of Jesus to love enemies, reject revenge, and leave vengeance in the hands of God. As a father who lost a daughter in the schoolhouse [shooting] said, "Forgiveness means giving up the right to revenge."

Everything will be okay. I believe in the possibility of our liberation and the power of love to heal and free us from the pain of the horrific violence with which we are still struggling to deal ten years later. But destruction does not have the last word. Rather than being extremists for war, we must be, as Martin Luther King, Jr., writes in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, "extremists for love." Only through extreme acts of love can we conquer destruction, re-build our nation, and heal our terrorised souls.

My Favourite Culture

I have just started my semester, and already I have written two essays, given a 30-second speech, and sputtered out Spanish I was unaware I knew whilst under pressure. The semester is going great. Today, I'll meet the last teachers I've yet to meet. There's a lot going on this semester, and it really feels like real college now, unlike last year which felt . . . weird.

My first major assignment is a "cultural artifact" speech. Basically, we have to bring in some item that represents a culture to which we belong, and give a short (2-3 minutes) speech on the artifact, the culture, and the significance of the artifact to the culture and the culture to us. It's a short little thing, and the options are endless. The example speech was about knitting needles, if that helps you understand how broad the term "culture" is being used.

Culture is a weird thing for me though. Biologically, I am white, but most of the "family" I actually know and see most often is from Honduras, my step-mom's family. From my step-dad, I grew up with Polynesian cultural influences. Growing up in culturally diverse Los Angeles gave me bits and pieces of other cultures too, so I don't consider myself any particular race. I decided I didn't want to do any sort of race-based culture for my speech.

I thought about theatre arts, about Harry Potter, about environmentalism and political activism, about all sorts of culture to which I belong, but nothing screamed "Pick me! Pick me! I am your culture!" like my faith. Forget race, forget arts, forget books and politics; I identify with the very long history of my faith, from ancient Israelites all the way to today. They are my ancestors, and their culture is mine.

Except how do you get up in front of a bunch of college students and tell them about how much you love the Bible without boring them all to death? Or worse, leading them to think you're some crazy right-wing, Bible-thumping nut who uses the Bible as a weapon? As much as I know my faith to be something beautiful, despite all of its flawed history—or perhaps because of those flaws even—the idea of standing up to say that and risk the burn of being judged for it terrifies me.

As I tried to find another culture about which to share, I could not help coming back to my faith. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that talking about my faith and its culture is exactly what I needed to do. It is the only culture about which I could talk with such passion—something I'll need if I want to engage anyone and get a good grade—and, I realised, talking about my faith is exactly what being a priest involves. While writing on this blog and talking to friends about my faith is nice, standing up to give a speech about my faith is something entirely different—and a skill I need to practice. If I am too afraid to even tell college students about my faith, who can I tell?

My cultural artifact? The Book of Common Prayer, the book which, in the 16th Century, sought to bring a divided nation together without sacrificing anyone. As Catholics and Protestant reformers fought viciously for control, a brilliant Queen declared that we could, somehow, be both Catholic and Protestant. Without killing each other. It is a book which connects a 19-year-old college student living in 21st century Los Angeles to 16th century Europe, to 1st century Israel/Palestine, to the slaves of ancient Egyptians, and to so many others, living, dead, and not-yet alive, whose cultures may differ so vastly from my own. Yet we pray the same prayers and we eat the same bread and wine. Despite whatever differences we may hold, we share the same humanity, and that is, really, what my favourite culture is all about.