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.