Absorbing Darkness

Abuses at the top of the system trickle down to those at the bottom and we see this expressed in the music our kids listen to.

A contemporary song that scares me is “you should see me in a crown” by Billie Eilish.

and her songs are all meant to be scary.

I think this song depicts the unspoken reaction of young women to the violent, pornographic imagery with which they are threatened on a regular basis.

When I was a kid, the biggest threat to young women was the waifish supermodel ideal that caused an epidemic of eating disorders. I never saw pornography until I was well into my adulthood and the internet made it pop up onto my screen because of someone who’d been using my computer before me.

If you’ve ever made the mistake of looking at a porn site, you’ve seen teenaged girls doing things that teenaged girls wouldn’t like to see themselves doing. There is a guy rubbing his butt on a young woman’s face while some medical device is used to dilate her anus. There is a video called sexticemia in which an incongruously smiling young woman is subject to the sorts of painful sex acts which could lead to septicemia – a deadly infection caused by the introduction of bacteria into her bloodstream.

This is an expression of extreme aggression and young women who see these images are learning that they are the target of rage. How terrifying it must be to learn at such a young age that so many people in the world hate you just for existing. As a mother, this concerns me.

Kids are the canaries in the coal mine and when they start listening to songs about being abandoned by their parents while they sink beneath a flood of emotional content for which they are not prepared, we need to do something to protect them.

But before we can fix the problem, we need to understand how it started.

Men are not known for their open emotional expression and that is why they often express themselves through sex. When women see that men’s self-expression in the bedroom has been influenced by violent internet pornography, those women are absorbing the darkness building up within the system.

When Billie drinks down a glass of dark liquid and sings

I could lie say I like it like that, like it like that.

I think of women in pornography absorbing the darkness of our time by doing things they do not like.

Men absorb the darkness when they are subject to unrealistic expectations from their parents, when they are isolated by social media, and when they are treated badly by the globalizing economy. This darkness is getting passed on to women. Women can only absorb so much and that is what “you should see me in a crown” is about.

Revolutions tend to be started by women, but usually, women lose power once the revolution has occurred and that is why the song is so scary.

You say, come over baby. I think you’re pretty… You should see me in a crown.

This song is about powerless people dreaming of taking revenge. While trickle-down economics may not accurately describe the monetary economy, I think it does describe the emotional economy. Abuses at the top trickle down to those at the bottom, forming puddles of despair. The video vividly shows what happens when there is a flood of despair.

I’m supposed to be a grown-up who is not bothered by images of young women getting abused, but it bothers me deeply. It also bothers me deeply that young people are getting desensitized to this abuse through early and constant exposure to it. Back before the internet, ‘scientists’ were publishing articles about how angry music, violent movies, and pornography did not damage young people, but I don’t think they ever imagined the extremes to which the internet would take this sort of content. One of my kids saw a video on a friend’s cellphone of a kid in another country abusing and killing kittens. She does not know how to process that, but music which explores what these sorts of images do to us might help.

When women are reporting an increase in feeling frightened during sex, I think it is important that artists like Billie Eilish are showing us in abstract form the dark things happening inside of our minds because as long as those things remain invisible, they can build up in explosive fashion. The abstraction of such songs is distancing and we need distancing after being hit with the ugliest aspects of reality.

……

I’ve only focused on the impact of childhood exposure to violent content, but the issue underlying this overexposure is addiction – a devils circle which causes kids to seek out more and more extreme content.

The internet reduces the amount of time we spend interacting with people in real life and this leads to disconnection. Once a person is disconnected, they are vulnerable to internet addiction. It is a devils circle with a drug which is more powerful than any narcotic. The internet gives a rush and this leads to a constant need to *feel good*.

Kids are aware that there is something wrong with this picture. They know that there is a place where they could feel free and happy – and that it is not online.

I personally found that a trampoline had a transformative effect on my neighborhood.. even for the big kids.

This article first appeared on quora.com in May 2019.

I explore a lot of controversial attitudes in my novels. You should check them out.