All I Really Want
Whenever I tell people one of my favourite albums in Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, I usually get a response such as “˜that feminazi bitch?’, and it always shits me. JLP is, IMHO, a very insightful album, written from the perspective of a twenty-one-year-old coming of age, discovering the world. You know how it is at that age; you’ve got one steady relationship behind you, plus several disastrous flings and acrimonious break-ups. You’ve held down a steady job, and have been turned down for countless others, as well as had several nightmare positions in minimum wage hell-holes with power-hungry assholes for bosses. You finished school a couple of years ago and are negotiating the path between childhood security and adult security.
It’s one of the most exhilarating, and scary, periods of your life. Jagged Little Pill sums this up with insight and intelligence. I was in my early teens when it was released, and me and all my girlfriends clung to it as a definition of the turmoil we were feeling. She sang with such passion, such connection to a communal turmoil that it’s no wonder pretty much every woman between 13 and 23 bought, borrowed or stole a copy of JLP. To this day, I find myself singing the lyrics of You Learn, even though I haven’t bothered to hunt up the CD for years (I think my sixteen-year-old sister has claimed it for her own). I recommend biting off more then you can chew to anyone, I recommend sticking your foot in your mouth at any time”¦
Of her released singles, Ironic is about how sometimes life does its own thing, which you have no control over. You Learn is about taking everything - the good and the bad - in your stride and learning something from it. Hand in My Pocket is about muddling through life as best you can. Head Over Feet is about the joys of being in an emotionally stable relationship after being fucked over countless times. All I Really Want is seeing the world warily and wanting something more simple, more peaceful.
Her other songs off the album are no less insightful. Perfect is about trying to meet the impossible standards of parents who “˜only want the best for their child’. Forgiven is about reflecting on a Catholic upbringing. Not the Doctor is her informing a lover she is not responsible for his fuck-ups. Overall, it’s a fantastic album, and I can understand why it was so popular. Morissette is a gifted songwriter and it’s a pity her newer, more interpretive stuff didn’t do as well.
But she’s largely remembered for one song off JLP called You Oughta Know. It’s your typical pissed-off-rejected-lover song, a rant about being ditched for an better model and she hopes he rots in hell. We’ve all been there, done that, and in context of the album’s sound - a twenty-one-year-old singing about her Life So Far - it’s only fitting.
But it shouldn’t be remembered as her only song. She shouldn’t be known as the pissed-off feminazi who wants to rake her nails down her ex’s back. Any of her five other singles off the album would have better represented the mood of the album, but no, she’s remembered for the song about the pissed-off ex who wants to rake her nails down her ex’s back.
Could this be because it suits The Patriarchy to have her remembered as the pissed-off feminazi who wants to rake her nails down her ex’s back? God forbid she should be remembered as a brilliant, insightful songwriter who made women feel that someone, somewhere out knew what they were going through wasn’t all in their heads. Because, you know, the last thing we need is for women to realise that other women are feeling lost and insecure, and maybe we should ask a few questions about why that is. Because we may just very well come to the conclusion that The Patriarchy is at fault and We Won’t Take Their Crap Anymore.
And that, apparently, would be very bad.
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10 comments
Wow, that is just so inacurate I don’t know what to say. You are making sweeping generalisations and I don’t think more than one in ten 21 year old women actually fit that description.
Besides, whatever happened to 21 year olds getting a higher education?
By whom is she remembered as such exactly? Society? How do you know? What’s your source?
In my experience (admittedly halfway across the world from you) some people like her music and therefor think favourably of her and some people don’t. That there are more women than men responding to her music is not a grand conspiracy, she sings about things women can relate to ergo she has a larger female audiance. What men or the ‘Patriarchy’ may or may not think about her differs from who is representing the Patriarchy at that moment. I guess in this instant it would have to be the media and the mainstream media at that. The mainstream media is famous for making charikatures of everybody because real people just aren’t that entertaining. I always got the impression that Ms Morrisette was Madonna’s more feminist disciple and now is the main inspiration for the angry young women (not to be confused with the british angry young men) a la Avril Lavigne.
While a very nice thought we all know it isn’t going to be that way. Changing the way a society works takes time. Should we wait? Hell no! But a general feminist uprising isn’t a likely thing to happen at this moment.
I would like to add that this is a criticism of the essay you have written, not a flame or an insult. As you’ve indicated before that grovelers are not your cup of tea I thought you would apreciate the candor of a non-sugercoated comment.
-Maartje
Ouch - generalize much ya think?
I’m not sure I see more than (Ha. More than, he says, and it’s sad when you have to discriminate between ‘larger conspiracy’ and ‘normal bad socialization by people’) anti-feminist generalization here, and I can’t find anything on a horribly cursory google search that would create a larger societal impression (although she’s clearly feminist as I read her site, and a lot of sites seem to peg her as a feminist/feminist-friendly artist), but I did wanna say that I remember Hand in my Pocket and Ironic (who _doesn’t_ remember Ironic? The amount of jokes made that it wasn’t actually irony, for one, smashed it into ones’ braincase) but I clearly didn’t own the CD.
That said, if ‘You Oughta Know’ is all it takes to be a feminazi, it’s way too easy. Most musicians do _something_ in that vein at least once. Part of me wonders if it’s not some sort of mistaken identity (entirely possible to mix up various 90s female singers if you don’t know them) or pure assumption (mostly acoustic/lyric-focused ‘chick’ singers tend to be associated with feminism) as opposed to a misrepresentation of her actual work, twisted with the stupid feminazi word. She does seem to have a rep for angry feminist stuff, on my continued search, but where exactly that camre from… ya got me. Or maybe she did something more loud recently. I dunno.
Also, anyone who thinks that music from 10+ years ago clearly represents exactly what a person is at this moment is crazy. *chuckle* Anyway.
-Mecha
Scarlett commited two cardinal sins of journalism, which is 1) to always clarify and 2) not generalise.
So to clarify my generisations; my opinions were based on my own experiences, plus those of my closest friends. Maybe we’re an odd group and not really representative of society as a whole, but we had plenty of bad relationships and shitty jobs by the time we were twenty-one.
And among the ppl I know, Morissette is known as the feminiazi who wants to scratch her nails down her exes back. It’s all I’ve ever heard - maybe I don’t google enough - and it shitted me enough to write this article, unclear and generalised though it may be :p
Thanks for clarifying. It sounds like your region regards Morisette a little differently than some other regions - which is something you can’t know until you post on the internet and hear otherwise.
I also didn’t have the same 21st year you and your mates had, which might explain why the only Morisette song I ever liked was “You Oughtta Know”. The reason I liked it was not that it’s so pissy; it was that it’s among the best of the pissy scorned lover genre. And “rejected for someone better” is something that most of us feel at some point - men included.
Now, it sounds like in your region, and possibly others, she’s regarded as a feminazi bitch and that’s the only song people know. I can tell similar stories about how far people in the South will go to paint a woman in a bad light. Fortunately, here in L.A., there’s more controversy over whether Morisette is a brilliant singer/songwriter or just a fad. I don’t hear people reading too much into her in a, shall we say, political light?
And by the way, she doesn’t want to rake her nails down his back - she wants him to feel it when she rakes them down someone else’s back (presumably during hot sex).
Its an album about overwhelming feelings, freequently feelings somewhat new to the character in the song. And sure, one of those songs is about anger (well, ok, several are about anger), pain and rejection. Why wouldn’t there be? I’ve never heard her called a feminazi, but in a world that can coin that term at all, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised if she has been.
wELL i HAVE… almost exclusively… it’s what shitted me to write the article…
Then I guess I’m not surprised.
I’m not sure it’s widespread, but as I said above, it could be regional. I remember in the ’80’s, the state of Texas banned the song “Union of the Snake” because they thought it was about devil worship. That idea probably wouldn’t have ever crossed the mind of someone from outside the southeast.
I don’t think it’s so much regional and the people I know :p I have an odd group of friends who are either leftie feminists or conservatove men. Hey, at least I never run out of people and incidents to discuss among them :p
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