Monday, October 23, 2006

 

hell hath no fury...

I love a newly popular song by that wholesome American Idol songstress, Carrie Underwood. It's called "Before He Cheats," and basically...she goes ballistic. Her boyfriend cheats on her, so she goes and wrecks his car. The video can be seen on youtube here.

She sings ... "I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up four-wheel drive, carved my name into his leather seats. I took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights, slashed a hole in all four tires" and concludes with "maybe next time he'll think before he cheats."

Pardon and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think every girl has a bit of crazy in her. A guy does something reprehensible, and you want some justice. Some way to hurt back. As Gabrielle exclaimed helplessly last night on "Desperate Housewives," "How can I hit you so hard that you won't recover?!"

Luckily, we all have that little thing in us that keeps us from crossing the line. It might be a sense of right and wrong, or it may just be pride. Or it might be a healthy fear of the law - whenever I see or hear "Before He Cheats," I'm tempted to yell (or you know, I do yell), "Stop! You're going to get arrested!!"

Whatever it is that dams the recklessness, it's a good thing. So, knowing that we remain in control, it's always great to witness a fictional account of a woman taking back her broken heart.

Another great example of scorned woman getting revenge is "Kerosene" by Miranda Lambert - she catches her boyfriend cheating on her, so she blows up his house. Obviously.

After giving this some thought, and going in a direction I entirely didn't expect when I set out writing this...I'm seeing people like Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, and Kelly Clarkson (Since You Been Gone) as modern-day Wonder Women, avengers of girls everywhere. Whether or not it's true, they portray that a) attractive girls get cheated on, and b) jerks pay for their mistakes.

Let's be absolutely clear here. You can't wreck someone's car, you can't burn down a house, you can't go to an apartment and thoroughly wreck it. Those are the actions of an unbalanced person. But Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert, and Kelly Clarkson can, and you can sing your heart out as they do it. Not bad.

Comments:
But admit it... you still think that it would feel great to smash out his headlights w/ a baseball bat... I can only imagine how much fun that video must have been to make!
 
oh, definitely. But I'm more afraid of legal ramifications than I want to get back at a cheater.

(also, knowing me, I'd hurt myself...)
 
It's posts like these that only perpetuate the "oh, she's just another chemically imbalanced woman" stereotype. I'm gonna go hide now, just as soon as I finish diggin the bunker in my back yard.
 
I disagree JC, which I think was your point... but anyway.

I think it's not about chemical imbalance: it's about basic instinct. He hurt you, you want to hurt him. And since it's obvious that his house/car/whatever means more to him than you did, you hit it where it's going to hurt him the most.

However, I'm in Meg's camp. I might want to do those things from time to time... but I never would. It wouldn't be worth it.
 
What is fiction, if not the place where we can express (or live vicariously through someone else's expression of) the desires that we repress in order to function as normal members of society?

Good analysis of a complex phenomenon...I agree completely. :)
 
Jc: whoops! I definitely didn't mean to give females a free pass b/c of hormones - I'm sure guys also have that anger/I wanna hurt someone feeling when they're scorned. Except they generally chase it away via fast women and drink...not destruction of property.

tc: thanks for clarifying my position! you hit the nail on the head!

m: yes, yes *nods introspectively*
 
Haha, you got me, TC. There are crazy PEOPLE, not specifically one sex or another. Girls tend to express it outwardly, or at least express their thoughts as such. Guys on the other hand tend to internalize it, and play up the sympathy card (so we can, in turn, sucker in more unsuspecting females into feeling bad for us). It's a vicious cycle. I vote that we just go back to the caveman days where emotions were expressed with a club hewn from the nearest tree branch...life would be a lot easier.
 
LMAO

It's only a vicious cycle JC, because both men and women allow it to be. Guess we'll all have to work on that.
 
i am in no way promoting infidelity or any kind of general good will for adulterers, but what happens when carrie underwood's cheating boyfriend calls the cops for her for vandalism of private property?

is ruben studdard going to release a song called "before she schitzes out and takes it too far when really all she needed to do was put colon blow in his coffee"?
 
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