In 1962, the Crystals released a song titled "He Hit Me (And it Felt Like a Kiss)." The poignant lyrics of one of America’s most famous "girl groups" at that time, included the lines, “If he didn’t care for me, I could have never made him mad. But he hit me and I was glad.”
Deborah Finding, from the gender institute at the London School of Economics, recited these lyrics in an emotionless voice before continuing, "It sounds all the more bone-chilling in light of what we’ve learned about their producer Phil Spector. Not just about the murder of Lana Clarkson, but also his treatment of Ronnie Bennett of the Ronnettes back then. She was his wife at the time. In her autobiography, she claimed that he kept a gold coffin with a glass lid in the basement of their mansion and threatened to kill her if she left him."
Finding, who recently completed her Ph.D. thesis, "Give Me Myself Again – Sexual Violence Narratives in Popular Music," states that she took the title’s first part from a song by Tori Amos. Finding describes Amos as the "patron saint of sexual violence" who wrote a song about her experience with rape.
Finding interviewed Amos’ fans and conducted online surveys into how they responded to her music. She was more than pleased to report, "I expected 50 or so responses to my questions, but I received over 2000. Some 98% of the respondents said that they used her music as a means of emotional support."
Finding asked how many of them felt that Amos’ music related to their own experiences. Her response was, "Enough to support the statistic that one in four women has suffered from sexual violence." Shannon Lambert, a victim who was raped at the age of fifteen, created Pandora’s Aquarium, an online web forum named after another Amos song, to assist fellow victims. Finding explains that, "hearing someone singing about a similar experience helped her to open up."
Finding declares that a great number of women are afraid to come forward for fear they would not be believed. "It’s very difficult to tell your story of what’s happened to you if it doesn’t conform to what people expect. She’s critical of TV dramas that perpetuate the myth that most assaults and rapes are carried out by unknown men lurking in dark alleys."
Finding’s parents were disco owners. "The wardrobes at home were always cluttered with singles,” she says. She has over 2,000 CDs at her west London home and added, "I have always tuned into the lyrics; this is very valuable to me."
Working on proects associated with abused women and for various non-governmental organizations, Finding hopes her studies will advance the overall understanding of how sexual and domestic violence are portrayed in culture, affecting the way people think of these issues personally and politically.
Finding notes that around the end of the 80s and early 90s, domestic violence emerged as a social problem as well as an individual issue. "Thus, there were quite a few songs reflecting feminist consciousness about things happening behind closed doors."
Several iconic songs emerged such as Tracy Chapman’s "Behind the Wall" describing a woman’s screams as the police arrive late; Suzanne Vega’s “My Name is Luka” laments "I’ve walked into the door again; if you ask, that’s what I’ll say" and the Beautiful South’s “Cry Freedom” for the Woman in the Wall who "has no voice at all."
Finding also notes the works of female artists like Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crowe who wrote songs about exploiting young women or the gray areas of sexual exploitation. As to men artists, she says, "That’s been discussed elsewhere and it worries me that these discussions typically involve a racist element. Black artists are condemned, while white bands like the Rolling Stones and the Stranglers get away with deep-seated unpleasant lyrics. I have been analyzing the way women narrate their experiences of sexual violence and how they imagine other women’s experiences."
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