Emo Music The Great Deceit Opinion Essay
Emo: The Great Deceit
Argumentative Essay
Up on stage, a skinny white boy dressed with thick rimmed glasses, a striped tee shirt from the 80’s, a pair of torn jeans and black converse sneakers strums his guitar and sings out
“You filthy whore
Shut up and swallow my pride for me
move closer and drive further
suck on the end of this dick that cum lead”.
The boy is the lead singer of a band called Glassjaw whose musical focus is the genre of Emo, (emotional type of alternative punk music). This boy, hidden by his exterior look, sings the same message as his thuggish black rapping counterpart. The question is why doesn’t society comment on his language and blatant disregard for women? Emo has some how escaped the feminist persecution. Because male Emo artists demean women from a passive position in which the males are seen as the weak partner in a relationship as opposed to the dominant position prominent in rap music, Emo has succeeded in fooling its audience and not allowing them to realize that the genre has still reduced women to sexual muses and heartbreakers through its lyrics and imagery.
The Emo genre shares its roots with many other musical genres of today. Its emotional roots come from the 80’s from bands like the Cure, and the Smiths. After nearly twenty years of developing, Emo has become a major genre in today’s musical society. The genre is based on capturing man’s emotional pain and putting it into lyrics; hence the title of Emo meaning emotional. The most prevalent type of pain in Emo is the pain of failed relationships between these male singers and the women in their lives. The artists present themselves from a passive position to display the pain women cause. “She’s the blade and I’m just paper” a lyric from the band Sugarcult, shows the emotion that the men place in their lyrics. The woman is the one that cuts him up; the woman is the one who is causing the problems. All Emo bands use the theme of pain cause by females to inspire their lyrics. A band that exemplifies the portrayal of men as the victim in the game of love is Taking Back Sunday....