this would make an awesome blues song. Something Bessie Smith would sing with her usual defiance and strengths.

So, I struggle with this song, in the sense that I like Florence & the Machine and I push skip everytime this song comes on.

Jezebel was talking about these sort of songs recently here: http://jezebel.com/5411983/the-cyclical-nature-of-songs-about-sexual-violence

Here's Florence's explanation from their myspace page:

Quote from Florence and the Machine's myspace page:
"Kiss with a fist is NOT a song about domestic violence.
it is about two people pushing each other to phsycological extremes because they love each other.
the song is not about one person being attacked, or any actual physical violence, there are no victims in this song.
sometimes the love two people have for each other is a destructive force. but they cant have it any other way,
because its what holds them together, they enjoy the drama and pushing each others buttons.
the only way to express these extreme emotions is with extreme imagery, all of which is fantasism and nothing in the song is based on reality.

leona lewis's bleeding love isn't actually about her bleeding.
this isnt really about punching someone in the face. thank you and goodnight."

and i don't want to restrict folks' visions, but despite artistic messages, i hate when a literal reading of something comes across so, as you said, trivializing of an issue so serious as DV that, considering its prevalance (1 in 4 women & 1 in 4 LGBT folks), finds its perpetrators abetted by the supersaturation of images of violence within relationships ....

I should have also said that I thought the video was doing well as representing the viewpoint Florence suggested in her myspace page until she started faux punching that dude in the face. The paper/streamery stuff definitely went along with the violence-as-metaphor stance, but not actual punches.

Another recent example is Chester French's video for "She Loves Everybody."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLIWLEJzqYc

I doubt this video would have ever seen the light of day if the genders of the people in it had been reversed.

Nike used the song in their commercial around here (Netherlands) when they had this men v. women challenge thing going on. I actually sent in a complaint letter about that, since I really don't think we need to be relating men and women competing to domestic violence. Never did get any reply though.

First. "Better then none"? Someone needs a spelling lesson.

Second. Sure it's about domestic violence! Are they claiming that because it doesn't fit the traditional abuser/victim scenario but instead has two abusers, two victims, and twice the blood that it somehow gets exempt? DV absolutely goes both ways and sometimes both at once. The retaliation of one party doesn't exempt the other from guilt.

I can see that it's a metaphor for a turbulent relationship, does it condone and trivialise domestic violence? I don't know.
From the quote in Dave's comment, it's NOT about dom violence, yet it uses it as an analogy. I think that once a song, or painting, or any type of creation has been put out for public consumption, the creator lose some control over it. So to the writer of this song, it is not about physical violence, and was not intended to be, however, imo all she can do is explain what she intended when she wrote the song, she cannot stop people from interpreting it differently.
I was watching Leonard Cohen's (?) 'Hallelujah' on youtube, and there was a huge debate raging in the comments over wether the song was about religion, or whether it was about sex, using religious imagery. People will come to their own conclusions.

As for the song itself, I don't think it's a great song, I'm not a fan of the band though. I think the lyrics aren't great (domestic violence aside) and the theme is that 'passionate' nonsense, about destructive love and teenage angsty drama crap, which I don't have time for. Why would a couple push each other to pyschological extremes if they loved each other?

I don't think the song necessarily trivialises domestic violence. I guess it could be argued that it kind of sexifies it, like if you both hit each other, it's okay cos you're equally violent, and it can be excused as passion, cos you'll have great make up sex anyway. Maybe it's me but I find it a little bit juvenile.

The "Paparazzi" video uses glamorous images of dead women to criticize the infamous tabloid photos of Britney Spears and other troubled female stars. It's true that the satire itself reproduces the problem, and that many of the video's viewers won't even recognize it as satire. But the intended message about the ghastly schadenfreude of fame culture is a decent one.

Another good example is Pink's video for "Please Don't Leave Me" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eocCPDxKq1o
It definitely trivilizes violence...and it's really gross.

This advertisement [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV2-7ActHXw&feature=player_embedded] (which I saw air last summer) does something similar by setting up the audience to expect a domestic violence awareness message...and then delivering a cleaning product commercial. It trivializes domestic violence by implicitly equating it with a silly injury, but also naturalizes domestic violence as something normal for women by linking it to domestic labor, which is seen in our culture as a normal, even natural, part of a woman's life.

Florence & The Machine's songs are all very... metaphorical.
One song seems to be about insanity (drums beating inside someone's head, and in the end they drown themselves) in Drumming Song, and another, I think, is depicting people (maybe slaves?) running from men on horses in Dog Days.
So it's really silly to take this song as pure face value.

I actually kind of liked the videos. I "read" them as problematizing the privileged position of (hetero)romantic love as a mode of social organization - a heritage of the last century that HAS structured and informed violence. Not just "domestic" violence, but systematic sexism and heterosexism as well.

I also liked Anon's comment three posts up. Its nice to see masculinity being complicated and restructured (given that many male abuse victims aren't taken seriously and even silence themselves because victimization is seen as failure to preform masculinity), although I am a little anxious about its potential to be read through a postfeminist frame...

This all said, maybe a lot of people have different readings of these videos than I did. At least, it seems that way by the comments

I just heard this song a few days a go for the first time and I was immediately torn. I'm in love with the tune, but can't stand the lyrics! So I just listen to it while acknowledging how problematic it is. However, I don't think this makes the song really acceptable. There are many people who will just absorb the messages without thinking twice! (Ahh, now I feel bad for listening to it!)

Florence herself has all but apologised for this song: she said it was metaphorical (the couple we all know who argue constantly and love each other for it), but that the implications hadn't ever entered her head (she also wrote it at 16).

To me (as a fan of hers) this song is extremely problematic, but I find it interesting that apparantly *nobody* higher up thought it worth mentioning to her. It was released as a single because they nagged her for ages about making a marketable song until she gave them this, so I wonder if they would have if she'd had another waiting in the wings? (Her other music is noticeably different to this song.) I refuse to believe *nobody* noticed.

Great post and blog! Check out Lauren Luke’s tutorial on how to achieve the Leona Lewis look right here .... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2SeyCOHXRU

:)

I'm surprised no one brought up this lovely chestnut from The Crystals via Carole King - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f20Oz9Yr_So (We're meant to worry about the speaker, rather than relate to her, but it still sounds sick and twisted enough that contemporary stars love covering it).

Better yet, another classic female ballad about dismembering a wayward lover - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr5M4z2kQrQ

Honestly, I think there's something about female artists depicting violence that always makes a lot of people uncomfortable, no matter what the subtext. But I don't think arguments that boil down to "people dumber than me won't get the satire/metaphor" are a very solid basis for problematizing or policing their work.

Especially when the work happens to be pop songs. The funny thing is, most people understand song lyrics as nuanced collections of idioms and metaphors before even know what those terms mean; otherwise, we'd think of a "broken heart" as a medical emergency and take all those "baby, baby" lyrics as endorsements of nepiophilia. We intuitively take just as much meaning - if not more - from the vocalist's tone and phrasing than from the words themselves, even more so when one contradicts the other. We take for granted that virtually every pop song about love is absurdly hyperbolic, seeking some representation of intense emotions with more visceral (often hysterical) metaphors, and thus avoid taking "I can't live without you" as trivializing suicide. More recently, deadpan irony and shock-baiting vulgarity have been absorbed into pop music as much as into TV and film.

In my opinion, this all adds up to a cultural context in which a song like "Kiss With a Fist" can be appropriately read as playful, subversive, or utterly ordinary, and in which the likely audience is heavily primed against interpreting it literally.

For the purposes of this blog, doesn't context count for something?

I'm seeing a lot of people pointing out that the song is metaphorical here and when I heard it I did assume that it was, but it still made me deeply uncomfortable because Florence + the machine are a very popular band and I'm not sure a 12 year old or a 14 year old would necessarily appreciate it as metaphorical. Plus, I find the idea of people walking around singing 'a kiss with a fist is better than none' more than a little problematic.

Digressing slightly, with regards to the song as a metaphor for a pushing-buttons relationship and that kind of relationship in general, I am sick of the promotion of relationships where you fight all the time meaning you have some great passion for each other or something. I know when I was younger I'd read a ton of books and watched a ton of tv shows which seemed to suggest that this was an amazing, sexy way to have a relationship and then when as a teenager I actually got into a relationship like that I found it incredibly stressful and damaging to my mental health and just not nice really. I know some people do like it, but when I was a teenager it felt like I was being told from every direction that this was the best, 'sexiest' kind of relationship to have and it took me ages to work out that it was making me miserable. Maybe I'm the only one who has noticed this, but certainly whenever I read women's magazines I feel like it's jumping out from every other page (solution: never read Glamour).

In these instances, though, the graphic imagery and lyrics are part of an artist's point of view. The songs are written and performed as art, and the videos are an extension of that POV. It seems to me that in both videos, the intent of the artist is not condone domestic and sexual violence or to encourage other people to engage in it, but rather to utilize it as a means of expression and as a metaphor for other aspects of romantic love. Because much art, particularly music, is easily accessed and a part of mass media and common discourse, people seem more ready to condemn it and to wish to censor it. I feel it's important to recognize that the lyrics and the videos that use sexuality and sexual violence are really just extensions of the artist's fantasy and that the images are in no way meant to reflect real life. At what point can we say the artist is being irresponsible rather than purveying their vision in a public context?

Eh, if breaking bones and burning beds is a suitable metaphor for one's turbulent relationship, it might be abusive even if nobody gets hit.

The song's catchy enough and somewhat thought-provoking, but it wants the listener to get caught up in the emotional extremes presented. Absolutely nothing is said about how either domestic violence or "extreme emotions" can make the people in the relationship feel (apart from preferring this sort of love to nothing). It's just not a complex song, although it's a complex subject.

That said, my major complaint is that this video is BORING. I see no evidence of the extreme emotions supposedly involved. The singer tries to look involved, I guess, but even the guy getting hit winds up looking tired. Seriously, either show scenes from the relationship discussed or add some gore to the goofy V-Day flower arrangement. The video is just too cutesy and emotionally flat.

Does anyone get the impression that 'Break the lock if it don’t fit' is about rape? Break the hole (read: girl) if the key (read: normal seduction) does not work.

This reminds me of the hand-wringers who condemned Fight Club when it came out too. The author of the book on which the movie was based defended both of those works by saying those people were the ones who needed their moral lessons framed by big frowny faces sternly wagging their fingers and forbidding taboos. The concluding summary was especially incisive: "You're not supposed to want to be a space monkey [i.e., one of the mindless thralls sucked into the madness and violence]."

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