Maroon 5 has recently released their new song “Animals” which is played approximately every 45 minutes on the Beat 94.5 and Z 95.3. The song is about a man whose extreme passion for his lover turns him into an animal. He discusses the hunter/prey aspect of their relationship, the magnetism of it that keeps drawing him to her even while she searches for a new partner. Is this hot? Sexy? All-consuming passion that is drawn from the depths of our animal being? That certainly seems to be the angle Adam is aiming for. I hope so, because the alternative is downright scary.
Let’s take a look at his lyrics:
“Baby I’m preying on you tonight,
Hunt you down, eat you alive
Just like animals, animals, like animals
Maybe you think that you can hide
I can smell your scent for miles
Just like animals, animals, like animals.”
This is clearly a metaphor for his love for his partner. His lust is animal, it’s wild, it’s natural and intense. Can this be a good thing? Maybe, but it seems a little extreme. Maybe both partners are into such intense passion? If the feeling is mutual, cool. But the next lyrics problematize this, and suggest that the individual Adam is speaking to does not want to be a part of the relationship anymore.
“Yeah you can start over
You can run free
You can find other fish in the sea
You can pretend it’s meant to be
But you can’t stay away from me”
Listening to this part of the song, the feminist in me screams out and alarm bells start ringing. She’s not interested. She is trying to move on, to put him behind her. He is not letting her go. This smacks of abuse, of stalking, of male dominance. Isn’t “preying” on someone simply another way to say stalking them? This hunter/prey metaphor describes all too well the abusive relationship of an ex-boyfriend and stalker.
According to a 2013 study by statistics Canada 173,600 women were victims of violent crime in 2011 alone. And this is only violence that is reported to police. Many women do not report violence for various reasons, including shame, victim-blaming, and fear of repercussions like increasing the violence directed at them. This means that the actual number of abused women may be much higher.
Furthermore, intimate partners such as spouses and dating-partners are the biggest perpetrators of violence against women at 45%. That means that just under half of the violence directed towards women in Canada is caused by their partners, such as their boyfriends. This is horrifying! Is it appropriate, then, to create a song that screams violence directed from an intimate partner?
In a book called “Saving Beauty from the Beast”, by Vicki Crompton and Ellen Zelda Kessner, the authors try to detangle the complicated dynamics of abusive relationships. In one chapter, the authors explain how inappropriate/abusive behaviour by the abuser is often given the justification that the abuser behaves this way “only because I love you” (18). This highlights our society’s flawed acceptance that love can be violent, that love excuses violence, that romance/passion/lust and violence can go hand-in-hand.
If the lyrics weren’t disturbing enough, the video is even worse. He is a blatantly obvious stalker, following a woman down streets, staring into her window, watching her sleep, filling his place with pictures of her different body parts. When he follows her to a club and tries to connect with her at the bar-top, she is clearly not interested and turns him down. Images of him hanging in a butcher’s shop next to flayed pig corpses repeat with images of him making out with the woman while they’re both drenched in blood, then with images of them having rough sex. He looks through the camera into his viewers eyes unblinking, like a hunter.
Sex, romance, etc, are so often portrayed in the media as linked to violence and heightened roles of male dominance and female submission. This is shown in 50 Shades of Grey, in the Outlander series, in Adam’s new song. I would hate for young women to take from these the idea that sex/romance are inherently violent, that the hunter/prey dynamic is natural, healthy, and/or desirable. When young girls watch Adam Levine’s sexy(?) body covered in blood pressed against a woman, when they hear him sing to them of hunting them down and fulfilling their sexual fantasies, I worry they become desensitized to abuse. I worry that Crompton and Kessner will have more interviews with women who excuse abusive behaviour and stalking with the thought “it’s only because he loves me so much”.
Is Adam trying to portray this type of romance as sexy? As desirable? As crazy? He is certainly mixing sex with violence, craziness with romance. I can’t see a purpose to this mixture, this obvious display of problematic mixing. All I can see is Adam making millions off a song about abuse that doesn’t offer a critique or even a discussion of the violence against women it displays.
Feminist in the Maddening Crowd 