Here’s another song that starts a discussion. The lyrics are abstract, about feelings whose cause is never specified in the song.
In one way, that could make it a song about anything traumatic. People who it hasn’t happened to can’t relate to the people it has happened to. Even though they want to help, they don’t know how, and some things they do to try to help make it worse.
In another way, not naming the cause of the feeling is part of the feeling. People who have been emotionally traumatized by something often don’t like to think about what it was. If you relate to the feelings in the song, you know it’s about you. If you can feel the song, you can listen to it over, and you can connect with other people who listen to it over and over. And you probably don’t want to be reminded of the cause of your trauma ever time.
Lady Gaga makes elaborate videos for her songs. This video makes the song specifically about sexual assault on college campuses.
There are different ways it can happen. What they all have in common is that they start by the perpetrators isolating their victims. No one can rape a woman while her friends are defending her effectively.
Sexual assault cases remain unsolved, and the trauma endures, because the trauma continues to isolate the survivors. At first they were cut off from their friends physically, and now they’re cut off from their friends emotionally.
The video isn’t about the rapists. It’s about the survivors. It ends with them feeling better because they have friends on their side again.
Remember: Rapists win by isolating their victims. They’re defeated when their intended victims aren’t isolated, and when survivors don’t stay isolated.
