Women as Agents of Violence
How Women Can Find Agency in Being Violent
For one reason or another, women are not seen as violent beings, so they tend to be curated into victims. In this sense, violence is being gendered, where men are the only people who are capable of being violent and women are people who are completely incapable of being violent. This situation is used in Melanie Martinez’s music video for both of her songs, “Tag, You’re It” and “Milk and Cookies,” which tells a story about a woman who gets kidnapped, but she puts a twist at the end.
Looking at me through your window
Boy, you had your eye out for a little.
“I’ll cut you up and make you dinner.
You’ve reached the end, you are the winner.”
The music video starts with Crybaby, the main female character and narrator (vocalist) of all of Martinez’s music videos thus far, describing a man stalking her from his car, who is thinking about the violent acts he wishes to do with her body. The man that is stalking her is pictured driving an ice cream truck around a residential area with large knives in the front of the truck, which he even holds while holding onto the wheel of the ice cream truck. The music, which is going with this unsettling imagery, uses altered sounds from a recorder and bells. Recorders and bells are associated with small children toys, since they are made for children to be introduced to musical instruments. The lyrics accompanied with the instrumental is meant to represent an innocence, which can be linked to Crybaby’s femininity. Since wolves are typically shown to be natural predators, men are meant to be natural born predators as well. Their prey are the “weak” women, who will eventually become their next helpless victim.
Rolling down your tinted window
Driving next to me real slow, he said
“Let me take you for a joyride
I’ve got some candy for you inside”
The video is using the cliché narrative of the threatening predatory male, tricking their prey into their van with candy. This kind of narrative has been around the 1950’s trying to warn children of stranger danger. From the 1950’s to 2016, there is the constant notion that men are to be seen as the main violent perpetrators. Re-using the same narrative repeatedly makes seem that women cannot be the assaulters, and can be excused for the violence that women do.
Running through the parking lot,
He chased me and he wouldn’t stop!
Tag, you’re it, tag, tag, you’re it…
Grabbed my hand, pushed me down
Took the words right out my mouth,
Tag, you’re it, tag, tag, you’re it…
At the end of the first half of the video, the wolf man poisons Crybaby, and the lyrics are being shouted with fear and anguish until they fade, like the consciousness of Crybaby. She becomes the victim at the climax of the first half of the video because of her supposed weak femininity.
One, two, Melatonin is coming for you
Three, four, baby, won’t you lock the door?
Five, six, I’m done with it
Seven, eight, it’s getting late, so close your eyes, sleep the days
At the beginning of the second half, the music is still evoking a sense of youthful innocence with using sounds that might come out of a toy music box. The melody is using the structure of the sing-song rhyme from Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street. This eerie mix of the innocent sounds and the reference to the classic slasher film is suggesting that Crybaby has something violent in store for her kidnapper.
In the video and as the name of the second song suggests, she is instructed to do the feminine activity of making milk and cookies from scratch. She is being put to do this task because her assaulter/kidnapper has power over her at this point in the video. This character is embodying hyper femininity from the clothes she is wearing (puffy pastel pink dress) to the space she is occupying (the pink room with a kitchen). Crybaby and the Wolf man are representing hyper femininity and masculinity in the video, and how the power dynamics are put into play with a violent male figure and the feminized victim.
“Ashes, ashes, time to go down
Ooh, honey do you want me now?
Can’t take it anymore, need to put you to bed
Sing you a lullaby where you die at the end”
Finally, the tables have turned, and Crybaby responds with violence to ultimately to save herself from the violence the Wolf man has done to her. She uses poison while she is cooking the wolf man’s cookies that seems to be given to her from the woman cashier at the store. She ended the life of the Wolf Man, and now he is not able to do harm anyone anymore.
According to Lucinda Joy Peach, in “Is Violence Male? The Law, Gender, and Violence,” she states, “Given the gendered dichotomy of victimhood and agency in the law’s grammar of violence, the deconstruction [of gender and violence] proposed here would both enhance the legitimacy of women’s use of violence in defense of self and others, and disable the use of violence against women.” If the law were to be reworded where female bodies are seen to be capable of utilizing violence, then women are able to be in roles where they have agency through violence instead of disempowered victims. In the video, although Crybaby is the hyper-feminine young heroine, she is able to gain some form of agency. With this type of representation, hopefully it could change over time where women can be seen as agents of violence, which can be helpful to allow women to be able to protect at all costs.
