Paula Irmschler on Raye’s “Click Clack Symphony”, the Shirin David documentary & current debates about violence against women.
No no no! This time I’m not writing anything about male violence in my column!
… I would say if I didn’t do it. Oh, if only you were a male author for whom the safety of women is just one topic of many that he can dip into here and there – and the next time he writes something about computers or something like that (what are men interested in again?) because he can separate the sexual violence thing from himself so well and outsource it to other men and let the justice system classify what he thinks is morally right.
Not alone
In any case, I want to write about the fact that we – who have been dealing with just one topic for the past week – don’t have to do all of this alone.
You heard about the specific new case; you read the research about it in “Spiegel”. The debate is about sexual violence – on the internet and in real life. The perpetrators are often close by, sometimes they are strangers. You are male.
How much you know about the specific case obviously depends on how much time you have to deal with it. Perhaps most importantly, first of all, to watch this report by Collien Fernandes as early as 2024 has led.
Since the “Spiegel” article appeared, people have been seen sitting alone in front of their cell phones even more often: some watch content, others create it. Affected, angry, determined, cynical, laconic, sad faces with statements, accusations, hopes, classifications, hot takes and so on. We know that. It’s the latest feminist campaign after countless ones before it, the latest hope that men will finally stop with their shit, and the collective reflections on how this could finally happen. Another prominent case, another monstrosity – online, offline – I don’t have to list anything else here or repeat anything. You hear about it, you were there, some of our mothers were there and our grandmothers were too.
The Shirin David documentary and the promise of hyper-individualism
There was a second, much-discussed topic in the German-speaking pop culture discussion landscape: the Shirin David documentary on Netflix. Most reviewers agreed that it wasn’t good – the reasons: too inauthentic, too staged, it doesn’t come off well, it comes off too well, there’s no real plot, the storyline was blown out of proportion. Shirin David is apparently not a fan of the result either: she neither advertised the thing nor is there a real trailer.
I find the documentary exciting because it shows something we can no longer lie to each other about: It’s not good to be alone. The prevailing hyper-individualism and the promise that we can all make it to the top is rarely shown as clearly as a dead end as it is here. Shirin David wants to present himself, wants to be a superstar, is labeled as a perfectionist by himself and others – but what perfection is at stake remains unsaid. It’s about being a perfect product, it’s about the promise of happiness behind wealth and fame and how to best personify it. Anyone who tries this has no time, no friends, no real happiness, but has to be absorbed in this wealth and fame. But there is nothing about it that is truly fulfilling. Because you can only ever do it alone.
The fact that it is “lonely at the top” is not a new finding. But the extent to which today’s superstars and their fans and observers suppress the fact that this could be the real problem seems new – possibly because everyone is isolated anyway. That’s perhaps why all these documentaries are now always about “mental health” as a character trait of the respective superstar. He wants to show his human side so that he is more relatable and we can continue to believe that we could be in his place. We just have to try, with the help of therapy if necessary. The problem is not the music industry, not the beauty standards, the hustle culture and the constant judgment from the public – it’s just that you can’t deal with it well. That’s how it’s told. Must. after. above. And. then. there. alone. be.
But there is something more than being poor alone or being rich alone. We don’t have to sit alone in our homes in front of our cell phones. Or backstage. Or in the break room. We can all come together and make sure we ALL get what we need. We do this together – then no one has to be perfect and constantly optimize themselves.
We know – and we don’t have to wait
We don’t have to wait for the help of men who have been telling us and showing us what they are like for ages (on the street, at the regulars’ table, through porn categories, on dating apps, through the employment contracts they offer and in their art)…
Yes, we know.
For this reason: LEAVE THIS HOUSE!
Like Raye says. This column is basically mostly inspired by her new song.
Raye’s “Click Clack Symphony”: Hope as an attitude
“Click Clack Symphony.” Send it to all your friends!
You never want to say “Read the room” to Raye because you want her to continue to do exactly what no one is doing right now – namely, in this case: spreading hope (that’s what her album, which will be released on Friday, will be called: “This Music May Contain Hope”).
“She’s empowered by the sound of us marching,” she sings, and rarely has the term “empowerment” been more appropriate than in this song. A window has really opened for me that I had been holding tightly together for several months – out of sheer desperation. Now I want to dance out, march with my friends like Raye, or storm Versailles like the then so-called “fishwives” or at least stop work, go on strike, demonstrate. The main thing is to finally take what belongs to us.
I don’t care anymore whether the men are there. “Decenter men”, as many people are demanding right now – for me that means: I no longer want to know what’s wrong with them, what’s bothering them, what makes them horny and why they become violent towards women. And whether “the laws” will be changed isn’t something I’m particularly concerned about either. While I understand and share the calls for recognition and consequences, the call for justice cannot be the primary focus. Because we don’t prevent anything and often only appear to achieve justice. And because the way people are punished and imprisoned is part of patriarchal capitalism. The lawyer, abolitionist, author and YouTuber Olayemi “Olay” Olurin better explains this (legal) focus of feminism, which is called “carceral feminism” in the US (coined by the sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein) – and she also refers to some cases involving well-known personalities.
Better: We rely on each other, we determine together what justice means, we work towards a world in which problems are not simply locked away, in which the focus is on the victims and, in the best case, most violence no longer occurs. And while they shout “vigilante,” we say: self-determination. Or, to put it with Raye: “Who let the girls out? I did, I did, darling”.
What happened so far? Here is an overview of all the pop column texts.
