It’s not the ‘Same Love,’ and that’s okay

There are a number of problems with Briana Cox’s January 30 article, “Controversies of Billboard’s Top 10.” Perhaps I’m just socially conscious to an exasperating degree, an accusation that Cox has leveled at music critics in 2013, but I believe that the writer could benefit from listening more carefully to those who have criticized Macklemore and artists like him (not to mention a fuller understanding of how systematic racism functions and why cultural appropriation is a problem, but I won’t talk about that today).

Cox writes, “I seriously do not understand why [Macklemore’s] very existence seems to fuel people’s righteous indignation, but it does.” Well, I’ll help you! As one of those pesky righteous people, I have a lot of problems with Macklemore’s song “Same Love” (though I definitely cry most of the time when I watch the video, because it’s super cute). When I, and other queer people or people of color or any people, really, say that Macklemore is “a culturally appropriative, straight-privileged, white-privileged toting asshole” (Cox’s amusing, if rude and somewhat dismissive caricature of people who dare to have an issue with our lord and savior Macklemore), it’s honestly not because we’re jealous of his success as an artist, as Cox alleges.

If Cox truly wants to understand our problems with Macklemore, she could read even a few pages of the enormous body of Internet literature on and mainstream press coverage of objections to “Same Love,” but she doesn’t appear to be interested in hearing out those who feel marginalized by the messages of the song. Still, I’ll give it a try. There are plenty of problems with “Same Love,” but I’ll stick to my main issue that Macklemore’s message of assimilation — that queer people are just the same as straight people — is ultimately a harmful effacement of facts. This assimilation myth threatens to erase the long and bloody history of all sorts of systematic, physical and sexual violence against queer people in America. This also excludes and stigmatizes the huge number of queer people who aren’t “the same” as straight people and who have no desire to fit into this mold. Queer people have advantages all their own which have nothing to do with being just like straight people.

The list of my issues with the song goes on and on. There’s Macklemore’s assurances to listeners that he’s straight (wait — I thought it didn’t matter? I thought we were all “the same?” Good to know, though, because I was getting worried, and I’m glad he repeats that’s he’s straight every single time he appears on a talk show). There’s his invocation and reification of stereotypes such as artistic talent and cleanliness to explain why he thought he was gay in third grade. There’s his oversimplified drawing of equivalencies between religion, conservatism, and homophobia. Especially harmful is his conflation of the African-American Civil Rights Movement with the battle over legalizing gay marriage. This is not the place to go in depth with these critiques, but it is undeniably clear to me that “Same Love” provides a host of issues to be discussed which are far more complex than Cox’s understanding of a queer-vs-straight fight.

I certainly appreciate that Macklemore’s song was directed toward the goal of legalizing gay marriage in Minnesota and that he wants to end homophobia in hip hop and the suicides of gay teens and that he has all other sorts of good intentions (also, like I said, I enjoy the song and its beautiful video). I think, however, that it’s worth asking for an ally in pop music who thinks more deeply about the implicit meanings of his songs and about the socio-cultural situations that these songs obscure or fail to unpack. Macklemore’s critics are not upset simply because he is straight and created a wildly popular song about queer rights, as Cox believes. We are, in my opinion, rightfully pointing out places where Macklemore could have improved, in the hopes that this will create positive change in the way in which marginalized members of society are portrayed, and in how these portrayals are reproduced on a massive pop-cultural scale and thus in public consciousness. If we settle for allies who are “good enough” and don’t push for something truly representative and inclusive (and if people like Cox continue to ignore our objections or dismiss them as exasperating, childish, and petty) pop music’s depiction of marginalized members of society is probably not going to get much better.

Consuming and enjoying problematic media is an unavoidable part of life in the modern age. I certainly appreciate the value of evaluating music purely on its artistic merits and I understand the experience of just being unable to stop listening to “Blurred Lines” or much of the other even more blatantly misogynistic music on my iPod (“Shake That” by Eminem and Nate Dog comes to mind). However, what Cox doesn’t seem to realize is that music, like all art, can never be free of politics and of history. Art is not pure, sacred, or cut off from society — rather, it is rooted in a complex web of meaningful gendered, raced, classed, and sexualized contexts. It is our responsibility, therefore, as listeners, to critique artists when they do something offensive, appropriative, exclusive, or wrong. If we don’t perceive these problems ourselves, it is our moral duty to listen when members of oppressed groups say that they feel deeply hurt and wronged by those who wield a great deal of power and influence (along these lines, we should also try to think about why we might not be able to immediately perceive these critiques, and how our own identities and background might have positioned us to understand such issues differently from others).

The one thing that Cox gets right in her article is that Macklemore and other artists with mainstream success are extremely visible and thus have a platform from which they can affect serious change, and, as Cox says, this can certainly be a force for good. Those who say that they want to be allies, like Macklemore, can perpetuate existing oppressive and exclusive systems of discrimination, or they can listen and apologize for their mistakes. We should support and advocate for this process of consciousness-raising and awareness, rather than dismissing critics as too sensitive, exasperating, or divisive. Otherwise, we’re just a part of the problem.