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Tag: Bono

Finding a place for anger

Bono may well have struck the wrong note with his recent comments on a lack of musical outlets for male anger.

But a conversation on what to do about male rage is long overdue.

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, U2’s frontman Bono discussed why he and his son are hopeful for a “rock and roll revolution”. The singer then elaborated, “I think music has gotten very girly. And there are some good things about that, but hip-hop is the only place for young male anger at the moment — and that’s not good.”

First, let’s address the “girly” comment. Not only is this dismissive and sexist, the Courier-Mail’s music writer Daniel Johnson confirmed for me that it’s laughably out of touch; “Some of the most sonically vital and thematically important music from the past year has come from female singer-songwriters. Might I suggest Bono have a listen to Marie DeVita of Brisbane band Waax baring her soul on Wild & Weak … or perhaps Melbourne band Camp Cope’s latest single The Opener, on which Georgia Maq unleashes on men in the music industry espousing exactly this sort of misogyny: ‘It’s another straight cis man who knows more about this than me/It’s another man telling us we’re missing a frequency.’ ”

And even the most fury-fuelled male artists have expressed a desire to explore the full gamut of human emotions throughout their musical careers; Bono himself once crooned about love as being the Sweetest Thing.

Social media predictably quickly blew up with those wanting to slam the music industry’s favourite punching bag (ever since Apple automatically downloaded U2’s Songs of Innocence to everyone’s iTune library without permission — a freebie that rapper Tyler the Creator tweeted felt like “waking up with a pimple or … herpes …” — it seems Bono can do no right. Even his support of causes including Poverty Is Sexist, was overshadowed when Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year Awards awarded him a gong him for it — “Now little girls will know they can grow up to be Bono” tweeted the cynics.

It’s easy to forget that U2’s early work was marked less by media mishaps, and more by raw emotion; their debut album Boy explored the often chaotic and painful transition from childhood to manhood. “When I was 16”, Bono told Rolling Stone, “I had a lot of anger in me. You need to find a place for it …”

And it is this point that is not only valid, but vital to discuss. For if there is no safe place for boys and men to put their red-hot feelings, where do these go?

Dr Andrew Smiler, a therapist and author who specialises in masculinity, believes that although sport and the arts can provide a valuable outlet, “These don’t work for everyone, they may not work over the long term, and they may not be enough in the case of more intense feelings such as rage. At that level, it’s not unusual to see violence. That violence can either turn outwards and manifest in the type of news stories that almost always have at their centre a man who is very angry and can’t find other ways to express the depth of his emotion or cope with the cause of those feelings, or inward (suicide can also be considered a form of violence, except the target is the self instead of another).”

If we are serious about curbing male violence, both the type that is directed towards others and the self-destructive variety, we need to start the urgent work of educating men on how to identify their emotions; studies show that we spend much less time talking to boys about their feelings than we do girls. We need to increase their emotional vocabulary (is what they are feeling really anger, or is it perhaps loneliness, fear or shame?), teach them how to manage triggers for their rage, and encourage them to see the value in seeking support when things feel overwhelming.

We also need to explicitly show boys how to move beyond versions of masculinity that would have them dismiss the expression of some emotions as feminine (and therefore undesirable). The fact that many of us would still be more confronted by the sight of a man crying than by seeing him kick a wall in anger or frustration shows there is still an urgent need for more open conversations around what defines both strength and vulnerability.

In our work on deconstructing gender stereotypes in schools, we find that boys don’t want to be angry young men, nor do they want to be told that blokes must be stiff upper-lipped and simply “man up” when overwhelmed. They are ready and willing to sing a new song.

This post was originally published in the Daily Telegraph, and online at RendezView: 27/1/18

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