Hederonormaativity in Chapel Roan | Criticism

I don’t think we realize how much independent thoughts collide together to form our opinions. Out there in the world you’re always taking in information, and some of it sticks. Some of it doesn’t. Some of it becomes fundamental to how you exist in the world, even if you’d wanted it to.

So this is a piece, primarily, about an issue I have with the extremely popular song “Good Luck, Babe” by Chapel Roan. But I feel like this is one of those rare instances where I can’t just explain what the issue is, there’s too much of my own baggage and the things I’ve carried wrapped up in it. So instead, I’m going to take you on a little journey as to the things I’ve read and thought that brought me to this conclusion, and you can see what you think from there.

Step One: You already are something. There’s this story I remember from when I was a kid. It was probably apocryphal, and it might even be a bit wrote by this age. I remember the illustrations in this kind of Harry the Horrible style, but I can’t remember if it was a Harry the Horrible book or not, I think it was from a textbook. I would have maybe been in Grade 5.

In this story, wherever it was from, there’s a bunch of kids getting ready to go out on Halloween, and they all kind of vaguely look like the Charlie Brown gang: mostly white but with a few visual minorities present. And there’s one kid who is clearly supposed to be the star of the story, he’s dressed like a cowboy. And he looks at the girl next to him, compliments her on her princess costume. Then to a boy next to her, great astronaut, lovely. But then he turns to the child of African-decent next to that boy, and that kid is dressed up like Superman. And the lead kid says: “Why would you dress up as anything, Thomas? You already are something.”

In case I fumbled the telling of it or it’s being missed, what’s being said here is: in this group, being white is normal, and on Halloween we dress up abnormally. But Thomas already was abnormal, so why dress up?

This story, whenever it was presented (and it’s likely a bit dated, forgive me) is presenting the young reader (young me) with an early example of othering but also an early example of white heteronormativity. You can laugh at the story, at the main character, and say ha, what an ignorant child, but how did Thomas feel, I wonder? How will he feel every day now… do people treat me like I’m wearing a costume? There’s a lot of layers to this simple interaction, and it’s meant for children’s consumption, but there’s also a lot there about what we assume the default is.

Step Two: Bi-Erasure. Over the past few years through my work with Engen Books and the broader local community, I’ve been working more and more with my local 2SLGBTQIA+ community. One thing I’ve noticed time and again and have developed a radar for is the subject of bi-erasure. I find bi-erasure to be an interesting segment of 2SLGBTQIA+ discrimination because it’s an issue that stems from both sides of the aisle. Bisexuals are erased from both sides. They’re erased by straight partners who view the same-sex fling you had in college as “experimentation that didn’t count.” They’re erased by same-sex life-partners who view your life as “having started” when you came out and choose to ignore the history of opposite-sex couples that came before you.

People like their little boxes and fitting people into them, and they don’t like that bi-sexuals don’t. Compare this with the thought process from Step One, the same, but different: you’re going our to a 2SLGBTQIA+ event and your straight friends look at you and sneer “why are you doing that? You’re straight.” Then you get there, only to get the same from your queer allies there: “why are you here? You’re straight.” Again, not the same as Step One, but cousins. Assumption of identity, questioning of what that identity means.

There is an invisible string connecting these thoughts in my mind, and if I had to name that string, it would be called “don’t treat people like this.”

 Three: Sigmund Freud. Sweet lord, it always comes back to this idiot, doesn’t it?

So Freud has this great statement about dreams that gets co-opted by other disciplines a lot, and shockingly, I really like it. And equally shocking, it’s not the Oedipal / Elektral dynamic. No, in this case it’s a simple statement Freud made about deciphering the meaning of dreams.

He said: “Think back on your dream. Whatever bothered you most about it, that is what the dream was really about. Everything else is there only in relation to that one key thing that upset you the most.”

And that is a fun statement. It’s fun to think of dreams that way. When I have dreams where I’m stressed (a common one being stuck on a highway with no exists) I know the dream is about the stress, that I’m having that dream because of a stress I need to process.

You can see why that sort of loose statement of absolute truth that cannot possibly be correct loves to be adopted by other disciplines, right? In Anthropology, it’s: what bothers you about the new culture you’re examining, and then using that knowledge of yourself in your analysis, framing everything around that key point.

In Literary Analysis, you treat the book like a dream and you ask yourself what bothered you most about the book. You then assume the writer did that on purpose, that it wasn’t a mistake, that they’re trying to tell you something by bothering you in this way, and you go hunting for evidence of that. What could they have been trying to say? Is there more evidence in the text that they were trying to communicate this to me?

As a general rule if something bothers me about a text but when I do my Freudian Analysis I can find a reason for it’s being there I’ll like it, and if I can’t find it, I’ll assume the writer was just off their rocker.

Step Four: Good Luck, Babe.

Combining all that together, what bothers me about Chapel Roan’s single “Good Luck, Babe”? A few of you might have already guessed it considering the preceding examples, but there’s a line in the bridge that goes like this:

“When you wake up next to him in the middle of the night, with your head in your hands, you’re nothing more than his wife.”

That, to me, is a massive example of bi-erasure happening here. But also, strangely, of heteronormativity. Just like in the early example when the child asks the bot of African decent “why would you dress up for Halloween? You already are something,” Roan here is making the same argument from the other side. The jilted lover she’s singing to could have been something, but has instead chosen not to be. She’s chosen to be the default, the norm: nothing.

So this is harmful on two levels, right? Its harmful in that it encourages us to think of being in a hetero-normative relationship as the default, the “nothing,” but it’s also a massive example of bi-erasure happening. Roan is saying here “you could have been with me in Column B, but instead you’ve chosen to be with him in Column A.” But it’s clear that there’s a third option… right? Her ex could be, and likely is given the circumstances, bisexual. But Roan treats this as a binary choice, one or the other, with me or with him, and in doing so viciously undermines her former partner’s identity while claiming to want her back.

It's quite a song, it’s on my driving playlist, but man I expect more from my icons.