Seeking the Oasis: Amanda Palmer's Comment on Living in Rape Culture

When Amanda Palmer put out her song and video "Oasis," she received a lot of criticism for it.  People thought she was making light of rape, of abortion, and religion. She noted on her own blog, in frustration, that perhaps if she had cried a little and did the song in minor key, slowed it down, and made the whole thing so sad, people would be fine with it, or at least less upset. She's probably right.

I think they were missing the point though. Okay, actually, clearly they were missing the point.

First of all, every song about rape and the consequences that follow will always be tackled in a different way for the very reason that every rape survivor processes what happened to them in a different way.  Because of this, how we express this in art will come in an infinite variety of ways. Even though everyone who has ever heard "Me and a Gun" by Tori Amos understands to the core of their being what this rape was like, not every song about rape will be "Me and a Gun."

As dark and horrible as "Me and a Gun" is, "Oasis" is far more devastating.  Palmer tells the story in such a way that we can clearly infer many things about her protagonist. The girl is still in school, so somewhere between sixth grade and college, though she feels more on the younger side of that.  The girl isn't sophisticated. Her language is simple, as is her sentence structure and phrasing. In the video, Palmer's dress and body language is also indicative of someone rather young.

It's not the youth of the protagonist that is most haunting so much as how she processes the events in her life.  Where many critics believed Palmer to be "making light" of rape and abortion, I believe she does no such thing. Instead, she shows a girl who is surviving being a part of rape culture by finding more reality in music and loving bands than she does in what is happening to her.

The girl divorces herself from what takes place in her body. During the part of the video where the rape is shown, instead of being horrified, the girl looks both bored and disgusted by the man.  She acknowledges that she knows this isn't her fault.  She knows he is in the wrong. In fact, while it is never pointed out, the rapist is almost always present in the rest of the video.  The impact of his actions on her life never leave her, even as she chooses to focus on other things.

What Palmer seems to be saying is that rape culture is such the norm now that people are evolving to survive  it by abstracting the violent acts from how they define themselves.  "Yes, I was raped. Yes, I got pregnant from the rape and had an abortion. Yes, everyone found out about it and talked about me. Yes, I was shamed. But none of this is important. I have better things going on in my life."

Is Palmer saying this switch in priorities is the best response? Not at all.  However, I think she is showing that it is a response that probably millions of people have to sexual assault. They don't get angry. They don't get upset. They don't even really let it accept them emotionally, any more than it has to.  There is an element of shallowness to this, but of course, to many, shallowness is a very keen coping device for living without going insane.

By the end of the song, despite all the horrible moments the girl has gone through, she is joyous, because what was most important to her, getting something from the band she loves and making her best friend jealous about that, has happened. Everything else was just crap she went through in the mean time.

And while I disagree with why people get upset over this video, I do understand it. In fact, I think there is a primal part inside of us that is horrified by the message of this video.  Because even though society gets annoyed with rape victims and wishes most of us would just shut the hell up, society also gets very, very frightened when people don't play their parts. Rape victims are supposed to be devastated.  Of course they are. One of the primary functions of rape is terrorizing people into staying in "their place."

So when we see someone who has been assaulted roll her eyes and just move on with her life, it is unsettling.  It means this method of keeping people oppressed may stop working. Whatever will the rapist do then?