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C2V
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20 Jul 2016, 11:15 am


For any Simon and Garfunkel fans out there, this is a female cover of their beautiful song "Scarborough Fair / Canticle."
For anyone not familiar, the lyrics originally run "Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine."
The original is sung by two men. But every female cover I find, the "she" has been changed to "he."
It's a subtle thing, but it makes me wonder about the more subtle forms of homophobia that are completely acceptable.
Because what is the reason to change that pronoun?
A cover is never reflective of the person covering it, since it is someone else's material, so you couldn't even argue that this person is singing about her own experience and she happens to love men. If you're covering a song you're covering the original song - why change that specific lyric and nothing else?
It seems to me that it is changed because the singer is female, and doesn't want to sound gay. That it would be somehow wrong for a female singer to cover the original song as is, "she" and all, without automatically changing it to "he" even if the person covering it is heterosexual.
There also seems to be a fine line between being "over sensitive" about things like this and making something of nothing, and actually legitimately catching out the subtler forms of homophobia that slide under the radar but are still reinforcing the idea that being gay is somehow wrong.
Anyone found any examples like this of the subtle stuff? How do you decide if it is legitimately reinforcing negative beliefs, or you're just being over sensitive?


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AnaHitori
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20 Jul 2016, 12:57 pm

I don't consider it homophobic, but I certainly prefer it when they don't change the pronouns.


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Cyreides
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27 Jul 2016, 5:59 pm

C2V wrote:
A cover is never reflective of the person covering it

Wat

I think it absolutely can be. It originally being someone else's material is irrelevant. People like to add their own spin on things, and adjusting things to fit better with current artist/group covering a song falls into that imo. I also agree with the above post, I don't think it's homophobic at all.



BirdInFlight
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27 Jul 2016, 6:06 pm

Nothing wrong with tailoring something to one's own expression even if someone else wrote it. I think this is a lot more on the harmless side than homophobic. One could equally well argue that by expecting this woman to sing "she" then that is heterophobic because she's not being allowed to express the song with her tailored preference.



Laelyn17
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20 Aug 2016, 10:25 pm

Sometimes people change pronouns if they're thinking about someone they really really like but I suppose it could also be homophobia.



Alexanderplatz
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20 Aug 2016, 10:59 pm

I've heard this done for my whole life and it has probably been done for centuries. Can't see anything in this to point towards fear of homosexualists.



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20 Aug 2016, 11:07 pm

if that is implicit homophobia, it still pales next to when my doctor boss [at a hospital i used to work in], who was old enough to know better, asked me if i was a "pitcher or catcher." :|



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20 Aug 2016, 11:11 pm

C2V wrote:
It's a subtle thing, but it makes me wonder about the more subtle forms of homophobia that are completely acceptable.
Because what is the reason to change that pronoun?
A cover is never reflective of the person covering it, since it is someone else's material, so you couldn't even argue that this person is singing about her own experience and she happens to love men. If you're covering a song you're covering the original song - why change that specific lyric and nothing else?
It seems to me that it is changed because the singer is female, and doesn't want to sound gay. That it would be somehow wrong for a female singer to cover the original song as is, "she" and all, without automatically changing it to "he" even if the person covering it is heterosexual.
There also seems to be a fine line between being "over sensitive" about things like this and making something of nothing, and actually legitimately catching out the subtler forms of homophobia that slide under the radar but are still reinforcing the idea that being gay is somehow wrong.
Anyone found any examples like this of the subtle stuff? How do you decide if it is legitimately reinforcing negative beliefs, or you're just being over sensitive?


No, just no. When someone covers a song, they make it there own, and they relate it to their own experience. Your idea otherwise is ridiculous. She changes it to he not because she is homophobic and afraid of being seen as gay, but because she is not gay, and thus doesn't think of a women when she thinks about the themes in the song.


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Alexanderplatz
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21 Aug 2016, 12:25 am

Now, if we were talking acceptable encoded homo and tg promotion in popular music, that might be a long thread.



auntblabby
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21 Aug 2016, 12:33 am

seems this squeamishness is more common on this side of the pond.



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21 Aug 2016, 1:25 am

I wouldn't assume it's homophobic....I can see what you're saying and I see it as a possibility. But I also think it's possible that the cover artists are just changing the pronoun automatically without any intention to avoid sounding gay (people often just adhere to social norms without thinking about it....so, if homophobia is involved, it would be indirectly involved at a societal level in the form of pervasive heteronormativity affecting whether or not homosexual relationships even factor into people's thoughts about relationships, rather than directly at an individual level where the artists are intentionally/consciously trying to avoid sounding gay); Or that the artists are changing the pronoun simply because they want to place themselves in the song and sing from their perspective -- and they just happen to be straight.

auntblabby wrote:
if that is implicit homophobia, it still pales next to when my doctor boss [at a hospital i used to work in], who was old enough to know better, asked me if i was a "pitcher or catcher." :|


I don't get it.....

Is that some obtuse way of asking "are you gay?" (derived from the whole thing about what team you play for...?) or is it a question about sexual positions/roles?


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auntblabby
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21 Aug 2016, 1:32 am

animalcrackers wrote:
I don't get it.....Is that some obtuse way of asking "are you gay?" (derived from the whole thing about what team you play for...?) or is it a question about sexual positions/roles?


IOW it was a roundabout way of telling me he thought I was gay, by asking the loaded question of whether I was the top or bottom.



luan78zao
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21 Aug 2016, 1:49 am

As an aside, it used to be common in folk music for a male to sing a song with a female protagonist, and vice versa. When the same songs were redone in pop/country/rock versions, the genders were usually switched to match the performer. I don't think this is so much homophobia as evidence of a different ethos in folk music as opposed to more popular genres, but others may disagree.


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animalcrackers
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21 Aug 2016, 2:08 am

auntblabby wrote:
IOW it was a roundabout way of telling me he thought I was gay, by asking the loaded question of whether I was the top or bottom.


Oh, okay....that gives me a different mental film than I had imagined originally....I can see the offensiveness of it, instead of just imagining someone asking a wildly inappropriate question in a more innocent way.


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AnaHitori
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21 Aug 2016, 8:00 pm

animalcrackers wrote:
the artists are changing the pronoun simply because they want to place themselves in the song and sing from their perspective -- and they just happen to be straight.


Exactly.

Sometimes I sing songs sung by girls about guys, and I change the pronouns because I'm gay and I like it better that way. It's not me being heterophobic. I think it works the same both ways.


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