Yes Adam Levine, you ARE an animal.

tw - sexual assault and violence against women.

For context, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpgTC9MDx1o

(Sorry if it scared the shit out of you)

It’s been over a year since I wrote about Blurred Lines. Since then, it’s occurred to me that most pop songs are fucked up and a lot of them implicitly trivialise sexual assault, and you can’t write an essay on all of them and still get other shit done. 

Despite my hiatus, I’m going to make a special exception for ‘Animals’ by Maroon 5. ‘Animals’ is really, really bad. Yes, it has a pop beat, and Adam Levine’s garishly high voice still sings things that vaguely rhyme. But it’s certainly not a good enough tune to justify the messages it sends about women. And butchers. Butchers are treated pretty poorly too. Maybe let’s deal with the butchers first.

I’ve never seen the main character of a music video be a butcher before. Adam’s butcher is a psychopath who hangs around the meat by choice, wiping himself in carcass blood, and by nights sits in a study looking at nudes he took without consent of someone he’s never even spoken to.

I feel sad for butchers. I’m sure you’re not all actually like this, in fact I’m going to bank on the fact that you’re people who leave work at the normal hour and go home to a family instead of all the crazy shit Adam Levine the butcher does in his spare time.

Moving on from butchers, the greater problem with the video is probably the bit where it celebrates/normalizes sexual violence and obsessive behaviours against women. The argument we’re probably going to get from the other side here is ‘BUT WAIT, IT’S ART’.

Firstly, it’s not, because it has about the same amount of depth to it as Adam Levine’s other videos, hint, fuck all.

But secondly, even if we take this one at its best, art is most valuable when it's exploring a unique perspective, I reckon. I don't really think we need 'art' exploring the experience of the creepy, over-entitled, obsessive misogynist. I think that's probably not really a voice we need to hear from again right now, and Bret Easton Ellis did a far better job exploring that perspective than Maroon 5 likely ever could.

Furthermore, that voice gets enough air time all over the internet spreading nudes and slut shaming and sharing misogynistic memes all over Reddit and 4Chan. Misogynists own the internet; it’s way fucked. And whilst Adam Levine isn’t responsible for that, he’s propagating the same attitudes; he’s complicit.

Also… I don’t care if Adam’s ‘not like this in real life’. If millions of people are going to watch your video, you have an obligation to construct it in a way that doesn’t entrench horrendous standards of treatment of women and other marginalized groups. I’m sure there’s plenty of other mundane subject matter Levine could explore, considering his last songs have been about payphones and Mick Jagger. There’s nothing worse when artists try to be edgy for the first time in their life and end up using highly problematic tropes just to sell as many records as they can, before they’re washed up. Some things are more important than your profit margin, sir.

So what is so bad about it?

Well first of all, there are a lot of comparisons between women and meat. That’s discomforting, considering carcasses don’t have rights or agency and exist purely to please other people and be consumed. Women are often treated in the same way; as passive objects to be used up, sexually or otherwise, who only have value insofar as their flesh can please others. In fact, it brings to mind that lovely statement by Sheik al-Hilali regarding Sydney’s gang rapes in 2000: ‘If you take uncovered meat and place it outside on the street or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it… whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem’. Oh dear.

Beyond that worrying comparison, Adam Levine the Creep spends the whole video frothing over a woman who came into the butchery one time. He goes into her house while she is sleeping and takes photographs of her sleeping in varying states of undress.

A couple of general rules:

1)   Don’t break into women’s homes, that’s fucked

2)   Don’t take photos of people without consent

3)   Don’t take NUDES of people without consent

4)   Speaking to women is probably a better approach.

Just the fact that Levine plays the antagonist/protagonist means we're invested in his character, and that we’re supposed to feel bad for him when he gets rejected by this dream woman in the club. Um, how about no? She doesn’t like you? Probably because you smell like the blood you rubbed on yourself? Probably because she can sense you’re a psycho?! Also, she doesn't have to supply a reason. If she doesn't want to talk to you, fuck off.

But in this video clip, no doesn’t mean no, because the following scenes are, quite inexplicably, just insane sex scenes.  There are lots of shots of knives, cutting of meat, smearing of blood, and carcasses on hooks, and both people being coated in blood and rubbing the blood all over each other. That would be fine I guess if they sourced the blood from the butchery and no one else needed it, and both of them were keen for the smearing process, but there's really no indication that the nameless lady is keen, in fact quite the opposite.

20% of Australian women have experienced sexual violence in some form since the age of 15; 81% of domestic violence victims do not report it. 12% of women are sexually abused before the age of 15. One in three women will experience partner violence worldwide. In light of those statistics, the video’s evocations of violence and coercive implements, which are meant to provide a simple ‘aesthetic’ to the video, are pretty unnerving. One third of female murder victims are killed by a partner. It’s not an ‘edgy’ video clip; it’s not questioning or demonizing violence against women, it’s trying to sex it up. Plz no.

It is relatively normal in this world for men to get their way through the use and threat of violence, which is exactly what the video portrays. The risk of homicide against women by an intimate partner increases dramatically when sex is denied, when the woman moves away, and/or when the male partner is extremely jealous.

Saying no, withdrawing to her home safely, being gazed at by other men are all things the chick in this video should have has the freedom to do. Because Levine shows sex directly after his rejection, he encourages the view that if you keep trying, you can succeed. Unfortunately, this usually leads to unwanted and persistent harassment with the goal of gradually eroding the other party's consent. 

The taking of nudes is an avenue to controlling jealousy, as it contravenes the bodily autonomy of a woman and takes a vulnerable part of her away, that can subsequently be controlled, enjoyed and distributed by the offender. Levine is a big fan of taking photos of a woman he doesn’t even know without her consent. There are unnerving parallels to ‘revenge porn’ here (sexual images of former partners shared on the internet by disgruntled lovers). Levine normalizes the practice by saying, even if she rejects you, possess her in any way you can, because your pride is far more important than her consent or ownership over her body.

The final offensive thing about the video is pretty stock standard but is shit nonetheless. Levine is hot damn obsessed with this chick after she orders some chicken fillets one time at his workplace. Unless he feels as though they have an unbelievable connection due to a shared love of chicken fillets, he’s basing his obsession purely on her face and body. She’s conventionally attractive – tall, thin and white. Nothing she says or does is important to him, it is only how she appears, how she would be in bed, and how good she would look in his photo lab.

For all intents and purposes, she is no better than the meat he slices up all day. She doesn’t talk, she doesn’t argue, she doesn’t work; her most active role is in a nightclub. She exists for the pleasure and obsession of others, and will passively attend to it when harassed enough to do so. The lyrics emphasise her passivity as just an object ripe for conquest: ‘Baby, I’m preying on you tonight; Hunt you down eat you alive’ – ‘Maybe you think you can hide’, ‘But you can’t stay away from me’.

It's pretty disrespectful and nightmarish to describe women as 'prey' which is trying to 'hide' that is going to be 'hunt down and eat[en] alive'. She's a person, not a deer. Show some respect.

Maroon 5, this thing you made is true scum. Pick up your game.