Why I Wish I Hadn't Used Up All My "Skips"

I was listening to Pandora, and my station is fairly complex by now - sort of like my crazy iPod - so I get a lot of weird songs that I end up "thumbs downing".

Tonight, a particular song came on called "I Can't Own Her" by XTC. I thought, now that's a good concept for a song! I could really like this song. So I looked up the lyrics.

I was utterly disappointed as I read the words along with the song. A song with a title like that has the opportunity to be a really great song about how women aren't property and all that, but this song did the complete opposite.

The persona uses "own" to show his material possessions, and he appears to be a pretty well-off individual.

I own this river, I own this town
All of its climbers and its wino's sliding down
But I can't own her and I never will

So far so good, right? But then that last line that finishes off the phrase group:

No I can't own her and that's a bitter pill

I got a little uncomfortable at that point. It might be something I could have overlooked, but I decided to think about what exactly the persona is saying.

He's saying "Look at all these things I have! I own a lot of cool, material things!" And then he's saying that he "can't own her", which is right, because he can't. Women are human beings, not property, not material things, not a river or a town, but people. There are societies around the world and throughout history in which women actually are/were property of men, and it's something we have had to fight against, and still do. [See this recent post at SocioImages for, well basically everything I just said.] No, persona of that song, you can not own a woman.

But what else is he saying? He's saying "I want to own her". He's not saying he can't from some feminist or humanist stand-point; it seems like he might be, until we see that fourth line. It's "a bitter pill", meaning something that gives him grief, that he can't own her.

Later in the song, it might seem like he's redeeming himself by saying:

And when I say I can't own her
I don't mean to buy her
It's nothing at all to do with money
I simply want her in my arms forever more.
Is that an odd request?
Is that something so funny?

But I don't think that's really redemption for him at all. He says, of course, that he doesn't mean "own" in a master-possession sort of relationship, which means we should give him a break, right? Wrong. That's the power of words. There are words for what he wants to do, or hopefully wants to do, with this woman - he could love her, he could marry her, he could be her devoted partner or friend, he could even keep her in a cage in his basement [but that's a very, very serious issue that is not so related to this post] - but he chooses "own", a word infused with political and personal tension.

He never says "love" in this song, or any word related to it. He says words of ownership like "want" and "own" and "have" and "thing". So even though he assures us this has "nothing at all to do with money", his fantasy of ownership and dominance shines through, and that's probably why the girl isn't interested in the first place.

Thumbs down.