Michelle Shocked

Michelle Shocked is an American alternative folk singer/songwriter from Dallas, Texas. Her 1988 debut album, Short Sharp Shocked, featured a cover photo taken by Chris Hardy, for the San Francisco Examiner in 1984. Shocked had been protesting during the Democratic National Convention.

Folk singers are nearly universally earnest, and they do this kind of thing and never imagine someone would pick them apart, or joke about it. Shocked is clearly being Choked; her tongue is out. But is there nothing disingenuous about her expression? Am I a bad person for thinking that?

This is the double-bind. Artists will sometimes do this, as a sideways method of avoiding criticism. I’m not saying that’s what Shocked does, but I’m telling you it does exist. Don’t claim I’m making light of her suffering; she’s the one who put it on the cover. Obviously she got better.

The cop throttling Shocked doesn’t even appear to be exerting. I’m a pretty good lip reader, and I can tell he’s saying “erg berg berg”, which is cop-talk for “this girl be crazy”. She has a megaphone. Her Mormon mom once had her institutionalized for drug abuse. She went through a “punk rock” phase. This is exactly the way these things pan out.

The design is also a little rushed, as the cop appears to be groaning out the singer’s name, in nauseated magenta letters. The cop on the right with the zip-ties doesn’t even notice. For all we know she went nuts and started hurting people, before she was finally subdued. It’s all context. For example, remember this photo from the Vietnam war?

That’s actually the chief of police executing a prisoner. After the fall of Saigon, this Vietnamese hero went on to open a pizzeria in Burke, Virginia. It went about as well as you’d think.

To appearances, the photo (by Eddie Adams) shows the emotionless killing of a weeping man. It’s so affecting that you might think it’s too intense to casually show you.

Is it?

Is it relevant to the music? Really?

I don’t know that  Thích Quảng Đức burned himself alive in public to endorse rap-metal. Imagine the will it must have taken to sit still as flames consume your body. That’s not a metaphor for anything you experienced as a teenager. It’s a horror of war you have to be ready to learn about.

Michelle Shocked took her name from the condition “shell shock”, as she explained to Green Left Weekly in 1992;

“The term ‘Miss shell shocked’ is a direct reference to the thousand-yard stare, which was a term that they first used to describe the victims of shell-shock in World War I. These people from outward appearances had survived the war quite well when in fact inside their minds were blown. I first used that name in 1984 at the Democratic Convention in San Francisco where I was arrested for protesting and demonstrating against corporations who contribute money to both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party campaigns.“

That’s the kind of thing you come up with to sound tough. In jail, my cellmate had a thousand-yard stare, and when I told him so, he had no idea what the fuck I was talking about.

In a 2008 interview with the Dallas Voice, a gay newspaper, Shocked said that she would be “honored” to be called an “honorary lesbian” but added:

“There are some inconvenient truths that I’m now a born again, sanctified, saved-in-the-blood Christian. So much of what’s said and done in the name of that Christianity is appalling. According to my Bible, which I didn’t write, homosexuality is immoral. But homosexuality is no more or less a sin than fornication. And I’m a fornicator with a capital F.”

While performing at the Wild Goose Festival in June 2011, a Christian event at which the inclusion of gay Christians was debated, Shocked responded to an audience member’s question about homosexuality by saying, “Who drafted me as a gay icon? You are looking at the world’s greatest homophobe. Ask God what he thinks.” [Wikipedia]

On March 17, 2013, Shocked made an impromptu speech against same-sex marriage during a concert at Yoshi’s nightclub in San Francisco, which led some audience members to leave in protest and the club’s management to end the show. All venues eventually canceled scheduled performances of her “Roadworks Tour” in response to reports of Shocked’s remarks. In a March 20, 2013, email to the news media, Shocked apologized, saying that her comments had been misinterpreted, and that she was not describing her own opinions about homosexuality, but rather those of some Christians. An audio recording of the performance was reported as contradicting Shocked’s post-performance explanation. [Wikipedia]

On April 1, 2013, Shocked appeared on CNN’s Piers Morgan Live to clarify her remarks. Morgan asked Shocked three times whether she was in fact “homophobic.” Eventually, Shocked stated, “If you want to keep this simple for the audience, let me just give you a straight no, I’m not homophobic. But the truth, I don’t think, lies in the simplicity. It’s in the nuance, and that’s been completely lost in this…” She said that the meaning behind her prior comments was misinterpreted. [Wikipedia]

I could not tell you a single Michelle Shocked song. I have never heard her sing or play a note. Something about her has always seemed disingenuous to me.