Au fil des bleus : chanter les violences faites aux femmes

Abstract

Feminisation of popular music since the 2000s has been accompanied by a significant increase in the number of songs addressing the theme of violence against women, particularly since #MeToo. This paper analyses a selection of songs that tackle this issue in a French-language corpus made up of artists of varying fame and different stylistic and sociolinguistic backgrounds. It explores the writing, musical and interpretive techniques used in songs, as well as the gender of their performers and creators. These questions revealed two recurring facts: the presence of the body, and the presence of bruises (or bleus in French, which also literally means blue). The centrality of bodies, increasingly studied in contemporary feminist writings, is also found in songs, particularly those describing the violence to which women’s bodies can be subjected. The colour blue is very often used in these songs to refer to the marks of violence left on skin. Damage to the body is more frequently sung than other types of violence, particularly psychological violence, that is more difficult to embody. Singing about battered bodies and souls takes song away from its entertainment function to make it more political and arouse empathy or anger. These songs can be interpreted as testimonies and are also signs of a shift – more space being given in the public discourse to the expression of women’s bodies and anger – a shift that songs fully contribute to.

Keywords

• violence
• song
• French language
• women
• blue/bruise