For the longest time, "Pinkerton" existed crystallized in its initial form. I heard the album when I was young, and the way I saw it then was the way I always saw it. I didn't realize at the time the benefit of the doubt I was giving the band.
There is another album that spoke to me in a similar manner that emerged from the following decade. That would be Jimmy Eat World's "Futures", which was likewise a dark album that spoke to the pain we feel when we haven't grown the scar tissue to let life's arrows bounce off our chests. Recently, as I was listening to that record and commenting to myself how it should have become the "Pinkerton" of another generation (or still mine, perhaps), the flash cracked in my head. Yes, "Futures" should have been more widely loved and accepted, but becoming a new "Pinkerton" is not the proper ending, because "Pinkerton" is not a proper album.
Society has changed immensely since 1996, and some leeway must be given, I suppose. But it has become clear to me that while I have always thought Rivers Cuomo is a terrible lyricist, "Pinkerton" reveals more than a penchant for bad poetry; it reveals Rivers' questionable attitudes towards women. The word 'misogyny' comes to mind.
Let's examine:
"Tired Of Sex" - The opening gambit to Rivers' confession, what was once seen as Rivers pining for love in a world of casual sex, is actually a song that shows Rivers believing women are disposable. He is indeed asking for the universe to send him love in lieu of sex, but his language reveals something ugly under the surface. He describes his sex life in terms of "making" women. Without love, the verb takes on a god-complex level of ownership regarding the women he was with, whom he respects so much (fictional or not) as to put their name in a song and leave implications for every woman with those names who was in Rivers' well-known social area during that time. Today, we could call that a mild form of slut-shaming.
Beyond that, River's complains "I'm spread so thin/I don't know who I am". With that couplet, Rivers passes the blame for his own existential crisis onto his sexual partners. It isn't his fault he's miserable and lost, it's the fault of all the sex he's having. The women, by extension, have taken so much of him that there isn't enough left for him to analyze and determine his own sense of self. It is the sort of myopic narcissism that can easily escape our attention, because Rivers couches it more than the average writer expressing these attitudes towards women. But it's there.
"Getchoo" - We need to hope this song is a metaphor, because if it isn't, it stands out as one of the most tasteless songs I can remember. Rivers' language is that of a man who commits domestic violence, who then laughs it off and says it was all a mistake. "Sometimes I push too hard/Sometimes you fall and skin your knee", he says. Taken at face value, Rivers is admitting to something deeply disturbing. "You think that I'm some kind of freak/But if you come back to me/Then you would surely see/That I'm just fooling around," he continues. Again, Rivers minimizes a woman's perspective. The 'she' of the song is clearly either scared or put-off by Rivers, but he insists she just needs more time with him, despite her worries. If Rivers wasn't scrawny, this would be pure intimidation.
But it gets worse. "I can't believe/What you've done to me/What I did to them/You've done to me", he finishes. At this point, Rivers is either saying their relationship (which the earlier lines indicates isn't actually a relationship) is mutually violent, or he is saying her rejection is akin to his physical abuse. There is self-loathing, and then there is whatever Rivers is doing on this song, where he makes himself the victim despite painting the picture of him as the only perpetrator.
"Why Bother" - One of the more 'innocent' songs, Rivers confesses his desire to masturbate to the image of the attractive women around him. He has decided rejection hurts too much to try making an actual connection, lest he suffer when it ends, so instead he will live with an idealized version of her in his mind while he pleasures himself. Like in "Tired Of Sex", Rivers is making this declaration public, letting every woman in his orbit know that he is or could be doing that with them in his mind at the time. Uninvited, it is a disturbing onus to put upon a woman.
"Across The Sea" - Even when I was younger, I knew there was something 'off' about this song. Rivers sings "I could never touch you/I think it would be wrong", acknowledging that a relationship between himself and an eighteen year old girl (if she was being honest) would be inappropriate. He then shows no self-control, saying "I wonder how you touch yourself/And curse myself for being across the sea". Despite knowing better, Rivers fantasizes about a barely legal girl touching herself while thinking about him, or listening to his music. His lechery extends to sniffing and licking the envelope her letter came in, where he is giving himself a physical manifestation of this girl to get himself off. Considering the real possibility the girl would exaggerate her age to make herself available to a famous musician, this song carries the potential of being a desire to commit statutory rape.
Rivers continues, "It's all your fault, momma/It's all your fault". Needless to say, blaming a woman is easier for Rivers than blaming himself, yet again. "This business is really lame/I gotta live on an island to find the juice", he then says. Why Rivers feels the need to confess his fetishes is beyond me, but it reveals a truth about the first half of the song. Rivers isn't hung up on the letter he received because he is interested in the girl as a person, it's entirely because she is Japanese. He has reduced her to her physical form, and now admits his fascination is due to his sexual frustrations.
"El Scorcho" - Rivers continues to be possessive. Beginning with "You wont talk, won't look, won't think of me", Rivers rejects her rejection, telling her "I think I'd be good for you/And you'd be good for me". He has written off her judgment, and supplanted it with his own, because he either believes he knows what she wants more than she does, or he doesn't care. He then "went to your room and read your diary". Nothing says love like invading someone's privacy, and then admitting it to the public. Rivers has now violated this woman, admitted to it, and still has the audacity to say she should be with him.
"Pink Triangle" - 1996 was a different time, but that cannot explain everything in this song. Rivers' attention is captured by "a sweet in floral prints", whom he begins to fantasize about. He then discovers "I'm dumb, she's a lesbian". A case of mistaken (sexual) identity is perfectly reasonable, and can make for a good song. There is plenty of comedy or pathos Rivers could mine in that situation. Instead, he gets creepy. First he says "Pink triangle on her sleeve/Let me know the truth". Here, he puts an onus upon the woman to publicly identify her sexuality (whether she wants to or not) so that people like him won't be tempted to leer at and fantasize about women who are not available to him. While the symbol was used by the LGBT community to take it back from bigoted forces, there are chilling undertones to a man in Rivers' situation finding solace in a minority group feeling a need to wear identifying marks. The innocent explanation is that Rivers was completely oblivious to the history of its origin, and bungles what was supposed to be a joke, but even that is not generous. At best, Rivers is ignorant of both history and sexual identity. At worst, he has found sympathy in a fabric branding campaign created by monsters.
But it somehow gets worse. "When I think I've found a good old-fashioned girl/Then she put me in my place/If everyone's a little queer/Can't she be a little straight?," he asks. Rivers is so determined to fulfill his sexual desires he expresses no concern as to the woman's identity. If she is indeed a lesbian, Rivers is implying that she should go against her own identity to give him what he wants. Whether he is asking for something permanent is not made clear, but his position toes close to the line of accepting the belief that underscores conversion therapy. Rivers narcissism yet again refuses to allow him to see a woman as anything but an object for him to conquer. She is not an agent with her own mind, she is not capable of decided she wants no part of him. Even though, in this case she is a lesbian, Rivers believes she can still find it in her to sleep with him, because that's what he views as important.
"Butterfly" - Ending the album with what sounds like a reflective ballad, and an apology, we instead get another song that is beyond questionable. Rivers sounds proud of himself for the line "If I'm a dog, then you're a bitch", which is a bad attempt at wordplay, but the least of the problems with this song. The extended metaphor is one where the object of Rivers' affection is a butterfly, whom he calls "my fairy pet". It once again, even subconsciously, reflects Rivers' attitude wherein he 'owns' whatever woman is in his gaze at that moment. As we have seen before, he refuses to accept a woman's agency over her own person.
That gets truly sinister in the chorus, where he sings "I did what my body told me to/I didn't mean to do you harm/Every time I pin down what I think I want/It slips away." Rivers' attitudes already revealed turn this potential metaphor into a more overt rape fantasy. The connotations of being pinned down and hurt because he did what he body wanted cannot be read as pinning a butterfly on a specimen board. It falls apart when he injects his bodily drives, which the entire album has illustrated constitute sex and nothing else. In that light, pinning a woman down and hurting her are not figurative language that can be written off.
And as if perfunctory, Rivers offers an apology at the end of the song, and the record. But after spending this song cycle degrading women's autonomy, treating them as objects, and pushing himself upon them against their wishes, how can we forgive Rivers? Yes, he does acknowledge the disgusting parts of himself, but the way he sings of them does not sound like a man upset at who he is. If he was truly repentant, he would spend more time examining what it is about himself that causes him to have these attitudes, and asking how he can change himself. Better yet, he wouldn't have dragged this side of his psyche out so bluntly, revealing the depths of his issues to the women he had encountered in his life, thereby given them reason to believe he could have been a threat to them. Rivers' apology sounds more like the 'I'm sorry you're offended' apologies that only pass someone's lips because they got caught.
In the end, Rivers' apology is that he wasn't enough of a man to exhibit any self-control. He writes himself as a debauched man-child, and wants us to forgive him more because he can't help himself than because he realizes what he has thought and done are terrible. The final act of his narcissism is to abdicate his responsibility for the things he is apologizing for. Without taking responsibility, an apology are empty words. And considering the implications of "Butterfly", no apology can suffice.
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As a teenager, I did not hear any of this in "Pinkerton". It was a different time, and those issues weren't talked about the way they are today. I feel shame that I didn't hear those connotations in my twenties either. In fact, it wasn't until recently that I began to understand what I always thought was a bit weird was actually deeply disturbing. For twenty years, I have allowed that message to seep into my brain without understanding what I was exposing myself to. If I am lucky, there is no residual damage done by singing these songs in my head for so long.
So what am I supposed to make of "Pinkerton", now that I have come to see it in this way? Honestly, I have no idea. The record has spent so long being a formative piece of work for me as a music fan that I don't know how I can separate myself from it. On the merits, these songs give me ample reason to divorce myself from ever hearing the record again. These are no attitudes I want to associate myself with, and I don't feel comfortable giving praise to the man who thought it a good idea to put pen to paper and create them. That said, I also know that art does not need to be beautiful to have meaning. Perhaps the answer is to tell myself that Rivers had demons he needed to work out, and use the record as a way of making sure I never allow myself to feel any of the same things. It can be a warning.
What "Pinkerton" can never be considered again is a defining album of my generation. If it is, I weep for what it says about us.
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