Miscellanea: Sweet Pain.
Deafening, kabuki-painted, and strategically outrageous, Kiss have been rocking and rolling, in various incarnations, both in and out of make-up, through multiple personnel changes, riding waves of success, irrelevance, and further success, since 1973. And despite the fact that they are both pushing seventy, founding members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons show little interest in retirement. Since the band’s ethos of rock and roll all night and party everyday has remained essentially unchanged over the last forty-five years (that is, on stage; the band members all having long since settled down to lives of domestic bliss—the point being that they have never redacted or disavowed their previous material as socially unacceptable) they provide a consistent gauge by which we can measure changes in culture and politics over the same period, specifically, sexual politics.
Kiss have always presented themselves as inexhaustible sexual gladiators, mowing their way through armies of quivering groupies, manifest in such lyrical classics as Come On and Love Me: I’m a man; I’m no baby/and you’re lookin’ every inch a lady/you’re good lookin’ and you’re lookin’ like you should be good; Hotter than Hell: She looked good/she looked hotter than hell/all dressed in satins and lace/I looked at her and it was just too clear/I had to get on the case; Ladies in Waiting: So you been to the market/and the meat looks good tonight/and the ladies in waiting/ will show you what it’s all about; Calling Doctor Love: You need my love baby, oh so bad/you’re not the only one I’ve ever had/and if I say I wanna set you free/don’t you know you’ll be in misery. And who could forget, Sweet Pain:
My leathers fit tight around me; my whip is always beside me. You want the same thing everyday; I’ll teach you love a different way.
You’ll learn to love me, and my sweet pain! My love will drive you insane.
And pain has got its reason; and if you don’t stop your teasin’ baby, I’m gonna show you now; you’ll get to love it anyhow, anyhow, and
You’ll learn to love me, and my sweet pain! My love will drive you insane.
Progressively-minded critics of the 1970’s characterised this type of lyric with the (now almost quaint-sounding) term male chauvinist. Today’s cultural arbiters employ several more acerbic and far more ethically charged qualifiers: toxic, misogynist, patriarchal, hetero-normative, rape-apologist, et alia. I believe it is no exaggeration to say that over the past four decades, male sexuality has been put to trial, and found culpable of great (albeit nebulous) wrongdoing. Today’s rock stars may yet warble about screwing and partying, but Kiss’ style of unabashed, bombastic, hyper-masculine, hyper-sexualised Cock-Rock has largely disappeared. And whereas the tenor of today’s lyrics, at least from the male perspective, are variations on the theme of how may I serve you, milady, the overriding message in Kiss’ lyrics is we’re ROCK-STARS, babies! Get down on your knees and lick our seven-inch boot heels!
I am not fussed over this type of lyrical content, or the historical milieu in which it flourished, which simply points out unremarkable truths about human biology: that men desire as many young and attractive sexual partners as is practicable, that men’s access to sexual partners scales with status, and that women are attracted to dominant, high-status men. Being, at their height, wealthy, famous, high-status rock stars, up to their eyeballs in nubile and disposable young nymphs, if would have been puzzling if Kiss sang of anything else. I believe these observations make sense from an evolutionary perspective, but as a soon-to-be extinct cultural dinosaur, my opinion is irrelevant.
We seem to have abandoned Kiss’ fashion of overt, hyper-masculine sexuality in favour of enlightened male cuck-ification, which is fine. Let us grant our current betters their argument; rather than typifying the healthy sexual appetite of the average young man, Kiss’ lyrics are emblematic of the oppression, sexism, misogyny, and toxic masculinity that have bedevilled Western Civilisation for centuries. The question arises; what now? What will our re-educated men sing about once our progressive physicians’ leeches have drained them of their toxicity? Notwithstanding the old injunction about correlation and causation, there does seem to be an inverse correlation between progressive sexual enlightenment and fertility.
I am beginning to suspect that the machine of civilisation is not well configured to survive its own liberalisation. As sexual enlightenment proceeds, marriage and birth rates recede. Which facts make me wonder whence will come the new generations required to continue the march of progress. Maybe we should not have been so eager to tear down our chauvinistic mores along with all of our other historical baggage; they may actually have been of some use. It is also not altogether clear, despite endless hash-tag lip service paid to gender-woke ideals, whether or not our sisters are quite finished with a more domineering type of masculinity (at least if Erika Leonard’s literary career is any indication). Could we, perhaps, do with a little medicinal injection of that sweet pain?