From Cubist Castle 02.06.09: Amy In The White Coat

Posted by Jon Kinsey on 02.06.2009

This week, I expand on one of my recent Top 5 picks and take a look at the Bright Eyes Song "Amy In The White Coat"

Salutations once again and welcome to From Cubist Castle. I've been under the weather for a lot of this week, so today's column is shorter than normal. Anyone breathing a sigh of relief can go and stand in the corridor!

Something that has rapidly become a weekly highlight for me in my short time here is Tuesday's Top 5. It's a great way for the music zone writers to get together and shoot the breeze and is always a great trigger for debate. From a writer's perspective, it let's you empty your cupboard on a particular topic without having to dream up an entire column's worth of material. You may only have a couple of sentences to say about something, but that is all that you are expected to say, so all is well.

This week is a little different though. Something has been playing on my mind almost from the moment I sent my submission off on Monday afternoon. For once, I don't think I said enough. My number 1 song about a girl was "Amy In The White Coat" by Bright Eyes and I added what I thought at the time was a pretty hefty comment. In fact, this is what I said: -

This song is definitely about a girl, but it differs markedly from the rest of my selections, inasmuch as it isn't a love song. In fact, this is precisely the opposite. This is, lyrically, one of the most unflinching and ultimately disturbing songs I have ever heard as it deals openly and directly with a father's sexual abuse of his children. Amy, the protagonist, has been violated to the point where she has now become completely dehumanized. She is unable to function in the real world, which she treats with cold detachment, knowing what awaits her when she returns home from school. Ordinarily, this sort of song would be sung entirely through the eyes of the girl, but Conor Oberst's masterstroke is that he deviates from type and, half way through, shifts narrative perspective to the father. Sometimes, the only way to draw attention to monsters is to paint the world through their eyes and this is what Oberst does so admirably in this song.

The problem is, it really doesn't touch the surface of what the song means. For somebody reading that excerpt with no prior knowledge, it doesn't really tell them anything. Yes, it says that Conor Oberst has done a masterful job of creating a monster, but it didn't tell you how. It has been bugging me all week that I dismissed one of the most thought provoking songs I've ever heard with such little care and I'm now going to redress the balance and say a little bit more about it.

The primary reason that I find this song so arresting is because of the detachment with which it treats its subject matter. The song is narrated by a third person, who serves as a sort of omnipresent observer, almost a voyeur, peering through the window with impassive eyes. The narrative tone of the song doesn't make any judgment or express any emotion whatsoever about the heinous acts being perpetrated. In fact, it is as if the conduct that forms its subject matter is an everyday occurrence.

The first verse starts with the mundane:

You take your clothes off right after school
The tea is on, the flame is blue
And you hope it won't take all afternoon
Your TV's waiting to talk to you

At this early point, this song could be about a great many things. There is a mundanity of routine here, arriving home and taking off your school clothes, waiting to watch the TV. You get the impression that whatever needs to be done is unpleasant as there is a definite desire for it to end quickly, but the immediate resonance of the lyric is that it is something boring, rather than something sinister. The next segment shatters that illusion:

It's your naked body on white velour
But there's no feeling, just weight on you
You get nauseous now as he speaks to you
Such proper language for acts so cruel

Suddenly, you are starkly aware that something is desperately amiss here. Even though there has been no explanation of who is doing what to whom, because of the information given in the earlier part of the verse, most will have already surmised that this is someone grossly abusing a position of trust. Amy has retreated into her mind and blanked out what is happening, locking the thoughts and feelings away, a classic psychological defense mechanism for people who have been subjected to horrifying experiences. Oberst, in the last line of the excerpt, outlines the magnitude of the betrayal in such a way that the listener is allowed to come to their own conclusion. Nothing is force fed in this song.

The middle section is where the narrative thread shifts, with the narrator relaying the abuser's words, rather than reflecting upon Amy's predicament:

He says "We all follow the rules
We can't very well go and break them now, can we
For you?

For the perpetrator, he defines his conduct almost as an obligation rather than a desire. It is as if he is saying "don't take this personally, this is just something that I have to do". This callous comment is the first indication of the mindset of the villain of the piece – he has disassociated himself from blame by justifying his actions as an unavoidable course of conduct.

The next line is the most openly harrowing of the whole song and is evidence of Oberst's ability to make so many multiple points in seven words:

Your older sisters, I've had them too

I can remember exactly what I was doing when I heard this song for the first time. I was sitting on a bus, making my way to court. As we pulled up to the stop, this was the line that was playing. I began to well up. This one simple sentence manages to convey the scale of the treachery, the magnitude of the darkness within that house. It both elevates the story away from Amy, painting the depravity in a wider context and also makes us feel even greater sorrow for her predicament. Finally, it demonstrates just how warped and twisted the man of this piece is. He is not ashamed of his past conduct. In fact, it is quite the opposite. He is proud of the way he has violated his children, bragging about his past victims to his present.

It is during this passage that we finally establish that the male character is Amy's father, when, in the middle of sexual congress, he begins to talk about her mother. He goes on to compare them:

You look like your mother, in that thin disguise
Your parting mouth, your shutting eyes
And the way that you hate me, and the length of your hair

I am particularly fond of the juxtaposition of stark emotion and mundane physical description in the final line. With this line, Oberst appears to paint the father as having some sort of fractured mental state, his thoughts darting between one thing and another. This is another small detail that is slipped in to paint a better portrait of the abuser.

The final part of the song is told once again from the perspective of the narrator, who gains personification towards the end of the lyric.

With the sunbeams bright
You keep your eyes shut
Your alarm clock lies
Get to school on time
Where you're a bag of warm fluid
Where you're the corpse in the class

Once again, Oberst reels off Amy's daily routine grounding the verse in a reality with which we are all familiar, emphasizing that the occurrences in that house are as normal and mundane to those involved as getting up and going to work is for you and I. It is clear to the narrator that the constant savagery that Amy endures at home has dehumanized her. She is no longer able to function in society because she is too scarred mentally to open herself up. The line "You're a bag of warm fluid really hammers the point home. She is no longer a person; she is simply flesh and blood, a receptacle for her father's advances and nothing else.

Despite the necessarily bleak tone of the track as a whole, the ending is curious, inasmuch as it can be interpreted as a sign of optimism.

I saw you walking once under powder blue skies
You looked cold still, your color was high
And I tried to talk to you, but you walked right by
I don't know which I said then, hello or goodbye

I know it doesn't seem particularly upbeat, but when I listen to the song I can't help but feel that it is ending on a positive note somehow. Maybe it's a combination of the lyrical ambiguity, coupled with Of course, I could just be mis-reading it.

By being prepared to be unflinching and by refusing to pull his punches, Oberst has crafted a brilliant song that deals sensitively and emotionally with a subject often deemed taboo by the world at large. Within the running time of the song, he has managed to construct painfully believable characters, through the careful structuring of his lyrics and gives the song a unique mood by almost whispering the lyrics. He has stripped a difficult issue bare and, in doing so, has drawn attention to one of society's hidden atrocities. Perhaps more artists need to step out on a limb and do similar.

There ya go folks. I'm off to bed so behave yourselves and I'll see you in seven.