Benji and Gender Roles

[Jirin]

I was listening to Benji for probably the 30th time on Christmas, but the first time when my mother was in the car. And this somehow made me pay attention to the fact that this album has both a love song for his mother and one for his father.

It also made me notice the difference between the songs and the difference between the way he loves his mother and the way he loves his father. The song about his mother conveys an imminent emotional reflex. I couldn't live without my mother, you'd better not say a bad word about her. My mother will probably die soon and when she does a big part of me will die with her. The song about his father is more descriptive. It recalls specific things his father did in his childhood. He tells a story about how his father taught him not to be racist, how his father taught him the value of patience. He has a verse where he says his father isn't perfect. His father hit him a few times, but he says he kind of deserved it and he's long over it.

If you criticize his father, he'll defend him calmly. If you criticize his mother, he'll deck you.

This got me thinking about the difference in the way we unconsciously perceive gender. A woman is unconsciously loved passionately and protectively and a man is unconsciously loved pragmatically. I found myself having a lot of the same feelings toward my own parents. This difference in the way we love our parents is then applied to our relationships with other men and women whether we like it or not. Like we're hardwired to relate to women emotionally and men pragmatically. Benji is a very rawly personal album about a man's basic emotions and childhood experiences, and because it's so personal and unfiltered, when you analyze it, it reveals a lot about the basic emotional instincts hardwired into men.