#I have the demo lovers tattooed for gods sake

[switch-bladefights]

i would like to hear your i'm not okay epiphany pls

ok so this might be 'ok Jamie but we knew that' BUT (long post incoming oops)

TL;DR: revenge uses its concept as a metaphor for the wider emo scene at the time and is a microcosm of the 'us v. them' environment perpetuated in the budding emo subculture and 'not okay' sums that up and THAT'S why its on the album

disclaimer too omg no way do I wholly agree with the things I'm writing here its just arguments I've been making in my diss

I've been analysing revenge for my dissertation under the lens of the presentation of women in emo spaces in the early to mid 00s and when I started looking at revenge I was like wow ok there is not great rep here for women, and until recently I've kinda not really got why I'm Not Okay is on there bc at first glance it doesn't appear to fit the concept at all

ANYWAY so the album can be viewed as two halves separated by interlude, with the first half having a tendency to villainise women, especially the female demolition lover character (which granted, seems counterproductive as the male character wishes to be reunited with her). Gerard uses a lot of violent imagery (throughout bullets and revenge) because that's very much the concept and what he does but when I put on my academic hat and start saying things I don't necessarily agree with so I can get marks, you can make a case for a lot of it being in reference to women: "I wanna see what your insides look like/ I bet you're not fucking pretty on the inside", "like the blade you stain", "got nasty blisters from the money she spends" "she even poked the holes so I can breathe" etc etc. This paints the woman as almost and 'eve' like character, making the man 'Adam'.

blah blah blah there is now a comparison of the demolition lovers to Adam and Eve, who obviously were tempted by Satan to eat the apple thus calling the fall of man from Paradise. However, it was Eve who ate the apple first, thus laying the foundations for hatred towards women like, forever. It is also Satan who makes the deal with the man in the concept (although now I'm realising maybe this makes him more like an Eve cos he was tempted and its some Gerard gender fuckery...... I'll have to think about that). So anyway it can be read as having some woman-blaming metaphors and imagery in the first half of the album, not that this was AT ALL uncommon in the scene as we all know MCR is one of the better bands for misogyny

so continuing on 'Interlude' acts as a turning point at the midpoint of the album and is a prayer in and of itself: "saints protect her now/ come angels of the lord/ come angels of unknown". it marks a turn towards an uptake in Christian religious imagery in the second half of the album.

the biggest religious image that is conveyed in the second half of the album is that of the fall, obviously most closely with the fall of Lucifer (shoutout to good omens for helping me remember all this religious stuff) yada yada as the focus shifts the woman turns from an Eve to a spectre as Gerard also uses way more references to memory. She's no longer a villain but a prize for completing his quest immortalised in his memory, a dream almost. She almost vanishes from the narrative as we focus on the fall of some guy.

The final line of Revenge is "they gave us two shots to the back of the head and we're all dead now". This sums up the us v. them attitude and puts two positions before the listener: you either take the shot or you go down with your friends ("we're all" implying company, it's not "I'm dead now"), with the implication that it's better to go down fighting than be the person who kills. This mirrors a theme that Judith May Fathallah picks up on her book 'Emo' called "beta-male misogyny", whereby emo boys think they deserve the girls because they're somehow better than jocks- likely that they view themselves as more sensitive and therefore more worthy of love (and sex). Here too are the two parties doing the shooting and being shot.

SO Revenge mirrors the emo subculture of the early 00s, with us v. them rhetoric with emo boys positioning themselves as better than jocks, where the emo boy is the demolition lover and the jock is the thousand evil men in his way. As the emo boy ever does irl, the demolition lover fails and the jock wins again (maybe the jock is also satan idk). Oh yeah and the woman from the album and the girls irl are marginalised and made into trophies for the men.

AND I'm Not Okay summarises this. It's the ultimate us v. them song, It's I'M not okay v. YOU wear me out. The video is a classic high school battle of the geek v the jock with that final image of them squaring up (although yes I know the whole video is like well everyones not okay but whatever this whole post is a reach). It's there because it's a summary of the album, it IS the album stripped of the concept. No frills, just Revenge.

Anyways that's my piece and I know it's a stretch but what is a masters degree if not a year long stretch