Singer Alanis Morissette says ‘children must be taught about the trauma of rape’ as she talks about her musical
AS the most important and successful female music star of the Nineties, Alanis Morissette fearlessly pushed the cultural boundaries at every opportunity.
And as I revealed in this column last week, her highly anticipated musical Jagged Little Pill is about to shatter every Broadway and West End taboo with a #MeToo movement-inspired storyline featuring a harrowing on-stage rape.
Now, in an exclusive interview, the singer-songwriter behind iconic hits such as You Oughta Know, You Learn, Thank U and Uninvited – has spoken for the first time about the very real need for such a provocative scene.
She tells me: “I think healthy sexuality is not something we are taught in schools. Relational functionality is not being taught in homes and schools.
“Pop culture in movies and dance floors presents sex in a very one- dimensional, power-playing way.
“There are many people addicted to sex, traumatised by sexual trauma and experiencing the fallout of that for the rest of their lives.
“It is such a beautifully complex topic and I will only be diving into it more and more.”
While sexual assault would be considered far too commercially risky for most mainstream musical producers, Alanis had no doubts about the need to include the subject matter.
“I didn’t feel nervous at all,” she explains. “I felt apprehension for this part of the story to be told from others, for sure.
“And I let everyone know that I would be there throughout it all, to support, to offer resources, to elucidate if needed, to really back this all up.”
Alanis herself bravely told of her own under-age and seemingly abusive relationship on her 2002 single Hands Clean, which was rumoured to be about her experience with a much older Canadian actor when she was just 14.
She says: “I am so happy that the lyrics to Hands Clean is in this musical.
“I often wondered why a song with this subject matter was received so neutrally. Perhaps, years ago, it wasn’t received at all.
“For how much we were all still turning a blind eye to overt and covert sexual abuse.”
She adds: “Within a patriarchal context, there is a rare female body — and yes, male bodies too — that is not subject to what so many of us have experienced and endured.
“We went into fight, flight or freeze, depending on our survival strategy of choice, because this patriarchy context did not make fighting the smartest of choices.
“So many of us were shut down in innumerable ways.”
I am all about revenge fantasy
Alanis Morissette
While Alanis — my favourite artist of all time — is wrongly stereotyped as a man hater, she insists many of her angrier lyrics are simply part of a healing process.
She explains: “I also know that some are still afraid of anger, female anger. I don’t think the feeling itself is that scary. It is the acting out of the feelings that is so destructive, when there is violence, or acting out of revenge.
“I am all about revenge fantasy. But not about the acting out of revenge.
“This is why I don’t share who my songs are about often, while I truly enjoy artistically and emotionally to write or perform or sing my revenge fantasy. I have no desire to enter into a violent acting-out of it.”
The musical, which got five stars from me after its Harvard University world premiere last week, is ripped from the headlines in so many ways, prominently featuring protesters from the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements.
“These movements have emerged as the natural evolutionary next step on our planet with our consciousness growing,” Alanis says.
“It is a truth movement, a wholeness movement, a connection movement, a vulnerability movement, certainly a feminist movement.
“Ultimately, in my mind, it is a feminine movement, within female bodies (because that is where the most egregious unbalance, inequity and outright abuse has occurred).
“And ultimately in every body. Any gender. The feminine is taking her rightful seat. And as this shift occurs, both the masculine and the feminine are being empowered.”
However, she does believe there is hope of a positive and very real change, saying: “I truly think that our outrage is a massive protest around a sense of disconnection with each other.
“On some level, I think we know in our bodies and souls how connected we are.
“And anything that evidences otherwise causes deep pain in our souls for those of us still attuned to our feelings and bodies.”
With typical Alanis modesty, she responds: “I think consciousness is at a place where feeling feelings and going within and telling the truth about our experience is less avoided, less shamed, more embraced.
“Every song I have ever written allows for the full experience of my own personal humanity to be expressed, not unlike writing a diary entry alone in a room.
“For me, personally, it is a very cathartic experience.”
Despite inspiring millions with her lyrics, Alanis says: “Fame didn’t follow through with what it had ‘promised’.”
She adds: “Fame, in and of itself, was pretty exhausting and isolating and confusing.
“But fame as a means to an end as a way to serve, offer empathy, offer connection, offer solace, that was what kept me going.”
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In very exciting news for Alanis fans, the musical, which features three new songs, was being written alongside Alanis’s new album.
She reveals: “I have written 23 songs for this new record, and intend to write three or four more, while we were all sifting through songs that would support the complex narrative of this story.
“Predator and Smiling and some lines from other songs on the record emerged as being a perfect match.”
It’s been six years since the last Alanis album — the world needs her qualities right now.
Having a last laugh
ALANIS has finally tackled the question that has haunted her for the past two decades: Does she really dispute the meaning of the word ironic?
During a side-splitting moment during the Jagged Little Pill musical, when the song Ironic is being performed, one of the cast members interrupts to say: “Wait a second, that’s not irony – that’s just like s**tty!”
Speaking publicly about the scene for the first time, Alanis tells me: “It is such a hilarious moment and I am likely laughing the hardest in the audience when I watch it.
“When (Ironic co-writer) Glen Ballard and I were writing this song, with both of us having a great love of linguistics, we truly didn’t care that they weren’t ironic – we were light-heartedly telling mini-stories.
“I thought maybe we would sell 100,000 copies – and I was exaggerating when I thought this – and didn’t think anyone would care. Certainly we didn’t.
“But people VERY much cared. Ha! And I have had my ass kicked non-stop for over 20 years. Haha.”
Alanis manages to take what many stars would deem an insult and turn it into the most beautiful of learning experiences.
Emphasising her words, she says: “I am OK with being deeply care-FULL, and also with being grammatically care-LESS.
“Art has always made room for a gorgeous crassness and imperfection and looseness and using words as paint.
“And I am OK with being hyper-intelligent, and very much unintelligent.
“I could tell by how up in arms some people were that being considered stupid is a tough one for most of us.
“But I am keenly aware of how dumb I am, and also keenly aware of how intelligent I am too. Both.”
In my book, dumb is one thing Alanis will never be.