Arcaina, Nicolene LIT193.17 A (Dr.

Jayson Jacobo)
100254 BS Legal Management May 22, 2013

FINAL PAPER
LOVE IS WAR: A CRITICAL READING ON THE CALLINGS STIGMATIZED
For a quick and convenient reference, below is a copy of the text:
STI GMATI ZED (The Calling)
If I give up on you I give up on me
If we fight what's true, will we ever be
Even God himself and the faith I knew
Shouldn't hold me back, shouldn't keep me from you

[Chorus:]
Tease me, by holding out your hand
Then leave me, or take me as I am
And live our lives, stigmatized

I can feel the blood rushing though my veins
When I hear your voice, driving me insane
Hour after hour day after day
Every lonely night that I sit and pray

[Chorus]

We live our lives on different sides,
But we keep together you and I
Just live our lives, stigmatized

We'll live our lives, We'll take the punches everyday
We'll live our lives I know we're gonna find our way

I believe in you
Even if no one understands
I believe in you, and i don't really give a damn
If we're stigmatized
We live our lives on different sides
But we keep together you and I
We live our lives on different sides

We gotta live our lives
Gotta live our lives
Were gonna live our lives
We're gonna live our lives, Gonna live our lives,
Stigmatized.

The song Stigmatized by the American band The Calling portrays an image of a forbidden love
as viewed or perceived by a particular societal lens. Being entitled Stigmatized, this initial sign
already exposes the state of affairs between the addresser and addressee of the song despite the
lack of a concrete and outright description as to where, when, or who the subjects are. It focuses
on one of the persons state of mind and a promise of fighting and living their lives
notwithstanding a particular perception that people, or others are watching the subjects; that
these audience holds a say which may go for, or more probably, against the subjects
relationship..
The song opens with a hypothetical question to the addressee yet one that is already
reeking of tension and longing. It tells us that its as if theres nothing must stop the subjects
relationship. There is a mention of God which points us to the character of one of the subjects.
We are told that this subject, this speaker can also be perceived as a religious subject, and not
merely a subject independent of a specific circumstanstiality. This points us towards a beginning
point - a possibility of a particular center which is our subjects primary locality.
The next stanza, which is the songs chorus, introduces a form of path offered by the
addresser towards his loved one a choice between permanent detachment from the relationship
which is a cause of pain and torment and a permanent commitment to this kind of relationship, a
leap of faith which can finally be some path towards freedom from an impending pain of
separation despite the fact that this decision entails living a life marked by a particular stigma
as the chorus closes by way of declaring a life lived in this kind of enclosure.
The second stanza reaffirms the status of our subject as a religious subject as he
emphasizes an action of praying that he deliberately pairs with another act he engages in every
single hour and day of his journey with his beloved. This reaffirmation can deepen our
understanding of our subject. It can be inferred from the first stanza that the subject recognizes
the presence of a God as something that must not interfere with the truth that he knows with his
loved one. However, a change in inference can be made upon the encounter of the second stanza.
The audience is told that the subject recognizes God as not a mere hindrance as what we see in
the first stanza, but as a higher Being he submits himself into because of the lonely nights he
experiences. And in these hours and days, the audience is told that the subject sits and prays.
The addresser does not only subject to the idea that there is a God, but he also subjects himself to
a relationship with a Higher Being because he communicates with a God. It can also be further
perceived how the subject feels attached towards his loved one even in his solitary moments as
he narrates how he is more in touch with an emptiness thats still filled with so much sound his
blood rushing through his veins and his loved ones voice that drives him insane.
The bridge right after the second chorus reveals a bond that the subjects must keep, and
some sense of distance between them as well while repeating the fact that such bond that they
must stand for will be forever marked with a particular stigma. The second part of the bridge
offers a promise, enabled by the presence of the word will in the contraction well. And this
promise by the subject is coupled with assurance, not by the addressers sole ability and action,
but by both of the subjects, the addresser and the addressee.
The coda reveals a declaration, an empowering of the addressee by the addresser who is
almost already subjecting himself to the fullness of their relationship. The addresser seems to
proclaim some form of credo that is directed to none other than his beloved. We can assume that
this belief that our primary subject proclaims is reflective of his inclination towards a faithful
life; by faith, we mean faith directed not just to a God that he talks about, but a faith in a
consciousness that he has a fuller grasp of. The latter portion of the coda intensifies this seeming
allegiance, this pledge, or promise and eventually, the song closes headstrong with a total
surrender to a choice of living stigmatized by means of repetition or reiteration of the lines we
gotta live our lives, stigmatized.
To further our reading of this song, we take one step forward in trying to read between
and still within the lines through focusing on a particular line and by slightly touching on the
elements of the song such as its musicality and accompaniment as a supplement in reading these
lines.
It has been proposed earlier that this song religiously recounts a mental and emotional
struggle for those subjected to a generic theme, which is a theme of forbidden love as the song
lays it bare early through its title. We delve into an inquiry on what kind of forbidden love this
song actually talks about as a primary focus for our next step.
We extract the songs opening line, If I give up on you, I give up on me as a response
to our inquiry. This line already tells us about the interdependence between the characters in the
song, their ties, a relationship which is an object of struggle, a crucial point that one of the
subjects is trying to make. Aside from this generalization, it can also be noted that there seems to
be an identification of the addresser with the addressee. By this, we mean a form of equation
between these two. You is equated to me by means of an if-then, or some form of a
transitive statement. It seems absolute; a proposal of sameness or being identical in a way or
another. This detail may be taken as an equation of the tension, of the feelings, of the struggle
that both the characters are undergoing. However, this may not be the entire point of such
probable proposal.
This sameness, or a possibility for the addresser of being able to absolutely identify with
the addressee can occur on different levels possibly emotional or mental towards themselves as
individuals or as a couple, as suggested earlier. However, another level can be posited in dealing
with this sameness or identification. Isnt it also highly possible that this sameness can occur
on a more physical, more material level; a more basic and biological facet to an entirely
complicated substance of discourse? This suggests that aside from the sameness in the
characters emotional and mental states, we are offered a more primary and fundamental take
sameness in them anatomically, as probably both females or both males. The sameness or state
of identification with regard to the other levels or faculties of occurrences, or the more
complicated facets to this struggle is closer to the real as the sameness already occurs at the
more, if not at the most, basic level; hence a greater domino effect or stronger chain reaction. It
makes much more sense that the subjects can identify emotionally and mentally with one another
provided that they already have this very fundamental disposition as a male or as a female. This
detail of equation between you and me through a transitive statement situated in urgency and
restlessness pertains to an introduction to not just a forbidden and struggling love per se, but an
introduction to a homosexual relationship which, if we take a look at the larger context, also
carries with it a stigma, as perceived by the societal lenses we considered earlier. This song is a
narration of faith in this homosexual relationship between individuals conditioned in a primarily
religious society.
The male voice as the singer, our primary protagonist-addresser, gives us an impression
or an immediate mental image that this is a gay relationship given the theory weve attempted to
introduce through the earlier paragraphs. However, a text, particularly these forms of text which
come in song forms, is always almost political and highly subjective; that the listener, an
addressee who belongs outside the text, always has the last say to what this song means to him or
her. But given and for the purposes of the specifics as to the type of genre and voice that are
employed through this text, that immediate mental image is projected as a representation unique
to this text, a clear point of reference when addressees outside this text attempt to perceive it.
The male voice is a supplementary element and it brings us even closer to the core of our text at
hand.
The song is set in key of G, a key we can classify as very masculine, a common key
carried out in a fusion of the acoustic and rock genres as introduced and can be classified through
similar songs that utilized heavy-gauged guitar strings in varying materials, creating a very deep
and dark effect conveyed in a highly melancholic tone as the introductory accompaniment prior
the first stanza. This introduction is heightened through a gradual build-up which slowly fuses
electric bass, hard percussion toms and cymbals as the pre-choruses unfold, distortion as a
main effect for electric guitars between stanza breaks and a climactic bridge and adlib right
before the final chorus, and softer string instruments consistently made prominent with a levelled
use of the more masculine instruments employed earlier towards the final chorus, coda, then the
outro. This dynamic can be very well-complemented with a strong, male voice that can weep
with this fusions delicate angst and outcry. The musicalitys blend with the lyrics in this
sense, in all its faculties, is poetry with a rather ironic juxtaposition of the previously mentioned
compartments. The song is poetry set out to dance with its bareness, almost always the spoken
(the lyrics) made to commune with a core which is unspoken (its melody) such that their
strengths can amplify their weaknesses and vice versa.
Some particular and further archival data are to be noted to better perceive the world that
this text is located in. We reiterate our theory earlier that the text unravels a homosexual love in a
society which places high value in religion; and a text delivered with and complemented by the
fusion of melodies as media of expressions. Hence, we can assume excerpts from the fields of
religion, psychology, gender, and media as we take a step further outside the text.
Alfred Kinseys continuum tells us that there exists a certain degree of homosexuality
in each person and this is a primary concept that theology, as a thorough method of explaining
faith and its controversies, considers.
1
In fleshing out a religions stance with regard to
homosexuality and homosexual relationships, we would focus particularly on the Catholic
Christian point of view, or recognition of point of views for a more thorough methodology or
discipline.
Moral theology would tell us that homosexuality is not an end to itself, or not an outright
moral wrong since as an orientation, it is not a product of free choice. However, developments of
earlier Church doctrines would almost and always condemn the entirety of homosexuality. The
CDF 1975 Declaration
2
perceives the homosexual orientation as objectively disordered insofar
as it involves a tendency directed towards the intrinsic moral evil of engaging in a homogenital
activity. This inclination is not an outright sin but it predisposes a person towards an evil act,
and instigates its bearing on the genital behavior.
However, critics of this CDF document would tell us that sexual orientation is not
fundamentally or primarily a tendency towards acts. It tells us that its all about a psychosexual
attraction towards a particular person and that the CDF presents a very truncated view of sexual

1
Adolfo Dacanay, SJ. Notes on Homosexuality. (Quezon City, 2008), p2
2
Ibid., 3
orientation and even sexuality itself
3
. It is criticized for providing a very flat and linear
perspective to a complex nature of human sexuality.
Traditional Catholic teachings with regard to homosexual behavior would have been
insofar based from traditional doctrine regarding marriage and the sexual activity which has
always been argued to be only appropriate within the context of marriage. All other sexual
activity outside marriage is considered immoral by the Church, and in the case of homosexual
behavior, this activity is lacking a very essential definiteness. Development on views regarding
Church doctrine such as in Gaudium et Spes which discusses marriage and intimacy, and reading
of the Holy Bible as a form of literature would enlighten us how traditional teachings, however
restricted they may seem, are always open to criticism and that they themselves could be used by
proponents of the homosexual cause and movement to argue that these documents do not
ultimately tell us its moral wrongness. It cannot be argued that the homosexual behavior, for
example, is wrong just because it cannot be procreative as marriage (GS 50)
4
itself is not even
solely for procreation as well, no matter how much legitimacy and prestige is given to
heterosexual marriage. If read as a human literature with a particular context, analysis on the
story of Sodom and Gomorrhea in the Bible (for example, in Gen. 19, 1-11) would reveal that
their real sin would not be regarding homosexual behavior (after all, the Bible doesnt mention
any reading of sexual behavior aside from heterosexual ones). Instead, it would recount and
would clearly tell us of a sin of inhospitality and worship of other deities.
5


3
Ibid., 4
4
Gaudium et Spes 50.
5
For example, in the book of Ezekiel 16:49-50: And the look at the guilt of your sister Sodom; and her daughters
were proud, sated with food, complacent in their prosperity; they gave no help to the poor and the needy. And the
Gospel of Luke: 10:10-13: If the people of any town you enter do not welcome you, go into its streets and say; we
shake the duest of htis town from our feet as testimony against you. But know that the reign of God is near. I assure
you, on that day the fate of Sodom will be less severe than that of such a town.
With these developments in reading traditional Catholic teachings, we are presented with
four positions regarding homosexuality when we survey its literature.
6
The first position or view
denies any moral value to homosexuality and is an absolute form of perspective. It considers all
theological biases from Church doctrines and the traditional Catholic Churchs view on the Holy
Bible. The second position sees homosexual orientation and activities as morally neutral as it
considers heterosexual acts and relations as morally neutral as well. It tells us that homosexual
relationships arent governed by any absolute laws as long as theres free consent between
parties and theres avoidance of unwanted an undesirable consequences.
7
The third position tells
us of a perspective that considers homosexual relationships as less than the ideal heterosexual
relations. It places value on stable and committed homosexual relationships but it still considers
such only as a lesser evil. Finally, the fourth position would tell us that the fundamental
manner in evaluating relationships is not about the gender of the concerned individuals, but
about the quality of the relationship and how such relationship could make the concerned persons
better. Questions such as does the relationship make the individuals more forgiving? More
loving? This school of thought rejects the second class quality of homosexual relationships as
suggested by the third position.
These views regarding attempts to understand homosexuality through Catholic
theological lens (and related disciplines) somehow provide a primary foregrounding, or a
development into which our text at hand is born into. Another world perspective can be taken
into consideration. Given that our text is in a form of a song, we can also perceive the texts
locality through the lenses of media, gender representation, their developments and relationship.

6
James Hannigan. Homosexuality: The Test Case for Christian Sexual Ethics. (1988)
7
Dacanay, 9.
Issues on gender representation stem from basically unequal human rights in some
countries rights to education, economic security, political enfranchisement, freedom from
domestic violence, access to high quality, affordable healthcare, and reproductive control.
(Gauntlett, 2002)
8
Women are deprived of such basic rights and more priority is given to men.
In both UK and USA for example, theres much clamor about how sexism affects employment
and organizational benefits. In these two states, women actually earn less per capita than men
and 180,000 jobs women enter into pay below minimum wage compared to the 50,000 to mens
jobs (According to NSO, 2002)
9
Men also continue to dominate the key decision-making
positions in different organizations and companies. Despite successful feministic movements in
most parts of the world, there are still other areas which are in chains of sexism making feminism
a field in such governments and states as what we can consider as a work-in-progress.
Aside from the political and state-oriented stance towards gender, gender is also best
represented through the different types of media which have developed across decades.
Stereotypes in films, literature, music, and television would tell us much about this. We are
conditioned that masculinity and femininity are opposites, especially in television and film we
see a stereotypical superhero as a male possessing supernatural strength, and leadership
potentialities such as in Superman, or in the Gladiator; a beautiful, emotional, and timid figure as
a princess in a faraway castle, as in Sleeping Beauty or perhaps Cinderella. We are told how girls
and boys should be raised to be the ideal women and men.
However, recent developments have been made towards gendered stereotypes, especially
with women figures. In the Harry Potter series for example, Hermione Granger appears as a

8
David Gauntlett, Music, Gender, and Identity. (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2002), 4
9
Ibid., 5
superior in terms of her skills and wits, given that she is a muggle
10
, compared to her closest
friends, Harry Potter, and Ron Weasley, who were both natural-born wizards. She saves them
in moments of peril and plays a very significant role in helping Harry Potters story move. In
understanding the emergence and development of earlier gender studies in media, the term
symbolic annihilation used by George Gerbner (1978) adn Gaye Tuchman (1978)
11
to describe
the claim that powerful groups in society suppress the less powerful by marginalizing them to
such an extent that they are rendered virtually invisible as a representable group. And strong
representations of genders still provided narrow sets of characteristics for the female and male up
until the end of the 1980s. Efforts to neutralize power are already evident towards the years near
the new millennium. And we now look at how much more could homosexuals be represented,
and how perceptions of sexual identities have become today, and how they have been appearing
as subjects in the media.
Although Theodor Adorno (1093-1969)
12
would argue that the mass media, music being
one of the many, is a culture industry; a well-oiled machine producing entertainment products
in order to make profit and that the mass media can never be art because media products will
always be commodities, John Fiske would tell us that popular culture is made by the people,
not produced by the culture industry.
13
Mass media products are just utilized for the diverse
formation the people who still make the choice whether to consume such products or not. Fiske
would then pertain to Madonna as an exemplary popular text because she is so full of
contradictions and would indicate Madonnas ability to connect makes her an exemplary
popular text, and not just because the culture industry has sold her well. Emergence of

10
J.K. Rowlings term for ordinary people not born as natural witches or wizards in the Harry Potter Series
11
Gauntlett, 13
12
Cynthia Carter and Linda Steiner. Introduction to Critical Readings: Media and Gender in Critical Readings:
Media and Gender. (England: Open University Press, 2004),
13
Ibid., 23
alternative sexualities in media such as gay or lesbian portrayals has only been prominent in the
late 1990s, giving even little room for physical contact for instance in the television scene, or for
being alone together in a bed sitting as in the US drama series Thirtysomething
14
. It was only in
2000, in Dawsons Creek, that the first male-to-male romantic kiss on primetime US TV
happened (Wilke, 2000). Queer as Folk would boost the TV visibility of gay men in the USA
(2000-). Lesbians still had less visibility compared to gay characters, and same can be true
bisexual characters.
Michel Foucault on the other hand would note that it is possible to create a homosexual
mode of life. A way of life can be shared among individuals of different age, status, and social
activity. It can yield intense relations not resembling those that are not institutionalised.
(Foucault, 2000). Moreover, we are also subjected to the development of the Queer theory
starts with Gender Trouble (1990) by Judith Butler. Itwould tell us that nothing in ones identity
is fixed, gender, like other aspects of identity is a performance, hence people can change. There
is a fluidity that media presents to us today about gender identity which is evident in text forms,
in pop music, in television, in film, and in other aspects of a modern lifestyle.
Towards the end of our text, the repetition of a choice being made by the addressee is
referent to the subjects lives or their choice of a sense of living those lives or that kind of
life. This phrase is indicative of their lives together, the lives around them which structuralize or
try to create that confinement, those bounds, or that form of classification, and the interaction
between the two. The aforementioned data give us the idea of how these work out, hindsight to
the interplay in the text, how the text is located in that context.

14
Ibid., 82.
The text theory we have at hand is a revolution, an outcry towards the traditionalist view
of the Catholic Church which totally condemns homosexual relationships and absolutely places
no moral value in them. As a text that materialized during the first year of a new millennium, it
questions and tries to veer away from such. It somehow yearns for at least to be in a neutral
society that lets them be, and dreams for a society that perceives the quality of their
relationship more, a society that values the individual more and his pursuit of the self and its
actualization. There is seeking of recognition, of an appropriate interaction albeit admission that
these might never be. There is struggle and an attack to the traditionalist view because the text
shakes the views foundations, that faith and credos exist past the human-deity level through
recognizing moral values in heterosexual relations alone. Or even if this was the highest level of
faith that could be present, the context that the traditionalist view employs not only suppresses,
but deliberately skips, a level of occurrence of faith which is as much human as faith developed
in heterosexual relationships.
Exposure of the spectral take on gender in media endows our text and theory some
form of hope and faith. It empowers. It enables similar forms to break boundaries and create
wider ones. This context embedded in the gradual development of such exposure continues to
spark these forms of expression. The unfolding of these gives birth to radical paradigmatic shifts.
We are also taken into a sea of interaction in mass media nowadays that wont render our subject
text as an outlier. The struggle that our text undergoes is a battle not fought alone. The revelation
the text makes and the leap it takes is both a form of subjection and freedom. It democratically
dives into a world it can perceive as a refuge and this enclosure, or context that the mass media
provide for such texts is indeed a shelter, an avenue for fuller nurturing.
Lastly, the presence made by the text in the context and vice verse strip pretence off the
circumstances which could be very tempting to use to cower away from truth or to limit it. Such
presence is honest and faithful to faith itself. It doesnt deny of the empirical faculties when one
wills to commit; to commune with another. It is realistic. It sheds light on a faith that can
definitely be found in this world, and not one that is distant or alien to it. This presence that seeps
through the text is an everyday deliverance; a constant reminder how there is so much out there
to set free and to see, to build and to break; a continuous seeking of something more.












Bibliography:
Cynthia Carter and Linda Steiner. Introduction to Critical Readings: Media and Gender in
Critical Readings: Media and Gender. (England: Open University Press, 2004),
Adolfo Dacanay, SJ. Notes on Homosexuality. (2008)
David Gauntlett, Music, Gender, and Identity. (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2002).
James Hannigan. Homosexuality: The Test Case for Christian Sexual Ethics. (1988)
David Machin. Analysing Popular Music: image, sound, text. (Los Angeles: Sage, 2010)
Edward Said. The World, The Text, and the Critic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983)