Return of the Revenge Narrative
What’s the difference between recrimination and telling your truth?
This piece was written before the horrific mass shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay. I’m holding the victims, their families, and those communities in my heart. If you’re looking for a way to help, here is a fund for the victims of Monterey Park. Here is a link to Everytown for more resources.
At least half the videos on my TikTok FYP (for you page) are of a creator performing to the strains of Miley Cyrus’s hit song “Flowers” in the background. ICYMI, Miley’s song is acknowledged as a revenge ballad to her ex-husband, Liam Hemsworth. There are all kinds of assumed cues to their relationship in the music video. Eagle-eyed fans claim that Miley wears a suit that he wore during a red carpet event where they were filmed in an uncomfortable interaction, that she’s filming at a spot where he committed alleged infidelities, that she dropped the song purposefully on his birthday.
The song is very catchy, but it’s really the controversy surrounding it that fascinates me. In the first stanza, Miley sings, “We were right 'til we weren't / Built a home and watched it burn.” Who hasn’t felt the sting of betrayal, whether from a lover, family member, or friend?
And in the grand tradition of revenge narratives, Miley isn’t alone. Shakira’s newest song addresses her ex-husband’s relationship with a younger woman. Anna Kendrick’s upcoming movie, Alice, Darling, is at least based somewhat on her own breakup. Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” is a skewering of an ex generally believed to be Jake Gyllenhaal. And even Prince Harry’s Spare could be read as a revenge narrative of sorts. In each of these cases, though, the argument could be that these creators are speaking their truths. Releasing their trauma. Revenge seems to assign some sort of hostile intention that, if not inaccurate, then is at least incomplete. Even in writing this piece, I wonder if I’m diminishing these men and women’s real pain by attaching the word “revenge” to them.
But revenge is compelling. I love a story about an underdog finally getting agency in a story. (Inigo Montoya‘s quest will forever remain one of the great revenge stories of the modern age.) I think revenge satisfies some inner desire for justice: seeing the scales balanced, for once. But of course, this assumes that all stories have easily identifiable villains and heroes. That our alignment falls firmly on one side. In reality, this is almost never the case.
While playing “Flowers” one evening, I asked my daughter out of curiosity, “Do you know what revenge is?”
“Yeah, of course,” she said.
She described a scene from Descendants 3, where a cruelly jilted character sings about her distress, claiming that she’ll be embracing her dark side from here on out. I think of some of the plots of children’s movies: Maleficent enacting a curse because she wasn’t invited to a christening, Shere Khan stalking Mowgli as a representative of the human race who defiled him many years ago. These villains’ backstories explain how they ended up on the wwrong side of morality. Rejection, even to the littlest among us, is reason enough to lash out.