I Can ALMOST Feel Your Needle in My Arm…

Did the title catch your eye? It was meant to. Just like many other titles that you might have heard before. Hurt. Have you heard that one? Maybe you remember that title and you can already hear Trent Reznor’s voice in your head. Or maybe Johnny Cash is who you picture in your mind’s eye as he strums that acoustic and pictures float by of his wife and kids. So which one has the greater impact on you? Is it Reznor’s version (the original, I might add), or does Cash’s endless collage hit harder? What if instead of Trent or Johnny, it was Kermit? That’s right; Kermit the Frog. Would it still make the song a tragic story or would the fact that it’s covered by a Muppet turn it into comedy? Well, According to Plato, that song, or any other song/poem, has no business being performed by anyone other than the author or someone who has been in the exact same situation and can therefore do it justice because (s)he has the experience to draw from. I have to agree with Plato that a work loses its original value once it has been through many different voices. However, I think that Plato was a little too strict in his views and there is definitely room for people to show their own takes on a song such as this one.

It is very obvious to me that songs such as Reznor’s Hurt are reproduced so many times by so many people because of the intensity with which it describes something as personal as a man’s battle with drug addiction. Johnny Cash was definitely someone who could draw from his life experiences as a long-time drug addict to bring the song to life. Socrates says to the Rhapsode in Plato’s Ion, “Now what about when Homer says that Hecamede, Nestor’s concubine, gives a potion to the wounded Machaon to drink. He says something like this:

…with Pramnian wine; over it she grated goat’s cheese

With a bronze grater; with it an onion as relish. *

Is it for the doctor’s skill or for the rhapsode’s to decide whether Homer speaks correctly here or not?” What Socrates was trying to tell the Rhapsode was that there is no one better to talk about something like medical procedures than a doctor. Because of this, he, being nothing more than an artistic performer, would not meet the same qualifications to explain Homer's works because he is not a medical doctor. Taking that into consideration, I am sure that when Johnny Cash heard the lyrics to the song, he was very moved and inspired to sing it himself because it applied directly to his personal life and therefore he was well qualified. The problem then becomes what to say or how to react when you see something like a spoof on the song which is made with Kermit the Frog pretending to be Johnny Cash. It is obviously not to be taken seriously and very few would put much thought into it other than to maybe forward the link to the video to all of their friends (because it really is a very funny video).

So in short, what I’m trying to ask is where do we draw the line for artistic integrity? Should we draw a line at all? Do we just allow for people to play with such texts? Should we learn to appreciate all of them for what they’re worth? I think so. Somebody like me could make another cover of the song even though I’ve never had a drug problem, but I could still draw from my own experiences in knowing people with drug addictions. There is nothing wrong with people wanting to imitate something as a song that they thought was great. I think that Plato might have been just a little too stringent in his views. After all, imitation is the greatest form of flattery.

*Ion, Plato, Classical Literary Criticism, Murray & Dorsch, Penguin Classics, 1965, Pg. 10.