Visit   / lanadelrey   to view Lana's public statement that she posted on her Instagram account.

Today, Lana Del Rey struck back against critics who have accused her of glorifying abusive relationships in her music. Some of Lana's songs are written from the perspective of a woman madly in love with a man who is either abusing or ignoring her. For example, as she sings in the title track of Ultraviolence, "He hit me and it felt like a kiss." When she sings about this, is she holding up abusive relationships as an ideal or advocating that people seek out abusive partners with whom to fall in love?

The nineteenth century romantic movement was an artistic and literary movement that glorified beauty, emotion, and the past (no matter how ugly). A romantic sees emotion both positive and negative as inherently beautiful. A sense of beauty in the tragic can be seen in Goethe's classic book, The Sorrows of Young Werther. The protagonist in this book kills himself in order to spare himself the burden of living while madly in love with a woman who is engaged. Arguing that Lana glorifies abusive relationships and that her art has a negative effect on society would be akin to arguing that suicide should not be depicted in art for fear of it sparking an increase in suicides. Of course, some do make this sort of argument and maybe that will be a topic for another video.

When viewed through the lens of romanticism, Lana is not glorifying abusive relationships. She is just artistically representing the beauty of being madly in love even with a flawed partner.

To view my lecture on romanticism, visit    • Romanticism  

Thumbnail Photo Credit: Justin Higuchi