Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Consumer Law Blogs -> 43(B)log

Consumer Law

: 43(B)log

"Men tend to send in song lyrics to express their stories"

By Rebecca Tushnet

The ever-fascinating cryptoxin pointed me to this 2008 National Review Online story about the antiabortion strategy of arguing that abortion harms women. One site encourages people to send in their abortion stories, and its creator reports that men use song lyrics to speak about their own experiences. This is consistent with my argument in Copy This Essay that copying can be a means of self-expression and of political speech, and it illustrates the ways in which pop culture is itself political, providing means of understanding and articulating the self in society.

Lyrics, like other forms of expression, are readily repurposed for speakers' personal meanings. Authorial control is in many ways the opposite of infant baptism. (Attributed to many, many wits: asked if he believes in infant baptism, the wit replies, "Believe in it? I've seen it!")

Full post as published by 43(B)log on March 11, 2010 (boomark / email).