Jacob Fortner
Janel Spencer
WRT101
27 March 2019
Hit Me with the Truth
Schools shootings were at an all-time high in 2018. Mass shooting attempts were recorded at 94 attempts while the number of deaths jumped to 55. While most civilians demand gun control or other possibilities to limit mass shootings, nothing has been done. Laws remain unchanged and the number of incidents and shootings only continues to climb. In 2016, George Watsky released a song titled “Stick to Your Guns.” In this song, Watsky portrays powerful imagery pertaining to various perspectives involved in school shootings: he portrays the views of the shooter, the media, and the politicians in mass school shootings. Watsky expresses his argument with facts supported by creative language and empathy.
Watsky appeals favorably to logos and pathos to convince Americans that school shootings are exploited via media and politicians. His target audience are preteens, teens, and young adults since they are the ones who can relate to the subject more than anyone else, as they are in school or college themselves. In the hook of his song, Watsky sings, “You’ve got your finger on the trigger, kid/Line it up, line it up, line it up/and hit me with the truth.” I interpreted this as the shooter is the only one who knows why he shot the school. You can always blame gun control, mental health, or emotional instability, but until you ask the shooter, you can only assume.
The song begins with Watsky introducing himself as the school shooter while reading the letter he has written before the shooting. He starts off saying, “I’ll be gone when you read this, so I just wanted to say/I’m sorry to the couple decent people who got in the way.” He continues in his letter to state what events lead up to this and why he reacted that way, “I was mocked and ignored/you’re sorry now but talk is cheap, shoulda thought it before/You’re the sorry flock of sheep that made me rot to the core.” He’s insinuating that school shootings are developed from emotional suffering and mental struggles. He also incorporates negative connotation throughout this verse to show the unstable mood of the shooter. The words of the shooter were very remorseful, he apologized and wished he had another option, but this was his only one. He then starts to justify his actions by claiming students treated him harshly and that’s why he had to react the way he did. This verse puts the listener in the shoes of the shooter. It shows his audience that the shooter is still human and has emotional faults like everyone else. Watsky might suggest that if the shooter was guided or counseled, the whole scenario could have been avoided.
During the opening scene in the video, a kid is shown sleeping in his bed in a dark, faint bedroom. The camera ascends and shows the boy’s dream cloud. The boy is symbolic for the shooter as he is dreaming of how to hurt the other sheep, in school in the story. Inside the dream, Watsky who represents the shooter, is dressed as a sheep herder while reading a children’s book to a flock of sheep. The sheep resemble the school students that potentially bullied or ridiculed him. The book that the sheep herder reads seems innocent, until a closer look is exposed. The book is entitled Dino Wars and it reveals blood and violence within the covers. It has an illustrated T-Rex and Pterodactyl. They seemed disgruntled on the first couple pages until he flips the page and show the T-Rex killing and eating a Pterodactyl. This can be interpreted that the T-Rex, an aggressive carnivore dinosaur, is resembling the shooter. The Pterodactyl, who was less aggressive and only fed on insects or dead dinosaurs, represented his bullies. Considering the Pterodactyls’ diet, you can assume the ones that they bully are emotionally dismal or weak. The fact they are dinosaurs could also suggest it’s showing the aggression between the him and his bullies in the past events. This metaphor can be used to show the mental struggles of the shooter. It shows the viewer the conflictions of emotions going on with the shooter. The book cover could resemble the calm, normal nature on the outside, while the text and illustrations are the shooters unhealthy, struggling thoughts.
Watsky’s second verse supports his claim that the media takes advantage of the school shooting to gain viewers. The verse itself sounds like an advertisement for the news station. While the news tries to report on one of the students who has been shot, they are also self-promoting simultaneously. He says, “We’re gonna bring you a segment live from her hospital bed/We’ll try to bring you the spin through your preexisting opinions but if we miss it switch it to our sister network instead.” He implies that news networks are just developing stories for views, not for the truth or integrity and that they simply twist the story to appeal to the viewer of the station. He touches on how the news promote their graphics, sponsors, and social media to pull in more viewers as well. While the scenario is partially exaggerated, it’s not false. Most news networks do have sister stations that to appeal to a both sides of the political parties. Television programs are reliant on ratings as well so it’s not uncommon for news stations to report on whatever they can consider news.
In the video, the second verse contains all but one sheep dying. They died from a fall from a cliff, drowning, bombs, hanging, poison, disembowelment, and gun fire. After each sheep dies one-by-one, it shows the herder mourning the loss of each sheep. I believe this resembles the media covering various types of death as it is a great interest piece for viewers. New stations commonly report on deaths as people are always curious who died and the details of the event. They like the controlled chaos because it’s all real, but safe from their they stand.
In the final verse, Watsky is speaking from the senator’s voice who appears to be addressing the citizens in a PSA for the shooting. He starts off remorseful, but then goes on to say there’s nothing that could have been done about it: “It’s just the strange inner visions of a deranged individual/Full of rage, full of hate, full of vitriol.” Watsky is arguing that most politicians don’t try to crack down on mental health or gun control. The people have come up with solutions, yet nothing has been implemented. He also uses the incident to reference how his opponent uses it for public appeal: “But I gotta mention that it’s sick and insane/my opponent’s twisting your pain/for political gain, that’s lame.” Watsky is claiming that it is common for politicians to point fingers and voice blame, especially on opposing politicians, but less uncommon for politicians to give a speech and try to speak on behalf of the victims and their family. They usually throw in their speech, “I’m here and my opponent John Doe isn’t, so what does that say to you?” This may influence the viewers to believe that John Doe doesn’t care about the shooting or its victims. I believe this is effective because political blame is casted on the opposition despite your political party or beliefs. It easy to place blame on others when they don’t agree with your argument.
The clip ends on a stormy night with the sheep herder and his last sheep at the sheep cemetery. The herder reads the sermon for the departed sheep. As the sermon goes on, the sheep start to resurrect from the graves and turn on the living. The herder and sheep are then consumed by the dead sheep and it then cuts to a quick psychedelic-styled art animation. Finally, the herder is shown at the end with him and his sheep floating on a cloud. The cloud turns back into a dream cloud from the kid sleeping in his bed. The kid is awoken, calmly walks off, and the video ends. The music slowly queues out and the video ends. This could mean that the deaths of the other students could have some lingering guilt and that comes back to haunt him. He can’t live with himself as he’s consumed by the zombified sheep. The psychedelic art can be his transition into death as him followed by him and the sheep ascending to heaven. The child leaving after his dream finished could symbolize that he went on to carry out his dream events in real life at school.
The music video makes the viewer feel sympathetic and gives symbols that the viewer can relate to. The video puts the school shooting in a child-like theme. It starts happy and shows how quickly innocence can be twisted into violence and death. The red eyed sheep that caused all the deaths, was influence from the moment it saw the illustrations from the book. This can suggest that the shooter often reacts from what they see in their everyday lives. This can be caused by violence at home, in movies/television shows, in video games, or any combination of the three. It also gives viewers hope that the dream that the child had, can just be a dream, it doesn’t have to be made into a reality. With some healthy communication and guidance, his emotional instability can be managed into healthier thoughts and dreams. The ending leaves the viewer with a cliff hanger and ultimately lets the viewer decide how it ends. I believe this was intentionally directed this way to show the viewer regardless that the ending to the story is up to them. I believe Watsky wants people take to take action against mass shootings and that we can decide when and how this epidemic will end.
The audience Watsky appeals to range from teens to young adults. They appeal to his fan base who most likely are attending school or college. They are commonly his fan base and the ones who can closely relate to the subject. One of the techniques he used to sway the audience was the Red Hearing technique. He used this when using the perspective of the news reporter. At first, they brought up the topic of the shooter and an interview with the victim. They quickly move into self-promoting themselves by endorsing their own video graphics, advertisement sponsors, and various social media platforms. Watsky also used the False Dichotomy as the news reporter. He says, “We’ll try to bring you the spin through your preexisting opinions but if we miss it switch it to our sister network instead.” They are giving the viewer only two options to watch for news updates. The Hasty Generalization and Glittering Generalities methods are also used, this time through the perspective of the politician. Watksy starts the verse with two lines of glittering generalities as in lines 5-7, In the first two lines, he comments on how the victims were “innocent” and how the deed was “cowardly”. In lines 5-7, Watsky says “It’s just the strange inner visions of a deranged individual. Full of rage, full of hate, full of vitriol. But I gotta mention that it’s sick and insane…” These lines are full of glittering generalities. The ad hominem was made when Watsky was portrayed as the politician and he bashes the other politician for using the mass shooting for political gain. The politician has no evidence to support his argument.
“Stick to Your Guns” addresses a lot of controversial standpoints encompassed with school shootings. Watsky used logos and ethos to support and make his argument. I believe his purpose was to show teenagers and young adults the repetitive sequence of events after the school shooting. After each shooting, there is a public news reporting covering anything from the shooter to the victims. You then see the politicians blame one another over the gun policies that they hold true to themselves. Then this is followed up by heated arguments amongst citizens about gun control and which policy to enforce to make sure mass shootings happen again. It feels like a horror film on loop. We see what can be done yet each day that passes, no one has acted on those duties. Watsky depicts this very well in his musical art work and successfully portrays these issues. I think this message was very powerful and effective. It mapped out the entire exploitation of mass shootings as well as it highlighted the key issues that cause mass shootings. Watsky was able to do so while being credible and avoiding any fallacies in his argument.
Work Cited:
Lopez, German. “2018 Was by Far the Worst Year on Record for Gun Violence in Schools.” Vox, Vox, 10 Dec. 2018.
Watsky, George. “Watsky- Stick to Your Guns ft. Julia Nunes [x Infinity]” Youtube. X Infinite, Carlos Lopez Estrada, Kush Mody, 14 January 2017, Link. Accessed 3 April 2019.
Jake's Jungle 