A Queer Analysis of KoRn's "Faget"

Femininity does not equal Homosexuality

Korn is an American metal band. Their first album, Korn, features a song called “Faget” which is premised upon the torment that the band’s singer, Jonathan Davis, faced in high school for having a feminine presentation with frilly shirts and eyeliner and being into art and new wave music as its subject matter (Wikipedia). Queer theory can serve as a useful analytical tool to interpret works like this brutally expressive and emotional song as well as the real life situations which they represent and hopefully bring us closer to an explanation of the sociocultural forces which make these situations occur.

Heteronormativity, which can be summed up as the psychic structure which presupposes heterosexuality between the gender binary to be the default and normal sexual orientation whereas all other sexual orientations are abnormal aberrations, produces an environment of fear within a given social context—not simply fear of being gay or queer, as queer people themselves can fit into the standards of heteronormativity, but fear of being perceived as an embodiment of the abnormality which the standards of heteronormativity conflate with queerness. “Heterosexuals themselves do not always conform to that model of heteronormative respectability, but many of them still use it to exile queerness.” (Parker 219). It wouldn’t have mattered if Jonathan’s childhood tormentors were in some way queer themselves, and it’s likely that at least some of them did not conform to the rigid standards of heterosexuality and binary cisgenderedness of their social context perfectly, because any given action does not necessitate any given identity and identities do not align with social standards and ideals on a one-to-one level. They had identified him as a clear nonconformist to the standards that had plagued them all, making him a clear and easy target that they could channel all of the fear produced by those standards into by insulting him. An insult directed towards a queer person by a cisheterosexual person draws a distance away from queerness for the cisheterosexual person where the perception of queerness in the person they’re insulting brought it closer to them, and reinforces the boundary between the territorialized identities of queer and cisheterosexual themselves. In simpler terms, it allows cisheterosexual people to feel as if they are nothing like queer people, as if people are truly separated and defined by clean-cut categorical distinctions at all, and reifies the social and psychic structures which produce these situations to begin with.

One recurring lyrical element in the song is the speaker desperately asking why he is tormented for the way he looks in the ways the rest of the lyrics describe. “Why did you tease me?” is repeated from the first verse in the third (Korn 0:49). “Why do you treat me this way?” repeats in the choruses (Korn 1:17). In the thick of the actual situation of being abused, these critical analyses of the societal forces which cause the abuse appear lofty and out of reach. It is the intensity of that experience that the song is an expression of, making it something a listener can possibly relate to and making it a point of catharsis for both the artist and the listener. Still, Jonathan does include some insight towards the answer of the question why he was mistreated in the lyrics of the repeating verse, “Fucking stereotypes feeding their heads,” (Korn 0:54). This one line is a simplified way of explaining the way male homosexuality is stereotypically conflated with femininity, conversely male femininity’s stereotypical conflation with homosexuality, and how both male femininity and male homosexuality as well as femininity and homosexuality in many ways in general are considered negative qualities of their own.

The aforementioned environment of fear produced in part by heteronormativity takes one form in a phenomenon known as homosexual panic. “Homosexual panic refers to the fear by straight people or by people of uncertain sexuality that others might think they are lesbian or gay in a homophobic culture. Homosexual panic is a powerful cultural force. It leads, for example, to queer-bashing, whether through harassing acts and language or through physical violence. As heterosexuals in a homophobic culture fear that they are, or might be, or could be thought to be queer they sometimes worry over the queerness or potential queerness they fear in themselves and project it onto others. Then they try to reassure themselves by abusing that queerness as if it were not part of themselves. They want to see it as utterly separate from themselves in a binary opposition. But the binary opposition is so shaky that they must keep propping it up to prevent it from falling over.” (Parker 216). This homosexual panic phenomenon is likely to be a contributing factor to the queerphobic abuse that premises the song. It is ultimately an effort to quell the difference that any form of queerness, that form specifically being male feminine gender presentation in this case, any divergence from the expectations and norms upheld by heteronormativity and gender conformity into submission, suppression, and invisibility. Jonathan does not allow himself to be suppressed, though. He responds with the song and in the song he turns the weapons used by his attackers against them by judging them according to their own standards, calling out the insecurity that belies their posture of conformity and attack. “You wouldn’t know a real man if you saw it.” (Korn 3:16).

Still, the damage done by the queerphobic abuse is given brutal expression in the song as well. The lyrics of one of the bridge sections towards the end of the track repeat: “I’m just a pretty boy/I’m not supposed to fuck a girl/I’m just a pretty boy/Living in this fucked up world,” (Korn 4:21). The misattribution of homosexuality that has been imposed upon him due to his feminine presentation suppresses his sexual desire which would be classified as heterosexual by the same societal standards conducting its suppression. One of the lines in the recurring verse is “I am ugly/Please just go away,” (Korn 0:59). He is experiencing self-loathing due to the hatred he has endured from his peers, and the desexualization or exclusion from the realm of sexuality that is oftentimes imposed upon queer people as a coinciding effect to the suppression of his desire. Queerphobia produces these kinds of distortions in self-perception. There is a long section later in the bridge that repeats the lyrics, “All my life, who am I?” (Korn 4:52). He has been thrown into an identity crisis because his social environment conflates feminine presentation with homosexual identity. The song ends with the last section of the bridge as follows: “I’m just a faggot (faggot)/I’m just a faggot (faggot)/I’m just a faggot (faggot)/I’m a faggot (faggot)/I’m not a faggot (or am I? Faggot!)/I’m not a faggot (or am I? Faggot!)/I’m not a faggot (or am I? Faggot!)/You motherfucking queers!” (Korn 5:24). He resolves this internal identity conflict by refusing the label of “faggot” and turning the accusation of homosexual identity back on his tormentors, although it is unclear how complete of a resolution this achieves. These final lines of the song could also be read as a response in the back-and-forth interplay between the label levied in the accusation of homosexuality and the heterosexuality that Jonathan identifies with. These incidents have introduced a new confusion around his sexual identity that wasn’t there before, as the quiet lines of “or am I?” show. The possibility of him being homosexual is left open, or maybe this is just an expression of the way other people’s images of oneself can collide and conflict with who one is on the level of their own personal identity and self-conception.

(originally completed on March 28, 2021)

Works Cited

“Faget (Song).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Apr. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Faget_(song).

Korn. “Faget.” Spotify.

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Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. Oxford University Press, 2020.