Shadows of the Pat (Benatar)

I performed this essay at The Encyclopedia Show Minneapolis on Sunday night. Video of the show can be found on Strike Theater's Facebook page. The show's theme was "Shadows."

What do you think of when you think of shadows? They’re creepy, right? If you’re like me, you imagine a netherworld of crime, iniquity, opium and the dens thereof. It’s where people go to smoke thin, black cigarettes and reject the triune god. They are the hiding places of the occult, the decadent, the profane.

But you must descend into the gutters to get a sense for how Life really is. This is where Polite Society puts its garbage, its trash, its human refuse. This is where the people who don’t fit in go to hide. This is where even the respectable people go to indulge their vices.

I don’t know what goes on there, because I don’t actually patronize those establishments. That’s one of the advantages of living in the Internet Age. But just the fact that these activities are hidden makes them all the more monstrous. I can’t imagine all the unspeakable things they must get up to down there.

Lucky for me, Pat Benatar was not so timid. She had the guts to delve into this underworld, as evidenced by her oeuvre. What she dredged up from that cesspool offers us all a glimpse into the seamy underbelly of Life.

Just take a listen to the chorus from her song “Shadows of the Night,” which I will try to reproduce as adequately as I can while still falling well short of the perfection of the original recording.

We’re running with the shadows of the night
So, baby, take my hand, it’ll be alright
Surrender all your dreams to me tonight
They’ll come true in the end

Now I ask you: What encapsulates the idea of shadows better than that? In a word, nothing. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the music video of that song. For some reason, they went with a story about fighter pilots in World War 2. The only highlights of the video are appearances by the then-unknown Judge Reinhold and Bill Paxton, as a pilot and Nazi, respectively.

So then I turned to the video that I’d actually been thinking of, “Love is a Battlefield.” It starts out with Benatar walking the mean streets of a city. These are intercut with shots of her riding a Greyhound bus through the country. Flash back to her running away from home, as her dad says that, if she leaves now, she can forget about ever returning.

Next, we see her on those mean streets again, this time during the day. She passes by a neon sign that says “Girls Girls Girls.” Then she’s in what appears to be a mall and walks by a person sleeping on the floor. Back outside, she valiantly maintains her singing and her focus on the camera despite the intimidating glares of rough-looking men on the sidewalk.

Meanwhile, back home, Dad is plagued by lingering doubts about his decision to kick her out. Listlessly, he stirs the contents of his dinner plate. Did he make the right choice? Was he too hard on her? She is young, after all.

Back in the Big City, Benatar climbs a dark staircase to a shadowy club inhabited by denizens of the dark. There are many scandalously-clad young women, dressed in the rags apparently favored by loose women of the night in this time period. A sleazy-looking man in a cream-colored suit beckons her with a devilish grin.

Next thing you know, she’s dancing indifferently with another man. This is her john, no doubt. She lazily drapes an arm over his shoulder. Her face betrays the resignation to her fate working for a pimp who looks like a third-rate bad guy from Miami Vice.

In the next scene, she sits at a dressing room mirror writing a letter to her younger brother, who reads it on his bed back home. There may be some horrible exploitation going on here, but at least they get a decent dressing room.

She sits down in a lounge chair in the club and declines a man’s request to dance, which would seem to violate the terms of her employment, but I’ll let that one slide. Then, diegetically, we hear one of the women scream, “Leave me alone,” as she frees herself from the pimp and runs away.

Suddenly, the tables turn. Benatar blocks him from chasing after the fleeing woman. The other women join her to surround him. He retreats to the bar and cowers in fear as they unleash the deadliest weapon in their arsenal: a spontaneously choreographed group dance number.

He looks for reinforcements, but he must withstand the barrage alone. Left with no other choice, he joins the dance. It’s his only hope for survival. The seeming détente is shattered when Benatar throws a glass of water in his face. She will not be denied justice.

Having liberated themselves from the pimp’s iron grip, the women head out onto the streets to continue their dance until the night gives way to a bright, new morning. Benatar bids adieu to her sisters-in-arms, with a hug here, a high-five there, and even a fist-bump over there. (Yes, they had fist-bumps in the 80’s, but they were vertical instead of horizontal.)

Then we see her back on the bus. She’s headed somewhere on that bus, but where? Back home to confront her father? On to another vaguely salacious club to liberate some more possibly-maybe sex workers? Who knows?

But does it really matter? The world is her oyster. She’s escaped the shadows of the night, even though that’s not technically the title of this song. But, still, you get the idea. She’s escaped the battlefield that is love, I guess? Sorry. I wasn’t paying much attention to that lyric.

The important thing is she got out, and, thanks to her courage, we all have a cautionary tale about the darker side of Life from our old friend, Pat Benatar.