The 'Blurred Lines' of Marvin Gaye's 'Here, My Dear': Music as a Communication Tort and Divorce Narrative
by Law Events
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Composed, written, and vocalized by Marvin alone, he first thought to do "nothing heavy, nothing even good." Then he changed his mind. The album that resulted? A brilliantly unsettling poison pen to and about Anna, sardonically titled Here, My Dear.
Released in December 1978, Here, My Dear laid bare to the world a marriage gone terribly, terribly wrong. From the double album's jacket illustrations and lyrics, down to the vocal colors and tones Marvin deploys, Anna is portrayed as greedy, vengeful, and manipulative. The work was so upsetting to her that Anna publicly threatened to sue Marvin.
Professor Adamson's talk explores the legal dimensions of that threat, and whether Here, My Dear conforms to or confounds frameworks that inform the performance of masculinity.