Well, here's the thing. If you take something that is deeply woven into the culture's consciousness in the form you find problematic, and change it, you are giving people a momnet's feeling of power, to have reclaimed the song from the previous hurtful experiences of it. That can be a powerful tool in starting to reclaim power over something wrongful.

But every time you use a tool like that to reclaim power, you are also restimulating the hurt from the wrong that was done. It's power in relation to the other thing, instead of power as pure human wonderfulness.

So over time, using a tool like that gives less and less of the reclaimed-power effect, and more and more of the restimulation.... it may help people START to move forward from the wrong, but ultimately it keeps them from leaving it behind.... it keeps them tied to it long after they may have been ready to soar as if it had never happened.

It's the reason why you can sway people with a negative, but you can't keep them without a new inspiration-- an inspiration to something better than whatever the negative was fighting against.

~Susan