This April marks the 24th year of official Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) observance. The month, dedicated to the spread of “awareness and prevention of sexual assault, harassment, and abuse,” includes efforts to “stop sexual assault before it happens by changing behaviors and promoting respect.” Every year, the month has a different theme, and this year’s is “Together We Act, United We Heal.” One song that demonstrates this theme is Lady Gaga’s 2015 song “Til It Happens To You.”
Though the song’s lyrics don’t explicitly make mention of sexual assault (in fact, co-writer Diane Warren said it’s flexible enough to “relate to anything you want”), its context makes clear its message. Written for Kirby Dick’s 2015 documentary “The Hunting Ground”—a film the Sundance Film Festival billed as a “piercing, monumental exposé of rape culture on campuses”—Gaga’s string-backed ballad expresses frustration with platitudes delivered by people who don’t understand. “You tell me it gets better … How could you know / 'Til it happens to you, you don't know how it feels,” she sings. As a survivor of sexual assault herself, Gaga does understand; when she says to “hold your head up and be strong,” she speaks from a place of genuine empathy.
The song’s music video (which doubled as a public service announcement), written and directed by Catherine Hardwicke, was released on Sept. 18, 2015 (the same day “Til It Happens To You” was officially released to streaming). Described by Entertainment Weekly as “powerful, disturbing and emotional” and by Billboard as “distressing,” the video opens with a title card warning that the video contains “graphic content that may be emotionally upsetting.” Unfortunately correct, the opening additionally notes that the depictions it contains reflect “the reality of what is happening daily on college campuses.”
The video shows the sexual assault of four college students and their attempts to cope in the aftermath. The video captures the diversity of experience: The rapists range from strangers to familiar faces, the situations from party roofies to the bathroom, and the survivors from a variety of racial backgrounds and genders. The end of the video features the four students and a crowd of other men and women walking through a hallway with linked arms. The conclusion also directs the viewer to helpful resources and includes another harrowing statistic: “1 in 5 college women will be sexually assaulted this year unless something changes.”
During the 88th Academy Awards season, the song was nominated for Best Original Song, an achievement which Gaga dedicated to survivors of sexual assault, saying the song “len[t] a voice” to them and their families. At the awards ceremony, she emphatically performed the song solo in a white dress at a white piano before being joined on stage by a crowd of fellow survivors. As the audience stood with applause, she and the men and women joined hands, raising them to reveal messages on their arms: “Survivor,” “It happened to me,” “Unbreakable.”
The song, its music video and the movie it was written for shine a light on the realities of surviving rape, especially emotionally. Throughout all of them, however, there is also a sense of solidarity and transcendence, a reminder that survivors of sexual assault are not alone. According to Warren, “that’s what it’s all about.”
General resources for survivors of sexual assault can be found here. Andrews’ Title IX reporting instructions can be found here. If you would like to someone, available resources include the National Sexual Assault Hotline and Andrews’ Counselling and Testing Center.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.