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Singer Morissette: "I also know that I still have a little way to go"
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Eric Robert / Sygma / Getty Images
Alanis Morissette is sitting in her living room when she says, "I'm going to need help because I never talk about it." Then the singer explains that she was sexually abused in the early years of her career.
The "Washington Post" describes scenes from the documentary "Jagged" about the Canadian's rise to become a megastar, which is currently being shown as a premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
"It took me years in therapy to even admit that I was a victim in some way," says Morissette in the film by award-winning director Alison Klayman.
“I always said I agreed and then I was reminded: Hey, you were 15, at 15 you can't agree.
Now I think, oh yeah, they're all pedophiles.
It's all juvenile sexual abuse. "
Who Morissette is referring to remains unclear in the film.
But she also says: With almost every person she has worked with, there has been a moment when the relationship has tipped.
That meant "either the end of the relationship" or "that there is a great secret that we would keep forever".
The age of consent in Canada was increased from 14 to 16 in 2008.
But even at the point in time to which the now 47-year-old Morissette refers, the age of consent was 18 years if, for example, there was a relationship of trust or dependency.
Personal and emotional, angry and powerful
Today Morissette is also considered a feminist pioneer in pop, she was just in her early twenties when she spoke to millions of young women from the soul with her record "Jagged Little Pill" in 1996.
The album became one of the greatest successes in music history, at a time when radio stations did not tolerate more than one singer in the program, as Morissette told SPIEGEL 2020 in an interview.
The film is also about the boundaries that Morissette broke for female singers after her.
In the film, she accuses the music establishment of not hearing her, let alone protecting her: "I told a few people about it and somehow fell on deaf ears." Even in cases where there was no sexual abuse, unwanted sexual advances were the order of the day.
In fact, Morissette, who has always shared very intimate details with fans of her music, has probably already tried to deal with dark chapters from her youth in her eighth of nine albums, "Under Rug Swept", which was released in 2002.
In »Hands Clean«, the first single, it says, among other things, written from the point of view of an older man:
If you were not so wise beyond your years I would've been able to control myself (
If you were not so smart, I could control myself)
If it were not for my attention you would not have been successful (
If I were not so interested, you would have had no success)
Ooh, don't go telling everybody
And overlook this supposed crime
The singer spoke to the New York Times about this song. Whether it is, as suspected, sexual abuse of young people or sexual exploitation? "You could classify it like that," she told the newspaper at the time. On the other hand, she is not someone who thinks in terms of categories. “I'm the kind of person who's more likely to say, 'someone I hang out with in a romantic way,' than 'my boyfriend'. So I say 'someone I was romantically connected with at a time when I wasn't particularly emotionally prepared' instead of calling it 'sexual abuse of adolescents'. "
As a young dance-pop star from Ottawa, she had the feeling that in this male industry she had to choose between "this complex relationship between older men and young women in the industry" - or to forego music altogether.
It took years before she realized that there might have been a third option that she didn't see at the time, namely "just get started, be passionate, express yourself and work with people who have your back."
Liberating knowledge
She had wanted to deal with "the truth" for a long time, she said in an interview with the "NYT".
It was only when she realized that privacy and secrecy were not the same thing that she realized "that I can maintain my privacy and at the same time be authentic and transparent," said Morissette.
And: »The song was of course written for my own healing and not to avenge me in any way.
I also know that I still have a little way to go, especially on this subject. "
In the documentary, Alanis Morissette is now, almost 20 years after "Under Rug Swept", taking the next big step.
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