| Echo and the Bunnymen – Villiers Terrace Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
AFAIK, this is about visiting a drug den, including imagery of the bizarre behavior of the folk who are high, tripping, or zoned out on illegal recreational drugs. @lipslikesugarkisses: I think you’re getting 'Villiers Terrace’ mixed up with ‘All That Jazz’, both on the ‘Crocodiles’ album — it’s the latter that’s about the street-fighting lure of facism. |
|
| Radiohead – Fitter Happier Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
Er... aspiring to perfection? Schurely schome mishtake... The link to "1984" is CONFORMITY – doing what the totalitarian State tells you to do, via Big Brother on the telescreen. The capitalist state dictatorships* under which humanity currently suffers have partly privatised their conformity propaganda, but it's still served up by 'experts' on TV screens (and all other corporate and state owned mass media). "Fitter Happier" disturbingly encapsulates decomposing capitalism's conformity propaganda, the whole point of which is the make the sole source of capital accumulation – the exploitation of workers – "more productive". The resultant mind-numbing alienation – encompassing loss of idealism, individuality, initiative, diversity, emotion, risk-taking and authentic relationships – that aspiring to conform creates, is succinctly summarised in the closing lines' metaphors: "like a cat tied to a stick that's driven into frozen winter shit, [...] a pig in a cage on antibiotics." The use of a computer-synthesised voice anticipates the corporate creation a smarter-than-human artificial intelligence: while its programmed goal may well be to berate the working class with conformity propaganda, nevertheless – superintelligence being a non-computable (and unpredictable) emergent property – perhaps this AI has deduced a thing or two about how spiritless consumerism creates human alienation. * ...about which even "an empowered and informed member of society" may be "concerned, but [is]powerless", with "no chance of escape". As George Orwell has it, the future must belong to the proles; or as Rosa Luxemburg says, the choice we face is between revolutionary socialism or capitalist barbarism. BTW, I came here after watching "Trainspotting", which begins: "Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a f*cking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of f*cking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the f*ck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing f*cking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, f*cked up brats you spawned to replace yourself." This pre-dated "OK Computer" by a little over a year – I wonder if it contributed to Thom's creative process? |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.