| The Dresden Dolls – Half Jack Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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You're on to something, Griffer, but I also think it's important to examine the role of the mother as the "bad guy", too. Consider the fact that two of the most common archetypes of female villains are the evil stepmother and the femme fatale. We loathe the evil stepmother for trying to take the place of the mother, but we also despise that we trust her to fill that role and she violates that trust by being cruel and cunning - very unmotherly. The femme fatale, on the other hand, is not a substitute mother (at least not for most of us); she is manipulative and untrustworthy, and her sexuality is an extension of her evil. Her power over people and her willingness to use them causes her to use seduction as a tool in getting what she wants. Thus her ability to love is not an exception to her evilness, but part of it. She is not loving in a motherly, nurturing sense at all. There is definitely a history of sexualizing the faults of men, but it's also a Biblical tradition to consider women deceitful and fear their sexuality. It's worth remembering that there are female roles as well as male roles where sexuality is representative of evil. On a completely unrelated note, my opinion is that the concept of this song being about a crisis of identity was rejected too quickly. Obviously I'm not claiming to interpret this as a song about schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder (and no, they're not the same thing), but I do think that this song is, in part, about coming to terms with the fact that you are made up of lots of different parts, many of which are opposite or contradictory. Who your parents were, who they chose to be, how they treated one another and you, what sex you are, what sex you choose to be, how you are expected to act, how you want to act, what you choose to learn from your parents' mistakes: these are only a few of the millions of things that define you. You can choose how you react to things, but you can't totally remove certain elements from the equation. No matter how much you hate or resent your father, you are tied to him by blood. You can never purge him out of yourself completely. It is like being raped, I guess. In a different sense. You have to deal with your human-ness, your biological impulses and your psychological chemistry, the fact that you are literally composed of one half mother and one half father. It sucks to feel like you're not in control of it. My dad is bipolar, and I've been diagnosed with clinical depression and general anxiety disorder. My dad is one of my favorite people in the world, and we are actually very good friends. But it's tough to have any kind of relationship with a person who has the sort of issues he's dealing with, much less a parent-child relationship. I don't blame him or resent him for what's wrong with me, but I do get angry that my biology and chemical makeup dictate how I feel and how I behave. I feel like I'm being weak sometimes, letting something control me. Even though medicine helps regulate my brain chemistry, it still feels like sort of a cop-out. I can't even begin to describe how guilty I feel. People are ultimately in charge of their own actions. My mom has just one brother. Their dad suffered from severe depression and alcoholism, and physically and verbally abused his wife and children daily. My mom grew up, worked a ton of different jobs, and paid her way through college. She conciously chose not to be like her father and she has made good decisions for herself (excluding, of course, marrying my father, who is bipolar and only stopped drinking when she forced him to). My uncle, on the other hand, blames everything that goes wring in his life on his father. He gets drunk every day. He doesn't try to live well. He has had three marriages and divorces, and his daughter never went to college. I guess seeing that helped me to figure out that even though you can't erase your past, you can choose how you let it affect you. That makes it a little easier to cope with being made up of a million puzzle pieces, good and bad. So, yeah. In a way, we are all multiples. We act differently around different friends or in different situations. You can be many people at the same time; you just have to favor one over the others in that moment. With all of these different people struggling to be chosen, it can feel like having a tiny war inside of your body. It's awfully frustrating to not know which version of you is the real you, even more frustrating to know but not be able to fulfill or complete that identity (for whatever reason - location, finances, biology). If you look at it that way, the hermaphrodite interpretation is not completely without merit. The first few posters were definitely too literal with this one, but the song is about trying to figure out your identity and be who you want to be even if your circumstances get in the way. And not physically being the gender you are inside is definitely a situation where your circumstance keeps you from realizing your identity. |
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| Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Scattered Pearls Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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This is such a beautiful song. It's really meaningful even when taken literally, but some of the images are especially powerful as metaphors. The "older men" come close to injuring themselves, because of the indiscretion of a silly girl. That's almost a warning that guys can't afford to mess around with younger girls. It's stretching a bit, but it's worth thinking about. Then there's the great contrast between the speaker wishing that none of the night had ever happened and her acting like it's not a big deal when she's responding to her mother. I feel like she wasn't trying to be glib so much as she didn't want to admit that she was upset. Think of all the things we lose and can never get back - like great ideas that are never recorded, or lost little charms that meant a lot to us, or our "lost" virginity. The problem here is that the mother presumably cares a lot about the pearls, too. The necklace is an heirloom - a symbol of family ties, ancientness, and, in a sense, innocence. People tend to idealize the past and think of older generations as really sheltered and sterile. Obviously we don't see our grandparents as sexual beings. But even pearls were historically used to signify "feminine wisdom". Pearls also symbolize propriety and dignity, and the loss of the pearls is probably one of a few bad decisions made that night. The girl can't retrieve all of the pearls, and she also can't undo the smoking, drinking, and partying. She seems to wish that she could, but doesn't want her mother to know that she sees that she messed up. |
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| The Dresden Dolls – Sing Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| Actually, I thought that the missing word was "janjaweed", as in the civilian army that's perpetuating the genocide in Sudan. | |
| Desaparecidos – Popn' Off at the F Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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if you're interested in learning more about the inspiration behind this song, you should try and track down a copy of the documentary "atomic cafe". it's made up of propaganda, radio broadcasts, footage from army recruitment videos, etc. from around the end of WWII/beginning of the cold war. the quotes that are used at the beginning and end of this song are all in the movie and the movie itself is actually really interesting. i had to watch it for my u.s. history class and my friend recognized the quotes and played the song for me; it was the first desaparecidos song i had ever heard even though i've been a big bright eyes fan forever, and now i'm hooked on desaparecidos as well. |
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