| The Beta Band – Life Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I think the first part of this song is about being frustrated with the person you are after failing again and again, and wondering if you can ever change. I'm not sure, but I think the second part of the song is about how when you and have a negative view of yourself, you get discouraged about all of humanity. You see the ugliness of society for what it is, and you don't see the good. This makes me think about that study where they had a group of monkeys, and they noticed some of them seemed depressed and anxious all the time. They removed the depressed monkeys from the group, and when they came back a few months later, all the monkeys had died because the depressed monkeys were the lookouts. They were good at pointing out danger to other monkeys because were constantly worrying about jaguars, (or leopards, I have no idea what continent this was on) and snakes, and eagles. I think depressed people sometimes play the same role in society, unless they slip to far into their depression that they just completely give up on themselves and society, and I think this song is about how it feels and what goes through a person's mind when they get to that point (I was there when I started writing this, but I'm feeling a little better now). |
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| The Knife – You Make Me Like Charity Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I hadn't thought about the sexism meaning in the song, and I think that all makes perfect sense in a beautiful way, but I think maybe the lyrics are also meant to be applied more generally to the "masculine" first world upper class and the "feminine" third world and lower class. The male speaker tries to feel the pain of those less fortunate than he is, but he can't wake up from his pleasant dream while the female speaker tries to do every thing she can to wake up from her nightmare of poverty and can't wake up. She tries to "do it backwards" (possibly referring to how people in third world countries feel when they go against their cultural values to fit into the modern world or when their governments follow the "trickle down" economic advice offered by the IMF), tries to reverse it (i.e. steal from the rich or engage in class warfare), and she even tries sitting astride and letting herself be raped by imperialism and predatory elements of capitalism. The male speaker says "you" while the female speaker says "I" because he is removed from the situation. The next part is about the fortunate first world dweller being moved by a war or situation and getting an emotional high and feeling of superiority from "a cab there to hold her" (ie driving to the ghetto handing out lunches to the homeless for your church) and taking "a plane there to feel what she felt" (ie going to visit a third world country or maybe going on a charity trip to build a house or something) This emotional high is what makes people "like charity," even though it would be more effective if we paid a little more in taxes to aid the poor. The amount of money it would cost to all but eliminate extreme poverty is actually very small when compared to things like "defence" budgets, bank bailouts, and tax write-offs for millionaires (the US is especially bad in this respect, but even the most generous European social democracies consistently give much less than they can afford and go back on promises made to developing countries). The reason that we don't do this is to preserve the good feeling we get from giving as well as knowing there are people who have it much worse than us. So we like charity it is ineffective and because of the high we get from giving. By the way, this has nothing to do with the song lyrics, but please don't use the fact that charity isn't an effective policy to justify not giving. I'd hate if what I wrote here kept anyone from helping someone else in need. |
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