| Manic Street Preachers – Pretension/Repulsion Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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It makes sense given the way the lyric runs that the core meaning is to be found in the chorus "Shards oh shards The androgyny fails Odalisque by Ingres Extra bones for sale Born-a-graphic vs pornographic" My take on it is that it is another lyric musing on sexual and with it personal failure, and the sexual / personal isolation it both stems from and and results in. This seems to be a running theme in Richey's lyrics from this period. He feels cast adrift by the combination of his personality and sexuality and the conflict therein. As far as I know he was straight, but not a "man's man". He recourses to his "feminine" self / self-image but he has found this to be no path to success when it comes to attracting women. It seems that he ponders, perhaps in light of this failure, that this approach is pretentious, that he has no real right to deny his masculinity, and has chosen the wrong path all along. He is repulsed by himself for this, and frames women's rejection of him as repulsion, that they must be repulsed by it. He is left with "shards", and, in a perhaps tongue-in-cheek reference / comparison, "extra bones for sale", a la the Odalisque by Ingres. The conflict and gap between himself and the world is framed in "born-a-graphic vs pornographic" The words in the verses detail the struggle of this conflict, and the veering between pretension and repulsion. I may be entirely wrong, but it seems to make sense. |
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