| Oingo Boingo – Not My Slave Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Subordinate TO (not who) | |
| Oingo Boingo – Not My Slave Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Rather than being merely about marriage and traditional values, I view this as being more subtle -- There's certainly a degree of societal values and expectations included here; however, I view this as more generally discussing the idea that people in a relationship should not be defined entirely through their new "couple" dynamic, but remain entities in their own right. The fire in her eyes that he never wants to go out is individualism -- after all, you fall in love with an individual, not "your other half". I think it's fairly strongly implied that in informing his partner of his views on how things should be he is implicitly stating that this should cut both ways -- the narratives society wants to create for us are subordinate who what we write on the own pages of our personal books. | |
| Dire Straits – The Man's Too Strong Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I'm currently using this song with my year 11 students to look at the way texts may be interpreted differently. I think the very obvious, dominant, reading is always going to be the idea that this is some sort of underling of some monster from history like Adolf Hitler, making excuses for getting swept up in Fuhrer-mania and being, as a result, partially (or greatly) responsible. Someone else suggested the song might be about Rudolf Hess; however, as much as Hess wasn't directly responsible for most Nazi atrocities due to being imprisoned in London for most of the war, he was still a pretty avid Nazi. While his life sentence in Spandau seemed excessive for someone who wasn't actually there when these things were happening, he doesn't strike me as particularly repentant. I view this more along the lines of a lower-level soldier or functionary who either went along blindly or did so out of fear of recriminations. BUT Your interpretation is going to depend on who you think "The Man" might be. What if it's not a real person but a metaphor? What if "wars", "torture" and so forth are also metaphors on various levels? "The Man" could be the base savagery within the human psyche. I did these things (literal or metaphorical) because I can't control myself. "The Man" could be The Devil -- "I can still hear his (beguiling) song", references to Judas Iscariot (silver) and the possibility that "father" here is a priest at a confessional. The devil made me do it! "The Man" could be an organisation or group or even an ideology that it is difficult to go against. Could we be talking about some of the negative history of the church? "legalised robbery and called it belief". The confessional vibe could be one of bitter irony. Could the wars and armies refer to the crusades? I think it's quite clear that we're drawing quite heavily on Nazi activities such as rewriting history via book burning; however, these could be symbolic of similar concepts employed elsewhere. To some extent, exactly who you view "Father" to be can also influence your reading. Is it a priest? Is it the speaker's actual father? Is it God? Is it someone else? Now, all that's left for me is to leave a big GRRRRRR here for my class if they are reading this. I told you guys not to Google the answer! :) |
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