Lie Lie Lie

I guess it's pretty damn obvious, but I think Metric is drawing a parallel to their experience in the record industry early on to what models/actors have to deal with. having your work dumbed down, being shunned for choosing your own path.

This is a reoccurring theme for Metric songs, for a long time they were basically bartered and sold to various companies before they finally decided to become independent. They probably got fooled and lied to before they gained the experience and fame they have now.

These lyrics contain the memorable lines of Natalie Wood, a beautiful American actress. Her breakthrough role came in 1947 in the film 'Miracle on 34th Street', in which she played the role of Susan Walker. She delivered the memorable lines, "Baby, you'll be safe with me" in the movie Splendor in the Grass (1961), and "Why do you never say what you mean?" in Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). Unlike Doris Day, and Katherine Hepburn, who also delivered those same memorable lines in movies during their careers, Natalie Wood also appeared nude in the movie Butterfield 8 (1960).

There is no credible evidence to suggest that Natalie Wood underwent a lobotomy. However, it is well-understood that actresses along with many other women in high-society during Hollywood's golden era were frequently labelled with psychiatric disorders such as "hysterical behaviour", when they were likely in the predictable throes of mental illness in response to untenable social expectations. In addition, there were rumours that this had taken place while she was institutionalized after "Splendor in the Grass". The subsequent treatment of inpatients was likely to include brutal psychiatric procedures such as lobotomies, electro-shock therapies, or psychiatric drugs that many might overdose on in later years. The psychiatric industry was often utilized by the movie industry to deliver these diagnoses in order to prevent them from generating bad press under the guise of offering help, but it was also an industry in which these women were frequently abused and exploited sexually and financially, and offered significant intrusions on their private lives such that many would experience severe mental and emotional distress to begin with.

I feel these lyrics are a clear reference to Hollywood's golden era which outwardly projected lives of pleasantness, glamour, and charm while harbouring this very dark secret about the means by which women were regularly discredited and silenced in order to protect and uphold the reputations of serially-abusive men in authoritative roles. The "question no one wants to ask themselves" is this: "To what extent was she complicit in her abuse?" In other words "Oh and I suppose I brought it all upon myself." This is both a question and a conclusion that many abuse sufferers both fear and gravitate towards, and it's internalization often leads to enormous self-loathing.

Like Marylin Monroe, Natalie Wood died of an overdose of prescription psychiatric drugs in 1981. It is unclear if it was intentional or accidental, but what is clear is that most people with high social integrative talents, such as these actresses, should be less likely than most to require them over a protracted portion of their lives to begin with.