On a purely sonic form I love this song dearly, its such a whirlwind opening to an album that i think it was a brave decision to sequence the track in its track one slot, but no matter...
However in regards to the actual meaning to the song I was (un)fortunate to have just bought it the week before i started my uni's course on feminism in media (more a tactical choice on my part rather than intellectual curiousity). So you can see how this following interpretation could be coloured in by my lectures rather than my mind just wandering about.
Ophelia as a lass in hamlet is obedient, perhaps simple minded (though i don't think so) and directly controlled by two men, her father (think track 2) and her partner/twat-like main squeeze.
The name of ophelia (to me) before this song always meant 'loopy fuckwit who can't get her bloody act together'. She is pushed and pulled, BETTER she ALLOWS herself to be pushed and pulled when she should be kicking booty a 'la buffy.
Ophelia was pampered and kept so far away from this reality that most of us share, that she could not see that neither side were black and white. That without the skills to assimilate different sides of the coin she could only descend into her madness and ultimately leave the play dead.
What came from all this when it reached my ears was that I got the sense that Natalie (god bless her boots) was 're-claiming' the name for all that women, the gender/species has become. That womenhood (or gurrrrls) has unburdened itself of the certain inevitability that ladies grow up to have babies and obey their fathers till the right guy comes along to tell them what to do. Not that women in Shakesphere's time where not capable of being independant; if anything they where more independant then than what became of them during the victorian age. However as a 'good' girl ophelia must follow her protocols until it results in emotional breakdown. Ophelia in the song is certainly not a good girl, but nor is she a bad one, she simply is, a women. She is a series of women (or a very multi faceted one) who have fulfilled one place or another. A nun, a socialite, a 'moll', a beauty queen, an idol, a circus preformer and of course a mother. All of these, and i mean all of these showing a strength of character and purpose of varying moral grades. That opehlia in this song is more than this notion that pop culture once embraced so ferverently of a glorified washing machine incapable of doing anything other than being mrs brady. That now someone like myself when i hear the name of ophelia I can remind myself of the wild and shocked applause.
When i took my feminism class I was one of 5 men in a class of 150. And though sympathetic to the feminist movement I found that class to be orientated to dogma - and led by observing calculated trailers and talking about the most obvious and skimming over anything resembling genuine intellectual growth. I managed to absorb more about how i felt about the movement of women in the 4 minutes that this song takes than in the 12 hours that class put me through...truely a classic
On a purely sonic form I love this song dearly, its such a whirlwind opening to an album that i think it was a brave decision to sequence the track in its track one slot, but no matter...
However in regards to the actual meaning to the song I was (un)fortunate to have just bought it the week before i started my uni's course on feminism in media (more a tactical choice on my part rather than intellectual curiousity). So you can see how this following interpretation could be coloured in by my lectures rather than my mind just wandering about. Ophelia as a lass in hamlet is obedient, perhaps simple minded (though i don't think so) and directly controlled by two men, her father (think track 2) and her partner/twat-like main squeeze.
The name of ophelia (to me) before this song always meant 'loopy fuckwit who can't get her bloody act together'. She is pushed and pulled, BETTER she ALLOWS herself to be pushed and pulled when she should be kicking booty a 'la buffy.
Ophelia was pampered and kept so far away from this reality that most of us share, that she could not see that neither side were black and white. That without the skills to assimilate different sides of the coin she could only descend into her madness and ultimately leave the play dead.
What came from all this when it reached my ears was that I got the sense that Natalie (god bless her boots) was 're-claiming' the name for all that women, the gender/species has become. That womenhood (or gurrrrls) has unburdened itself of the certain inevitability that ladies grow up to have babies and obey their fathers till the right guy comes along to tell them what to do. Not that women in Shakesphere's time where not capable of being independant; if anything they where more independant then than what became of them during the victorian age. However as a 'good' girl ophelia must follow her protocols until it results in emotional breakdown. Ophelia in the song is certainly not a good girl, but nor is she a bad one, she simply is, a women. She is a series of women (or a very multi faceted one) who have fulfilled one place or another. A nun, a socialite, a 'moll', a beauty queen, an idol, a circus preformer and of course a mother. All of these, and i mean all of these showing a strength of character and purpose of varying moral grades. That opehlia in this song is more than this notion that pop culture once embraced so ferverently of a glorified washing machine incapable of doing anything other than being mrs brady. That now someone like myself when i hear the name of ophelia I can remind myself of the wild and shocked applause. When i took my feminism class I was one of 5 men in a class of 150. And though sympathetic to the feminist movement I found that class to be orientated to dogma - and led by observing calculated trailers and talking about the most obvious and skimming over anything resembling genuine intellectual growth. I managed to absorb more about how i felt about the movement of women in the 4 minutes that this song takes than in the 12 hours that class put me through...truely a classic