'With western eyes and serpent's breath' describes a mismatch between what the eyes say and what the mouth speaks, 'serpent's breath' seems to me to mean speaking with a forked tongue, i.e. deceptively.
The song is full of contradictions, for example: we lay our conscience to rest, and then 'they' do, perhaps describing a battle where our opponents fall to the same sins we do.
There is also 'the heart of love is their only light' to 'faithless and holding down charity', the innocent who can't wait to crucify, and heroes who are both hidden and candid.
So 3 themes running through the song are:
1) Deception;
2) Things that possess two contradictory characteristics (hidden heroes / candid heroes, heart of love and light / faithless, holding down charity, and arguably western eyes / serpent's breath);
3) Good people turning bad (innocent turning to crucifying, dishonesty).
Interestingly, if we take the line 'western eyes and serpent's breath' to be a straight example of contradiction, and that serpent's breath means evil and deception, then western eyes would signify truth and goodness, implying the theme is not a critique of the west after all. Furthermore, I believe Portishead are too subtle for making such a broad critique. Critiquing globalisation and neoliberalism is one thing, but all of western civilisation is something else altogether. The 'western' reference is still a mystery to me.
@lordsummerisle I’ve written about this in another forum. I’ll start with your last sentence and move backwards. Not long after first hearing this when it came out, I started reading about Western Imperial culture. That’s what “western eyes” means. The westerner’s gaze. On the ‘other’. You also mentioned “the heart of love is their only light” Joseph Conrad’s book ‘heart of darkness” directly correlates with the sentiment of the song and that word play and its title. The “innocent turn to crucifying” for me is about the Native peoples being turned into and treated like savages. Or towards conversion or...
@lordsummerisle I’ve written about this in another forum. I’ll start with your last sentence and move backwards. Not long after first hearing this when it came out, I started reading about Western Imperial culture. That’s what “western eyes” means. The westerner’s gaze. On the ‘other’. You also mentioned “the heart of love is their only light” Joseph Conrad’s book ‘heart of darkness” directly correlates with the sentiment of the song and that word play and its title. The “innocent turn to crucifying” for me is about the Native peoples being turned into and treated like savages. Or towards conversion or death by Christianity. Portishead were super lefties as most musicians were then. Very political. “We lay our own conscious to rest” - we westerns put down our conscious when we pillage and plunder the 3rd world. Then (colonial / Conrad’s time) till now with blood minerals. And we are aching at the view of what we’ve done. And I’m breaking at these seems in shame and utter frustration of what our culture and country has done. UK artists came to be coy but forth with criticizing colonialsm etc at this time. So many bands jn 80s and early 90s started in collectives. Squats. Even Sade lived in one. Portishead wrote a bit about western critique in their lyrics
'With western eyes and serpent's breath' describes a mismatch between what the eyes say and what the mouth speaks, 'serpent's breath' seems to me to mean speaking with a forked tongue, i.e. deceptively.
The song is full of contradictions, for example: we lay our conscience to rest, and then 'they' do, perhaps describing a battle where our opponents fall to the same sins we do. There is also 'the heart of love is their only light' to 'faithless and holding down charity', the innocent who can't wait to crucify, and heroes who are both hidden and candid.
So 3 themes running through the song are: 1) Deception; 2) Things that possess two contradictory characteristics (hidden heroes / candid heroes, heart of love and light / faithless, holding down charity, and arguably western eyes / serpent's breath); 3) Good people turning bad (innocent turning to crucifying, dishonesty).
Interestingly, if we take the line 'western eyes and serpent's breath' to be a straight example of contradiction, and that serpent's breath means evil and deception, then western eyes would signify truth and goodness, implying the theme is not a critique of the west after all. Furthermore, I believe Portishead are too subtle for making such a broad critique. Critiquing globalisation and neoliberalism is one thing, but all of western civilisation is something else altogether. The 'western' reference is still a mystery to me.
@lordsummerisle I’ve written about this in another forum. I’ll start with your last sentence and move backwards. Not long after first hearing this when it came out, I started reading about Western Imperial culture. That’s what “western eyes” means. The westerner’s gaze. On the ‘other’. You also mentioned “the heart of love is their only light” Joseph Conrad’s book ‘heart of darkness” directly correlates with the sentiment of the song and that word play and its title. The “innocent turn to crucifying” for me is about the Native peoples being turned into and treated like savages. Or towards conversion or...
@lordsummerisle I’ve written about this in another forum. I’ll start with your last sentence and move backwards. Not long after first hearing this when it came out, I started reading about Western Imperial culture. That’s what “western eyes” means. The westerner’s gaze. On the ‘other’. You also mentioned “the heart of love is their only light” Joseph Conrad’s book ‘heart of darkness” directly correlates with the sentiment of the song and that word play and its title. The “innocent turn to crucifying” for me is about the Native peoples being turned into and treated like savages. Or towards conversion or death by Christianity. Portishead were super lefties as most musicians were then. Very political. “We lay our own conscious to rest” - we westerns put down our conscious when we pillage and plunder the 3rd world. Then (colonial / Conrad’s time) till now with blood minerals. And we are aching at the view of what we’ve done. And I’m breaking at these seems in shame and utter frustration of what our culture and country has done. UK artists came to be coy but forth with criticizing colonialsm etc at this time. So many bands jn 80s and early 90s started in collectives. Squats. Even Sade lived in one. Portishead wrote a bit about western critique in their lyrics