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"but you're still fuckin' peasants as far as I can see..."
(x-posted from adswithoutproducts)
Just came across another candidate for my collection of incredibly strange American politico-cultural amalgamations, hybrids, and halfrights: Green Day's recent cover of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero."
Did they actually listen to the song before they decided on this Darfur x-over thing? High-Period Lennon Political Ambivalence (see also: "When you talk about destruction, doncha know that you can count me out... in...) meets Teary Liberal Piety about those Poor, Poor People Elsewhere at the crossroads of unmetabolized reflexivity.
How about this part, as the noble faces of the Darfurians bubble across the screen, and Billie Joe Armstrong sings:
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
Yeouch. Just to make it worse, here's a bit from wikipedia that quotes the band's press release about the song:
When asked why they chose the song, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said, "We wanted to do 'Working Class Hero' because its themes of alienation, class, and social status really resonated with us. It's such a raw, aggressive song -- just that line: 'you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see' -- we felt we could really sink our teeth into it. I hope we've done him justice."
You could write a dissertation, not an acceptable one, but whatever, on the topic: "Who does Billie Joe think the 'you' of that toothsome line refers to?"
Secondary mystification, or simply vapid distraction, "what the fuck, yeah, the Africans, cool..."? Benettonism gone libidinal? Inadvertent self-disclosure, a profoundly unconscious honesty that leaves Lennon's navel-gazing in the dust?
By CR | August 9, 2007 in Specious Rhetorical Strategies | Permalink
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It seems obvious to me, in context, that GD are referring to the peasants of Darfur as working class heroes and the working class of the US as fucking peasants. What could be clearer?
Posted by: CBR | Aug 9, 2007 12:32:29 PM
hmmm... I'm not sure the song can be broken down that way. This is the problem from the start. You're taking a crazy abbreviated self-hating (and everyone else-hating) bildungsroman of a song and bringing it to a context where it just totally doesn't work.
It goes something like this: "Let me tell you how shitty it was growing up poor. It's nearly fucking impossible to make it out of that in one piece. What a bunch of bastards running that game. But, ahem, do you know who's even worse - the shitheads still back there, rolling around on their couches in Liverpool. Or, ahem again, maybe I mean myself, for thinking that I'm any different at base."
Right? That's the interest of the song. Otherwise it would just be a puddle of self-pity. He turns in the third stanza, against just about everyone.
Alternately: given everything else going on, it's the blank openness of the "something" in "something to be" that totally disrupts the sort of reading that you - and I suppose GD - are doing. In short, there is no easy way for the song to be read as actually valorizing "working class heroism."
So. I disagree.
Posted by: CR | Aug 9, 2007 12:47:20 PM
I'll put it another way:
Back in the 80s and early 90s, you'd see on tv little documentaries and news features all the time about "the sixties." Invariably, when it came time to show "radicals in the streets," they'd play Lennon's "Revolution" in the background. "Well, the word's in the song, after all, and he says the words 'Chairman Mao.'" But the choice made no sense, contextually - the song isn't at all a "to the barricades" period piece, but rather a (largely) anti-revolutionary piece posing as something else. (That, plus the little out / in thing in some versions - which is even weirder, right? Crystallizing out destruction for its own sake as something that Lennon is admitting might interest him on some level, but only if it comes without the utopian cant...)
Something similar to what those documentary producers did with "Revolution," I think, happened here with GD. I think they thought it sounded like a really radical song, which it sort of does, but in the end its about something absolutely different... It's a self-reflexive narrative about the inevitability of complicity, not a pass-the-pot piece of agitprop.
Posted by: CR | Aug 9, 2007 1:05:59 PM
So what's Green Day's radical message? "Let's all get sappy, stoned, and ask the UN to do something like send people in with better guns."
Posted by: Jared | Aug 9, 2007 2:00:04 PM
To be fair the whole thing came about as GD's contribution to Amnesty's Instant Karma - wait for it - " compilation album of various artists covering songs of John Lennon to benefit Amnesty International's campaign to alleviate the crisis in Darfur. The album and campaign is part of Amnesty International's global "Make Some Noise" project."
So, its not as though GD decided to cover WCH, and then further decided the video really needed some Darfur themes to bring it all home. The point being that I think this substance of this error took place farther up the decision making chain than Billy Joe. WCH maybe an unfortunate choice, but its also easy to imagine some much more unfortunate ones.
The real question then - if you had to choose a Lennon song to cover for a Darfur benefit disc, what do you choose?
Posted by: squibb | Aug 9, 2007 4:30:35 PM
CR--My post was tongue-in-cheek, naturally.
Squibb's info does shed a somewhat different light on things.
Posted by: CBR | Aug 9, 2007 6:36:36 PM
Squibb,
Helpful information. I still wouldn't have chosen "Working Class Hero," of course. But that does take them off the hook a bit.
CBR,
Crap. Sorry for over-reacting. There's something about this post that makes me all jumpy and defensive...
Posted by: CR | Aug 9, 2007 11:05:18 PM
Irrelevant testimony phase: talked with Billy Joe once, and do not think he prides himself on his piercing critical intelligence, but think he's a good guy.
Irrelevant opinion phase: the great cover of WCH (chillingly better than the original) was done by the rather posh daughter of an officer/professor and a Habsburg baroness — who had, as a dancer, worked with Weill and Brecht).
Posted by: jane | Aug 10, 2007 11:36:20 AM
"It seems obvious to me, in context, that GD are referring to the peasants of Darfur as working class heroes and the working class of the US as fucking peasants."
So is being a peasant a bad thing? It seems to me that the peasants were doing well until we began to 'develop' their countries.
The song would be appropriately used with a video showing North Americans consuming big macs, face creams, and diet formulas.
Lennon challenges the myth of the working class hero; he hates the lies of the system. If one wants to apply the song to Darfur, it ought to be done in a way that exposes the heroism of being a good First World citizen who 'helps' other countries for what it is: a charade.
Posted by: Polly Jones | Aug 10, 2007 1:26:10 PM
The song would be appropriately used with a video showing North Americans consuming big macs, face creams, and diet formulas.
That would take the irony to a necessary level, wouldn't it.
Relatedly irr-testimony: the experience of songs mis)used as blunt propaganda/spectacular "fun": closing the minor league baseball park last night, fireworks snapping to every "American Girl," "I'm an American Man"...ad naseum, so recognizabl(y tortured) (but to whom? were those teenage driving anthums really the best years/the most to live for?) they just blend right in obliterating (as no longer interesting but endured, kitsch) all space for marking the irony's been erased,done gone, the lyric in the lyrics has been lost. Insta-"home" via business brain, trite CEO citation for (projected, injected) nostalgia...or so the times
Posted by: Matt | Aug 10, 2007 9:44:26 PM
The song being standard robot playlist, fwiw, on nearly all the crappy (English-playing) international "rock" radio stations our fancy internets shop radio gets. Like, it's a f$cking anthem, dude.
Posted by: Matt | Aug 10, 2007 9:52:12 PM
the irony in my opinion is that Green Day are sellout assholes and the company that owns them helps contribute to us all being peasents.
Posted by: | Aug 11, 2007 4:13:29 AM
the irony in my opinion is that Green Day are sellout assholes and the company that owns them helps contribute to us all being peasents.
Posted by: | Aug 11, 2007 4:14:11 AM
Regarding Lennon's political ambivalence, this out/in version of "Revolution" was of course the Beatles covering their own song. With the dragged-out tempo and the doo-wop chorus they were clearly parodying the political naivete of their earlier pop-hero incarnation, when you could definitely count them out. And the "in" wasn't in the original lyric -- Lennon was signaling increased radicalization rather than static ambivalence. Whether he meant it or not is another matter.
Posted by: ktismatics | Aug 12, 2007 11:24:11 AM
Actually, the album version was recorded first, so your analysis is wrong.
Posted by: CBR | Aug 12, 2007 4:21:21 PM
I'm pretty sure Billie Joe thinks of the song in his own way. He is probably considering the people in the White House, are fucking peasents too. And all the other high class shitheads who think that they're better than the rest. I don't think anyone really knows who John Lennon was reffering too, but Billie Joe thinks of it in his own way. Same as anyone else, I think that's how the song was supposed to be used. Not to attack someone on how they think of it. Think of it your own way. Does it really matter who Billie Joe thinks the song is reffering too? I'm pretty sure it doesn't. But I could be completely wrong. I don't think I am, though. Billie Joe isn't racist so he wouldn't zone out one group of people. You can't take the song apart. You have to keep it all together.
Posted by: GreenDay_punx | Aug 13, 2007 3:25:59 PM
I'm pretty sure Billie Joe thinks of the song in his own way. He is probably considering the people in the White House, are fucking peasents too. And all the other high class shitheads who think that they're better than the rest. I don't think anyone really knows who John Lennon was reffering too, but Billie Joe thinks of it in his own way. Same as anyone else, I think that's how the song was supposed to be used. Not to attack someone on how they think of it. Think of it your own way. Does it really matter who Billie Joe thinks the song is reffering too? I'm pretty sure it doesn't. But I could be completely wrong. I don't think I am, though. Billie Joe isn't racist so he wouldn't zone out one group of people. You can't take the song apart. You have to keep it all together.
Posted by: GreenDay_punx | Aug 13, 2007 3:27:14 PM
In response to CBR... actually the up-tempo, upbeat, "count me out" version of Revolution was released first (B side of Hey Jude); the "out...in" version came out later on the White Album. However, both were recorded during the same session, so I have to agree with CBR that my analysis fails -- Lennon's ambivalence seems to have ruled the day. That the more optimistic version came out first probably says more about the Beatles' image management apparatus than about the band's political evolution. (I submitted a variant on this comment yesterday, but since it's been more than 24 hours I figure it must really have disappeared.)
Posted by: ktismatics | Aug 13, 2007 6:11:32 PM
He is probably considering the people in the White House, are fucking peasents too.
While there are many, many names applicable to the folks in the White House, "peasant" is not one of them.
Does it really matter who Billie Joe thinks the song is reffering too? I'm pretty sure it doesn't.
Actually, I think this sort of thing really does matter. I don't think Billie Joe is a racist, no. But I do think we're having a really, really tough time figuring out right now what to do with the legacy of sixties radicalism, ambivalent radicalism, what you will. I think our confusion on this point - and it truly is confusing, I'm not being condescending about this - is one of the things that has made political mobilization so ineffective over the past 6 years, and probably further back than that.
Posted by: CR | Aug 13, 2007 10:19:17 PM
to find what referred fuckin' peasants is very easy.this song was written for middle class people.because middle class people generally was kept doped with religion sex and tv.we can see it fourth side of the song.to sum up fuckin' peasants referred middle class people who was subjected to exploitation of the religious and concentrated sex and tv.
Posted by: bosphorus | Sep 8, 2008 5:29:43 PM
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