"The kids couldn't hurt Jack, they tried and tried and tried..." Jack (personification of global capitalism?) lives on the well-known tax haven, the Isle of Man. Jack is childlike, Myshkin-esque, and the 'kids' can no more hurt him than 'stop the water's lapping' - acknowledgement of inevitablity of global hegemony, or critique of how capitalism propagandizes itself as 'inevitable' and thus natural?
The name of the island is significant, as Townshend repeats it (rhyming with "Wasn't old, but he was a man") - capitalism's relationship with patriarchy? (A theme also alluded to in 'Pictures of Lily', as father passes down the secrets of commodification/objectification ['Pictures']to son, mentioning mysteriously that 'Lily' [pornographic pun, as in 'gilding...']mentioning strangely that 'she's been dead since 1929' - date of stock market crash?) 'Pictures of Lily' uses language of advertising ('I used to wake up every morning, I used to feel so bad'), and the 'pictures' are offered up as the 'solution' to filling the market-created vacuum. (Triumph of the commodity, cementing the role given objects by those who name them - "I asked my dad where Lily I could find, he said, son now don't be silly"). ('Anyway Anyhow Anywhere' also sounds like an advertising slogan - 'I can talk anyhow'= futility of discourse within such a perfectly closed system? Esp. as it's soon followed by "and YOU'RE WRONG". 'AAA''s title is a three-word slogan redolent not only of advertising but of ideology-as-advertising ["Liberte Equalite Fraternite", "Strength through Joy"], with the final 'Anywhere' implying global hegemony, but of what sort?)
Questions of identity-re-commodification (perhaps inevitable in a group with an almost Orwellian divison of labour - the 'Ox', whose Calvinistic counterpoints safely represent an earlier agrarian time)and more specifically patriarchy-constructed identity are obvious in "I'm a Boy" and "Tattoo" ("We just couldn't understand, what made a man a man") - but if identity is merely a collection of marketable constructs ("I Can See For Miles" = 1st-person personification of Smith's 'invisible hand', references to 'Eiffel Tower' and 'Taj Mahal' placing them on same level of signifiers as the 'tattoo saying something rude'), then can identity be fixed AT ALL? (Hint - 'I'm a Boy' makes as much sense - possibly more - if it's sung from a FEMALE p.o.v.) So what is to be done? Continuing to 'drop things on Jack's back', or 'cutting yourself to see your blood'?
― dave q, Monday, 6 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
'son now here's some little something' - obviously a quick
reference to the 'Philosophical Investigations' - the meaning of
the sentence only exists in its enactment - and of course, this
suggests that the 'W.H.O' acknowledge 'the inevitability of global
[capitalism]' - for after all, Wittgenstein's dismantling of
philosophy was also the removal of the last barrier to said
globalisatified capitalism. But my middle name is Lily, so I want
to know, what porno pun? Spare me the euphemisms. LIke,
don't be so deep. Seriously.
― maryann, Monday, 6 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
'What porno pun'? Well - what do teenage boys 'gild' cheesecake pix
with?
― dave q, Monday, 6 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)