Another one similar to the “Every Breath You Take” usage in the OP: “I Will Always Love You” is used to show undying love. Well, sort of, except that the singer is showing that love by leaving the other person because the relationship is not the right thing for them.
With that mess of melisma, how can you tell? By the time she gets to the end of a verse, I can’t remember where she started!
*Whitney version, anyway. I can’t complain about any aspect of Dolly’s original.
“Lust for Life” by Iggy Pop gets interpreted as a life-affirming ode to Living For the Moment ™, when it’s actually a bit darker than that. Similarly, Timbuk 3’s “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades,” a song about looming nuclear destruction, is usually interpreted as “hey, the future’s looking’ good!” (I recall it being used a lot in the years shortly after its release as a graduation anthem).
“Closer,” by Nine Inch Nails, is part of a concept album detailing a man’s spiral into depression (therefore the title, The Downward Spiral), and is pretty much about a person sexually using another in order to not feel empty and broken-- one stop on the man’s descent into self-hatred and loathing. People seem to love it, though, as an ode to primal sex.
Kind of as an aside, one pop-culture reference that I always chuckle over is with Kroger’s house brands of pet foods and supplies. Kroger has licensed Disney properties for its stuff; cat food is under the “That Darn Cat” name, for instance. The dog food brand is “Old Yeller.” Yes, now your dog can suffer the same fate as the movie’s Old Yeller, for a low price!
And a Habanera is a 19th century style of Cuban dance music… so 3 strikes, they’re out.
In other news:
Our Country by John Mellencamp is, well, did you just get an image of flags waving, stereotypical patriotic Americans crying at just how AWESOME this song describes our country to be? Umm… well…
That’s two of the earlier verses. Still sound like a pride song?
Well, now let’s put the last verse everyone knows in cotext:
It’s not a national pride song, the song is basically saying “come on guys, this place sucks, can you at least try to pretend to help people? Pretty please? I know we’ll get there eventually but you guys should probably work at it!” Using it to mean “national pride” is like trying to use John Lennon’s Imagine to say “the world is perfect already!”
“Always look on the bright side of life!”
“John Barleycorn” sounds like it’s about a murder, but it’s actually about harvesting barley.
THough I sniped at Annie, and though the Bible isn’t exactly “pop” culture, there is certainly a book of the Bible that’s used as an example of a virtue that the protagonist definitely does NOT possess.
The millions of people who’ve used the phrase “the patience of Job” must not have not read that book! Job is NOT patient! He’s furious at God, and spends most of the book furiously (and sarcastically) demanding that God show himself and give a good explanation of why His servant is being allowed to suffer.
The first and most commonly-sung verse of “You Are My Sunshine” is very nice and happy. However, other bits of the song…
Ouch!
Also, this is a cool article about the song Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, about how the original (non-included) lyrics for the version in Meet Me In St. Louis are dark and sarcastic. The version that did appear and then went on to become famous is much sweeter. Read the article, it’s cool.
Greg Lake’s “I Believe in Father Christmas” is often considered to be a traditional holiday tune, but the lyrics are actually a scathing attack on Christianity.
Again, this is not so much “pop” culture, but…
We’ve seen several examples of ANTI-patriotic works being treated as patriotic. But believe it or not, the opposite sometimes happens.
Every year, right around November 11th, you can be sure people will reprint the poem “In Flanders Field,” by Canadian colonel John McCrae. It will tug at our heartstrings with itssad, anti-war message:
*In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields. *
That’s USUALLY where they leave off. Problem is, it’s NOT an anti-war poem. It’s a jingoistic, PRO-war poem! The last verse goes:
*Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields. *
In other words, the message people usually take away is, “How sad… war is awful, and we must seek peace.”
The real message of the poem is, “Those goddamn Kraut bastards killed us! Now YOU owe it to us to pick up a gun and AVENGE us! THAT’S the only way we’ll ever have eternal peace.!”
And turning it into beer and whiskey.
Whitney version? Of what are you speaking? Next you’ll be telling me that they made a sequel to Highlander.
Hunters and Collectors’ Throw Your Arms Around Me is often described as the Australian national ballad, and according to the industry it’s the song most often played at Australian weddings.
Naturally it’s about break-up sex and how it’s better in the planning than the execution and in its original form (it’s been recorded a few times with subtly different lyrics each time) it ends with a very stalkerish implication - that “though you’ll disappear out of view/You know I will never say goodbye”.
But, you know - pretty ballad about how great twoo wuv is.
Not really pop culture, but Shakespeare’s " The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers" is often read as “Hey look, Shakespear hates lawyers too!” In fact the line is spoken by a villain who wishes to foment violence and chaos.
I resurrected this zombie thread because Antonin Scalia just provided me with another very famous literary quote that actually means the opposite of what people think.
Almost no one reads or watches George Bernard Shaw’s plays any more, but thanks to Robert Kennedy, everyone knows one piece of Shaw’s “Back to Methuselah”:
“You see what is and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.”
Everyone seems to think that’s an idealistic, inspirational quote. But you know who says it in Shaw’s play? The devil. Or, if you prefer, the serpent who’s trying to convince Eve to defy God.
This thread reminded me of the scene of Piper trying to explain Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken in Orange is the New Black.
Yes and no, yes as the serpent is the one telling it, but Bernard Shaw was an atheist and later in life became a mystic that still accepted evolution, for him the serpent was really a “take that!” parody of what the serpent was to religious people (the devil). For Shaw the serpent was, as Joseph Campell can tell you, the symbol of life throwing off the past and continuing to live.
So, Scalia is the one misinterpreting what he thinks was a great gotcha, it is really Scalia the one that was hoisted by his own petard.
Howard Beales speech is great and is inspiring in just the way Beale, the author, the director and the public intended.
You lost the context, zombie dude
Nonsense. Scalia understood perfectly what Shaw was getting at, and he opposes Shaw’s nihilism.
It was the clueless Robert Kennedy who had no idea what Shaw was getting at, took a sacreligious quote out of context, and tried to make it sound idealistic.
Not really for the simple reason that god is not mentioned at all regarding the interaction of EVE and the serpent, it is indeed about the snake being the symbol of life throwing off the past and continuing to live.
And that in context shows that Scalia trying to make the snake to be about “evil” was wrong, and it is even more wrong when one takes into consideration what Scalia was trying to do with that “gotcha” to use that as a defense of his reprehensible view of the separation of church and state is very underwhelming once we do become aware of the larger context.
When Austin Powers cocks an eyebrow to a comely young supermodel and says “Oh, behave!”, I don’t think he actually wants her to behave.