I’ll offer a few examples, and let other people jump in with others.
“Saturday Night Fever.” When I was in high school, teenyboppers were streaming to this movie to worship John Travolta. Only years later, when I finally saw it, did I realize how completely wrong the teenyboppers had gotten everything! The movie is superb, but not in the way TRavolta fans thought- it was a dead-on portrayal of a blue-collar loser! Tony Manero is a semi-literate dork, who works in a low-paying, dead-end job, and still lives with his parents… but he THINKS he’s hot sh*t, because, on Saturday night, he puts on a cheap white suit from RObert Hall, and scores with some ananymous bimbo at some dive of a disco. How did ANYONE mistake this movie for a glamorous glorification of disco?
Bruce SPringsteen’s “Born in the USA.” SOME people have suggested that Bruce is URINATING on the AMerican flag on the cover of “Born in the USA.” WHile I don’t believe that for a second, that IS a legitimnate interpretation, considering how angrily ANTI-American the album and the title song are! George Will and Lee Iacocca did everything imaginable to convince peoiple it was a patriotic anthem. How deaf (or dense) would anyone have to be to reach THAT absurd conclusion?
Allan Bloom’s “The CLosing of the American Mind.” This is one of those books that EVERYONE bought and NOBODY read, except me. Well… okay, everybody read the chapter in which Bloom railed against rock and roll, and everyone read the chapter in which he decried the excesses of campus militants in the 60s. But as soon as he started writing about Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, people of ALL Political persuasions started dozing off. (Michael Kinsley once said that he’d put notes promising cash rewards inside dozens of copies of that book… NOBODY ever called him to claim the cash prize!) Regardless, religious conservatives hailed Bloom as one of their heroes, and liberals railed against him as an intellectual Falwell (or even an ayatollah).
But as a religious conservative who’s actually READ the book, I can tell you that
Allan Bloom was an atheist, who had nothing but scorn for Christianity.
He was a nihilist, who did not believe in traditional morality… or even that there IS a rational basis for traditional morality.
He didn’t hate rock music or 60s culture because they were immoral- he hated them because they TRIVIALIZED nihilism, which he took very seriously!
To Bloom (and to his heroes, like Nietzsche), GOd was dead, and that fact was SUPPOSED to shake people up, to make them rebel against “the system,” to make them completely revolutionize society. But of course, American college kids in the 60s were too shallow to become REAL revolutionaries! When THEY learned that “God is dead,” their reaction wasn’t “Modern society is meaningless! Let’s remold and reshape it.” Rather, their reaction was, “Cool! Now we can smoke dope, have sex, and party all night without going to Hell!”
In other words, Bloom wasn’t angry that Sixties collegians had abandoned traditional morality- he was angry that they embraced a “lite” form of nihilism, one free of intellectual despair.
Okay… enough about Bloom. What books/movies/records can YOU think of that have been hoplelessly misunderstood?
The Beach Boys song God Only Knows has a lot of bitter ironic undertones that I don’t think most people catch. I think the irony would be more obvious if sung by a woman in the sixties.
I may not always love you
But long as there are stars above you
You never need to doubt it
I’ll make you so sure about it
God only knows what I’d be without you
If you should ever leave me
Though life would go on, believe me,
The world could show nothing to me
So what good would living do me?
God only knows what I’d be without you
The works of Franz Kafka have been lauded by self-styled nihilists, even though he is effectively preaching ideals that they object to – protestant beliefs in predestination and original sin.
Pink Houses – John Cougar Mellencamp: A song about how America pisses on its working poor. How more anti-establishemnt can you get, and yet people still see this as an “ain’t america grand” kind of song.
Semi-Charmed Life – 3rd Eye Blind: THIS IS NOT A HAPPY SONG. It’s about how miserable the narrator is with his hedonistic lifestyle. Basicly, the narrator in the song does a shitload of drugs, has lots of meaningless sex, and feels empty and worthless because of it, and finds himself wanting more. It’s written in a happy key however, and thus Disney feels justified in using it for The Tigger Movie!?! Huh?
A plethora of protective parents nationwide have shown their incredible stupidity by trying to have "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"removed from library shelves.
What’s wrong with Louie Louie?
Are you implying that it had dirty lyrics? Are you implying that it didn’t? Are you implying it had any meaning whatsoever?
If it’s the first option, then I direct you to http://snopes.com/music/songs/louie.htm
Nothing’s wrong with it, Pepper. And I know the original song’s lyrics - courtesy of the 'net.
But back in the 1960s nobody (yes, I know several somebodies did) knew the lyrics and we all played the tune. Manny, manny variations of home cooked, and usually a bit blue, lyrics were performed.
The classic by The Dominoes. It’s quite surprising that it ever got any airplay at all, since the lyrics leave nothing to the imagination. (Remember what “rock ‘n’ roll” originally meant.)
Now why anyone would ever write a song glorifying premature ejaculation is another question.
Years ago, Sting used to bitch and moan that everybody misunderstood the meaning behind “Every Breath You Take”. Seems he had hoards of people thanking him for this moving love song that perfectly described their relationships, and he was thinking, “Hey, that’s a song about OBSESSION, not love!” I thought (still think) that if everybody was misinterpreting it, it couldn’t have been a very well-written song, could it?
No, it’s a very well written song ricepad. But the sound of it is very loving, he sings it very lovingly. But look at they lyrics.
“Every breath you take…
I’ll be watching you.
…
Oh can’t you see
You belong to me…”
Yeah, I know when I want someone to tell me how they love me, I want them to promise to stalk me. :rolleyes:
It’s not that the song wasn’t well written, people weren’t listening to the lyrics and using the grey matter in between their ears.
Nah…I don’t buy that. You can’t blame the receiver of the message 100% for not getting it…the sender has to put it in a way the receiver can understand. Both are responsible for effective communication.
