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PaperclipPerfector
7mo ago
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
My wife asked one of her typical "Long drive stuck in traffic" questions the other day, and I want to pose it to theMotte: What pop song written this century would you propose as the new national anthem for the United States of America?
I settled on Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me. It perfectly captures the modern American middle-class self-conceit. It's got a little twang to it without being Morgan Wallen, a dash of country but not too much, reflecting a people that still thinks of themselves as descendants of frontier farmers but really drive a lawn tractor around a suburban three-quarters of an acre; a driving rock beat but not heavy metal, a cultural artifact that honors rock music's past but neither pushes it forward into avant garde strangeness nor slavishly imitates what went before.
The femcel narrator's view of herself as the putative underdog ("She wears short-skirts I wear T Shirts, she's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers") is the kind of self-view every American takes of themselves. We Americans all think of ourselves like that, we're all middle-class or working class underdogs striving against the "system" and its head honchos. We think that about ourselves, even when we're billionaires who have been elected president, superstar athletes who pushed other superstar athletes out of the sport that we already dominated, or the literal richest man in the world. Americans picture themselves as the underdog when they fight wars against impoverished tribesmen across the globe, when they play sports we barely care about against tiny countries. How better to capture that than a song by a thin, young, rich blonde about how she just can't get a guy to notice her. The video presentation adds to the hilarity: she's the only one who really understands the (checks notes) star wide receiver on the football team, they're the most conventionally attractive high school couple imaginable, but they're so unique because she unlike his current girlfriend "listen[s] to the kind of music she doesn't like, And she'll never know your story like I do."
The conclusion of the song ("Dreaming about the day when you wake up and find, That what you're looking for has been here the whole time, If you could see that I'm the one, Who understands you, Been here all along, So, why can't you see?, You belong with me") reflects America's inherent hopefulness and future-orientation. We all think that one day the world will wake up and realize what we have. If we just stay in Iraq long enough, if we just really make the case for democracy in China, if we get antidiscrimination right this time, if we create a path to good jobs for the working class...Americans believe in so many impossible plans it is hard to keep track.
What's your pick and your justification?
Optimistically, Air Traffic Controller's Blame. We had great plans, great hopes, and great dreams; put our future on the line, and instead:
It's not just misfortune or bad luck or our moral faults, as much as pride plays a repeated place: the song isn't a Tragedy. Our choices were bad, our plans faulty, our hard work not enough. Our 'home' wasn't our place, our lessons wasted. The rules we followed brought us to this.
And in the process:
The shallow read for the title is "Don't Blame" yourself for your own failures, and as selfish as that seems it's a useful rejoinder to depressive tendencies, but I think that misses the deeper answer:
That is, there's more to this country than The Politics of Grievance; picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and trying again matters more than pointing fingers at who is at fault. You're not dead yet. It's not the best description of the current politics of this country, but then again I'm not sure the Star-Spangled Banner was a great description of the politics of 1812.
As what the country wants to be, should be, though... there's a reason that this theme's been resonant in a lot of recent works: I point to FFXIV or Chuubo's for doing it especially well, but they're far from unusual in touching it.
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