Lyrics in Focus: "What's Going On" and "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" (1971)

It may be trite to say that history repeats itself. But unfortunately, our world leaders rarely seem to learn from their mistakes.

When Marvin Gaye released his landmark album, What's Going On, in 1971, the United States was in the grip of turbulent times, as it is again today. Pollution, poverty, and the Vietnam War were all prevalent in the American consciousness. Gaye managed to address these issues of the time in a sonically lush collection of songs that were beautiful, sorrowful, and yet full of hope.

The songs from the album that attracted the most attention were the title track and "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)." In the U.S., "What's Going On" charted at #2, and "Mercy Mercy Me" charted at #4. I brought the album in the car with me a few days ago and listened to both of these songs several times, soaking in the words. They are quite simple, but that simplicity does nothing to detract from the message. Indeed, if anything, the straightforward lyrics make Gaye's heart-felt pleas for social justice all the more powerful. Perhaps our leaders and those of other countries will finally listen. If only things were that easy...

"What's Going On"

Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some loving here today

Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some loving here today

Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
What's going on, what's going on
What's going on, what's going on

Mother, mother
Everybody thinks we're wrong
But who are they to judge us
Simply 'cos our hair is long
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some loving here today

Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
What's going on, what's going on
Tell me what's going on
I'll tell you what's going on

"Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)"

Whoa, mercy mercy me
Ah things ain't what they used to be, no no
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east
Whoa mercy, mercy me, mercy father
Ah things ain't what they used to be, no no
Oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas, fish full of mercury
Ah oh mercy, mercy me
Ah things ain't what they used to be, no no
Radiation under ground and in the sky
Animals and birds who live nearby are dying
Oh mercy mercy me
Ah things ain't what they used to be
What about this overcrowded land
How much more abuse from man can she stand?
Oh, na na...
My sweet Lord... No
My Lord... My sweet Lord

"Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" live, 1972


Sources:

• Lyriki
• Lyrics Wiki
  

Maus: A Survivor's Tale (1973-1991)

When I was a kid, I was somewhat of a comic book reader. I can't say that I was a comic book collector because I never went searching for rare, priceless issues of Spiderman or The X-Men or put my comic books in plastic laminate. Rather, I just wanted to read good stories coupled with pictures.

And good stories I did read. It's amazing that compelling, complex plot lines appear in the comic book medium, but both Marvel and DC have tackled some pretty weighty issues. For example, my favorite comic series was The X-Men, in which the heroes were not only busy saving the world, but were also dealing with and battling racial prejudice.

While I read plenty of comic books, I never got around to reading a graphic novel. This is probably because the graphic novel phenomenon didn't take hold until the mid- to late 1980's, when I began to cop an attitude about comic books and had decided that they weren't worth my time any longer.

In retrospect, that was an unfortunate and misguided decision because I just finished one of the best books I've read in the last several years, and that book happens to be a graphic novel: Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale.

Spiegelman was a pioneer in the alternative comic genre and began writing Maus as a comic strip serial that appeared in the alternative comic magazine RAW, which he co-edited with his wife. In Maus, Spiegelman tells the story of his father, Vladek, who was a Polish Jew and a Holocaust survivor. Those involved in Vladek's story are depicted by Spiegelman as anthropomorphic animals. Jews are mice; Germans are cats; Poles are pigs (a depiction which drew some ire); the French are frogs; the British are fish; and Americans are dogs. At first blush, these depictions might seem to trivialize the events of the Holocaust. But they actually serve a metaphorical purpose, particularly in the case of the Jews being depicted as mice and the Germans as cats. Indeed, at the beginning of the second half of the novel, Spiegelman quotes from a German newspaper article from the mid-1930's that drives home the metaphor:

Mickey Mouse is the most miserable ideal ever revealed. . . . Healthy emotions tell every independent young man and every honorable youth that the dirty and filth-covered vermin, the greatest bacteria carrier in the animal kingdom, cannot be the ideal type of animal . . . . Away with Jewish brutalization of the people! Down with Mickey Mouse! Wear the Swastika Cross!

Vladek's story is like the story of so many other Holocaust survivors. We see the Nazi's seizure of the businesses and homes of Vladek and his family. We see the terror that gripped Europe's Jewish communities as they were herded into ghettos. We see the eventual deportation of the Jews to the death camps in Eastern Europe. And, we see the combination of resourcefulness and luck that Vladek used to survive the Holocaust.

But Spiegelman makes his father's tale unique and engaging in several ways. First, there is the obvious difference from other Holocaust stories: the medium through which it is told. By telling Vladek's tale in words and pictures, Spiegelman permits the reader to take in a story that is more palpable than it would have been had it been told merely in prose. Second, Spiegelman tells us not only about Vladek's harrowing experiences in Nazi-ruled Europe; he also tells us about his strained but loving relationship with Vladek. Finally, and probably most effectively, Spiegelman does not portray Vladek as a saintly figure. Instead, we get to see Vladek's good traits--his resourcefulness and intelligence--as well as his flaws--his mistreatment of his second wife, his overly miserly nature, and his prejudice against African-Americans. By showing us his father's drawbacks, Spiegelman humanizes Vladek in a way that allows the reader to closely identify with Vladek.

Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for the book, and deservedly so. Maus is a powerful book that will have you thinking about it long after you have finished it.

Speak English or else

Organizations like this one concern me. As far as I can tell, those who are are dying to make English the official language of the United States are motivated by fear and ignorance.

Like it or not, Spanish has become the second language of this country. But while our country continues to experience wave after wave of Hispanic immigrants (both legal and illegal), and while more and more Spanish-language television stations, radio stations, and publications are appearing in the U.S., English is not about to be supplanted as the predominant language of the United States of America. This is so for two important reasons. First, Hispanic immigrants today adopt English as a first language at the same rate that previous generations of Hispanic immigrants did. Studies show that by the second generation, around 50 percent of Hispanics speak English as their primary language, and by the third, nearly 100 percent speak it as their primary language. Second, English is the lingua franca of global commerce and diplomacy. With the advent of the global economy in this century, Americans who want to succeed need to speak English. Hispanic immigrants are aware of this. After all, they come to the U.S. to get ahead. They know that the ability to speak English here means more economic opportunity.

If anything, Americans could stand to experience some linguistic diversity. When it comes to countries that have a high percentage of bilingual citizens, our country undoubtedly lags behind others.

Sources:

• Robert MacNeil and William Cran, Do You Speak American? (2005).
• Wikipedia
  

Grammar Girl

Want to get your grammar geek on? Check out the Grammar Girl podcast. That's right--there's actually a podcast about grammar. Mignon Fogarty, the namesake of the podcast, was recently featured on CNN.

For those who are curious about correct grammar yet don't want to get bored to death...

The Four-Letter Film - F*ck (2005)

"Oh, Boone!"

If you slammed your hand in the car door, is this the sort of interjection you'd use? Absolutely not. You or I would probably have no qualms about dropping the f-bomb. But Pat Boone, who is featured as one of the talking heads in Steve Anderson's documentary, F*ck, uses his own last name in place of the most powerful word in the English language.

Anderson's documentary examines various facets of the word: its etymology (the word's history is still a mystery); the political ramifications of its use, particularly in today's "culture wars"; its obvious application to sexual situations; and, its versatility (it can be used as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and, yes, as an interjection). The dissecting of "fuck" is presented through that commonplace documentary vehicle--a series of interviews with people who are presumably learned on the subject of the film. While this documentary technique is far from original, Anderson uses it well by assembling a list of experts from all walks of life and from all points on the political spectrum. Boone is among several interviewees from the right wing, along with Alan Keyes, Michael Medved, and Dennis Prager. Interviewees from the more liberal end of the spectrum are primarily comedians: Drew Carey, Billy Connolly, Janeane Garofalo, and Bill Maher, among others. In between are several experts in the English language, such as Jesse Sheidlower, principal editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, and Reinhold Aman, a scholar who researches "verbal aggression." The end product is a funny, informative, and engaging examination of what the freedom to use this word means to the vitality of our society.

Unfortunately, my review of this documentary comes a bit late for those of us who reside here in Indianapolis, as the film ended its run at Key Cinemas on Saturday. It is, however, available on DVD and would be well worth adding to your Netflix queue. Locals should encourage Rick and Keith at Mass Ave Video to add it to their outstanding selection of independent films and documentaries if they don't already have it in stock. I'm sure that it won't take much to persuade them to do so.

• The official website for F*ck.
• View the trailer (NOT safe for work!)

The Stranger (Matthew Ward translation, 1988)

Standing on a beach
With a gun in my hand
Staring at the sea
Staring at the sand
Staring down the barrel
At the Arab on the ground
See his open mouth
But hear no sound

I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm the stranger
Killing an Arab

~ The Cure, "Killing an Arab"

I remember listening to this song for the first time back in 1986. I was a sophomore in college, and I had just picked up The Cure's first compilation album, Standing on a Beach, and was spinning the record for the first time. The album was essentially a greatest hits compilation, and it was my first Cure record.

Up until that point, I had never heard the album's opening track, "Killing an Arab," which was originally released in the U.S. on the band's 1980 album, Boys Don't Cry. As I sat on my bunk and listened to the song, I wondered why the song's protagonist was motivated to murder his victim. Was the motive a typical one, such as racism, jealously, greed, or psychosis?

Actually, it was none of these. If I had been aware of the song's inspiration--the pivotal moment in Albert Camus' classic novel, The Stranger--then I would have known that the killer wasn't motivated by what one would think was a "normal" motive to kill. Rather, the killer pulled the trigger simply because of the glare of the sun.

As I mentioned in my first entry in this blog, I missed a lot of classic literature in my high school and college years, so my ignorance of the connection between the Cure song and The Stranger was not surprising. I chose to read The Stranger after learning that President Bush read the novel last summer. I figured that if he--a guy who has admitted that he doesn't read newspapers--has time to sit down and read what is regarded as an important 20th Century novel, then I certainly could make time to do it. I read the book with no knowledge of absurdism or existentialism, which are the two movements of philosophy with which The Stranger is typically connected. So I suppose that I bring somewhat of an outsider's perspective to the book.

The plot of the book is actually not all that complex. Meursault, a Frenchman living in Algeria, learns that his mother, who was living in a home for the elderly, has passed away. He attends her funeral, displaying no emotion and a bit of ennui about her death. This, not surprisingly, is unsettling to those around him.

After Meursault returns home, he begins hanging around with an unsavory neighbor named Raymond, who seems to enjoy beating up women. One of these women is an Arab woman with whom Raymond apparently had an affair. Raymond enlists Meursault's help in luring the woman to Raymond's apartment--Meursault writes her a letter to get her to come--where Raymond smacks her around until the police intervene.

After Raymond is released by the police, Meursault and his girlfriend, Marie, take an excursion to a beach house with Raymond. As Meursault, Raymond, and their host, Masson, are walking down the beach, they encounter the Arab woman's brother. Raymond and the brother have tangled with each other in the past, and they get into another fight. The Arab knifes Raymond, so Meursault and Masson take him back to Masson's beach house. Meursault takes the pistol that Raymond was carrying and returns to shoot the Arab with Raymond's gun. The first bullet kills the man, but Meursault fires four more times. As mentioned, Meursault's only explanation for the shooting is the glare of the sun. The rest of novel describes Meursault's trial, conviction, and wait to be executed at the guillotine.

Meursault is a rather unsympathetic protagonist because he cares little for the feelings of others. For example, he won't tell Marie that he loves her, yet half-heartedly agrees that they should marry. And he doesn't blanch when Raymond asks him to write the letter that lures the Arab woman to Raymond's apartment. In addition, Meursault is unlikeable because his attitude toward life is listless. When his boss offers him the chance to transfer from Algiers to Paris, Meursault refuses. When Meursault's boss says that he should embrace a change in life, Meursault replies that "people never change their lives."

Despite these character flaws, Meursault is an intriguing character because he seems to unquestioningly accept his fate after the murder. He immediately admits to the killing. Despite the attempts of his lawyer to explain away his actions at trial, Meursault tells the judges and the jury the truth about his motive for the killing, no matter how strange or ridiculous it might sound. And even as he sits in prison awaiting his execution, he refuses a priest's attempt to get him to accept Jesus Christ as his savior, clinging to the notion that there is no god.

Undoubtedly, others have gleaned different meanings from this story. For me, The Stranger was a lesson in how not to live life. Perhaps that interpretation is facile. But I know that I could never live life in such a callous manner with such a bleak outlook. To care for others, to want to act to benefit humanity, is part of human nature. To disregard that benevolent capacity is terribly wasteful and truly leaves one open to a life of emptiness. I realize that this notion is in direct conflict with the concept of absurdism, but perhaps absurdism is itself absurd because of the human instinct to seek out meaning in life. That instinct is inevitable, and, I would argue, healthy.

Toeing the line

This week, I was reading an article in a very well-known daily publication. The author of the article wrote that a member of a particular political group was "towing the party line." After I read the sentence, I stopped, paused for a moment, and read again. I realized then that the author had made a very common mistake: he mistook one homophone for another.

Homophones are words that are pronounced the same but have different meanings. Homophones typically have different spellings. In this instance, the writer confused the homophones "tow" and "toe." In other words, the writer should have written that the members of the political group were "toeing the party line," not "towing the party line."

So what does the phrase "toe the line" mean, and where did it originate? According to Merriam-Webster, "toe the line" means "to conform rigorously to a rule or standard." As for the etymology of the phrase, English language maven Michael Quinion gives this explanation:

Toe the line is actually the survivor of a set of phrases that were common in the nineteenth century; others were toe the mark, toe the scratch, toe the crack, or toe the trig. In every case, the image was that of men lining up with the tips of their toes touching some line. They might be on parade, or preparing to undertake some task, or in readiness for a race or fight.

So the next time you use this idiomatic expression, make sure that you toe the line.

Post script: The online version of the article in which the incorrect usage of the phrase appeared has since been edited to eliminate the phrase completely.

Sources:

• Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
• World Wide Words