I’m a (dead) Soul Man
In the accelerating race to the top of the boredom pop chart we have the NY Times review of “American Idiot”, a rock opera by the Berkeley Reperatory Theater. It’s based on the album by Green Day. The Times spends hundreds of words trying to describe the phenomenon of young people emerging from a shrink-wrapped suburban life, disconnected by the mind-numbing screens that surround them. To them nothing has meaning. Words and action are meaningless. Everything then is a joke or a joke based on a joke. Can we see the perceived hopelessness in the economy, the wars, the social fabric of America as having an impact on the psychology of young people today? The “Idiot”, then, as a hero in a kind of war on human sense and sensibility, makes perfect sense . . . as in: “no sense”.
Here’s the song “American Idiot”:
Don’t want to be an American idiot.
Don’t want a nation under the new mania
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind fuck America.
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
For that’s enough to argue.
Well maybe I’m the faggot America.
I’m not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along to the age of paranoia.
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
For that’s enough to argue.
Don’t want to be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It’s calling out to idiot America.
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
For that’s enough to argue.
