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by SaraH
I felt that Avril Lavigne's hit song Sk8er Boi was rather problematic ever since the first time I heard it. The song is about a young boy having feelings for a girl that is very different from him, and maybe vice versa, but they never started anything. Years later the boy became a rock star, the girl a young mother. The song ends with the scene of the girl in the crowd "looking up at the man that she turned down", and the singer (in this case Ms. Lavigne), who is dating the boy now, feels deeply sorry for the girl, because she missed such a fantastic guy and now leads an uneventful, domestic life.
Immediately after hearing the song I wondered if Ms. Lavigne was indeed entitled to judge the lady that way. As a wise old saying goes, "One man's meat is another man's poison"; the same goes for love, "One woman's dream lover is another woman's nightmare." From the lyrics, the girl turned the boy down for good reasons - "he was a punk; she did ballet". Even if they got together in a fit of passion, I would imagine that the difference in life-style choice would cause them to drift apart eventually. If the girl chooses to get married and have a child early in her life, maybe an entertainer's life is just not for her. I, for one, would most likely shun a relationship with a punk star, despite all the glamor and excitement promised by it.
The same feeling surfaced again as I listened to Girlfriend. By then I had realized how Ms. Lavigne's songs represent a sort of superior judgment over others - she believes that her preference for flamboyance and repugnance by commonness is universal.
It is interesting to consider another song that represent almost a kind of judgment on the opposite side. "I've Never Been to Me" is a song about a woman's longing for simplicity and mundaneness after a life of wild adventure and breath-taking excitement. What is ironic is how she asks other women to stick to their husbands and kids while numerating her various exotic escapades and colorful encounters. She seems to be saying, "I had an extraordinarily wonderful life, but all that was just a pretty illusion. You family is real, so don't envy me." If you ask me, this sounds pretty lame. It is easy to dispose of the significance of an eventful life and exalt the everyday triviality once you've lived that life; but for those who haven't, the charm is always there. Life is elsewhere, so says Kundera.
We judge because it's so easy to forget how different people can be. Since we have spent our whole lives with ourselves, our tastes and beliefs all seem to be so naturally true that they're often taken for granted without questioning. Yet, this is precisely what we need to remind ourselves against, for judgments leave marks on other people's feelings, and these marks are not easy to undo.
In the good old times before democracy, power could often protect the powerful from being judged. From that came extraordinary beauty and extraordinary evil. It's not easy to do that now. Maybe that's why petty dramas mark our time, not great tragedies or marvelous miracles.
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Posted by shera on 2008-10-11 00:39:36 | Rating: | Views: 33
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Isnt it ironic you judging her for her way of judging/evaluating another?:P A viscious cycle.
But, the way your mind works...Im not sure if its too much talk or a very intriguing analysis:)
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Posted by brainstormer
on 2008-10-13 13:10:48
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Good writing. Always following.
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Posted by fanxia
on 2008-10-22 17:11:23
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I can say the same thing about you, Katherine.
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Posted by shera
on 2008-10-24 14:48:06
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