Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Bartleby - Radiohead


In the video for "Just" by Radiohead, there appears to be some connection to the Bartleby story.  Thoughts?

Just by Radiohead

5 comments:

  1. The song "Just" by Radiohead is similar to the story of Bartleby. The lyrics match up very nicely with the summary of the story. Basically, the author tries to ask Bartleby to move, but no matter how many times he tries, Bartleby always comes back "reeling through the door". Finally, one day the author is able to "get to him" and relocate him to the Halls of Justice. He shows Bartleby the "purest death"; in other words, death. - Charles Pan. Pd. 7

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  2. He keeps on singing "you did it to yourself" like how Bartleby felt the consequences of his actions. And the guy on the sidewalk told everyone they would not want to know but they decided they wanted to, making it their 'fault'. In the part that is not captioned, he says: "I see why everything..." This reminds me of the song "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol.

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  3. My take on Bartleby is that he was stubborn and just didn't want to take orders or seem wrong. I think this is an interesting point of view, though, that he isn't simply being rebellious, but has his own reason that we either don't know or can't understand.

    On another, unrelated note, this kinda reminds me of the smoking ad we saw earlier with all the bodies.

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  4. I think the most interesting line of the song is "And teach you how to be a holy cow." While the rest of the song seems to fit in to Bartleby, with the lock changing and the hanging around for days, this part doesn't seem to make any sense to me because I do not see the relation between cows and Bartleby.

    The 2 ideas that I think it may represent are the expression "holy cow." Being a holy cow means that you are a standout. The other idea is that you literally are a holy cow because cows are revered in some religions, most notably Hinduism. I do not know the reason for cows being holy, but it might have something to do with the lyrics.

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  5. Honestly, I never thought of the lyrics when considering this song. I just enjoyed the plot of the video but you guys are really showing some interesting points in your discussion. Here's a link to the song Zach mentioned earlier:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GemKqzILV4w

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