BOC: Swastikas and Me.262s!

Ted O. Jackson TOJACKSO at HAWK.SYR.EDU
Thu Apr 25 15:52:04 EDT 1996


Andy says:

> Thinking about "Me 262" (the song, that is, not the plane :)...  I think it
> would still be a good song even if it went "I wanna rock you all night long",
> okay, but what makes it a *great* song is the lyric - which is wonderfully
> subversive!  It presents a scene from World War Two, and invites us - and
> it's intended, really, for a US audience, but it works in Britain just as
> well (if not better) - to identify with "the enemy"; to be open-minded enough
> to see things from their viewpoint.  This is *really* unusual - of all the
> many WW2 films, for instance, I can only think of two, off-hand, which are
> told from a German point of view (_Cross of Iron_ and _The Keep_, fwiw), and
How about the amazing 'Das Boot?'

> in neither of those are they fighting western troops.  What the song's
I'm not sure who the enemy is in this one. UK?

> saying, I think, is "the Germans are no different from us".  [Which is of
> course an entirely different statement from "we are Nazis", but these nuts
> with an irony by-pass will never figure that out.]
>
Agree up to a point, but the inclusion of the marching feet and
cheering crowds tends to celebrate militarism a bit too much for most
listeners.  But, of course, the fliers in those 'fortresses' are
waging war upon Germany just the same, and bombing civilians as well
as munitions plants.  So, plenty of killing to go around.

> The symbol, too, is meant to be subversive - I always felt it was
Ironic that the hooked cross be displayed on an ME262, given that the
hook could be taken as similar to the sickle, an element of Soviet
symbolism.  And from what little I read, the Germans seemed to truly
hate the Russians [or more likely, Bolshevism] more than any of their
other enemies.

> deliberately not anything in particular, but reminiscent of all sorts of
> things; but mainly meant to look *pagan*.  Together with the name of the
> band, it conjures images of unspeakable rituals from the depths of
> pre-history...  Which is really cool!  (But, of course, doesn't mean the band
> advocate, or participate in, unspeakable rituals - you'd have to be pretty
> simple-minded, or else in the moral majority, to think that!)
>
Well, now, I think we're onto something!  Iconoclasm, irreverence,
humor, disquiet--all key elements of BOC's music.

> I guess the upshot is that by deliberately being unsettling and subversive,
> they managed to upset some "squares".  Right on!
>
> - Andy
Yes!
theo

New and noteworthy:  Richard Thompson, You? Me? Us?



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