Wang Chung: Self-Idolators?
My wife recently obtained a collection titled, Millennium '80s New Wave Party, which contains Wang Chung's "Everybody Have Fun Tonight." One line in the song ("The words we use are strong/They make reality") consistently fascinates and perplexes us: Is Wang Chung arguing that we literally make reality by our language? Does reality not exist at all until we use language (a view with which I would disagree on theological grounds)? Or, are they saying that the only world we know is the one that we "construct" via language (a view with which I would be in partial agreeement)? (In other words: Is Wang Chung making an epistemological, rather than a metaphysical, argument?)
Unfortunately, placing this line into the context of the immediately surrounding lyrics doesn't help much. Before the aforementioned text, we hear: "I'd drive a million miles/To be with you tonight/So if you're feeling low/Turn up your radio," which implies that either (a) the singer is communicating with a loved one long-distance, via radio, or (b) the singer is suggesting that while his loved one awaits his return, she should listen to music in order to alleviate her loneliness. In either case, these lines do not appear connected to any epistemological claims.
Then, we hear the confounding line ("The words we use are strong/They make reality"), followed by "But now the music's on/Oh baby dance with me." This doesn't make sense. Why does Wang Chung make a philosophical claim but then instruct the listener to forget about it and just dance? Are they saying that music and dance are more important than philosophy? If so, then why make any philosophical claims at all?
Perhaps a subsequent line can answer our question: "Rip it up - get the feeling not the word." Perhaps Wang Chung is arguing that while we seemingly make reality with our words, there exists a deeper, "truer" reality based in our feelings. We need to get in touch with those feelings while the world around us, the one imperfectly "made" by our language, falls apart: "On the edge of oblivion/All the world is babylon/And all the love and everyone/A ship of fools sailing on."
How do we get in touch with those feelings? By having fun, by "wang chung." "Wang chung" becomes a verb that is synonymous with celebration, and since the band is named "Wang Chung," then it becomes the epitome of celebration, of connecting with the "feelings" that are the heart of "true" reality. Thus, the most important question: Is Wang Chung enganging in self-idolatry, claiming to be the essence of reality?
posted by Kevin O'Donovan @ 21:17
3 comments
3 Comments:
This raises several issues. In order to judge whether "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" is just an "inane, mindless" song, it seems that we at least should - out of fairness - interview Wang Chung in order to ascertain their original intent for the song. Were they just trying to make a catchy tune (and a quick buck)? Or, were they wrestling with deeper, epistemeological questions?
If they say that their intention was, indeed, just to write fluff, then we need to deal with a second issue: does their original intent matter? Is the most important question what Wang Chung intended or how the listener responds to - and interprets - the piece? The audience itself can become the object of study (just look at Trekkies or Deadheads).
I think, if they meant anything at all, that they meant by:
"The words we use are strong/They make reality" is that they "make" reality...as in that made my day, or such and such made the moment. Words and the strength or weakness of them make our reality more fun, harder, yadda yadda yadda....
Don't be so literal.
My comments interspersed throughout. --RSOne line in the song ("The words we use are strong/They make reality") consistently fascinates and perplexes us: Is Wang Chung arguing that we literally make reality by our language? Does reality not exist at all until we use language (a view with which I would disagree on theological grounds)? Or, are they saying that the only world we know is the one that we "construct" via language (a view with which I would be in partial agreeement)? (In other words: Is Wang Chung making an epistemological, rather than a metaphysical, argument?)I think that you are indulging yourself in a false dichotomy. What Wang Chung is saying is that there is no difference between the epistemological and the metaphysical. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Wang Chung, and the Word[s were] "Wang Chung."
Incidentally, "Wang" is Mandarin for "king." Who is this King of Glory? It is the Lord of Wang Chung.
Unfortunately, placing this line into the context of the immediately surrounding lyrics doesn't help much. Before the aforementioned text, we hear: "I'd drive a million miles/To be with you tonight/So if you're feeling low/Turn up your radio," which implies that either (a) the singer is communicating with a loved one long-distance, via radio, or (b) the singer is suggesting that while his loved one awaits his return, she should listen to music in order to alleviate her loneliness. In either case, these lines do not appear connected to any epistemological claims.Here again, sir, you find some sort of rupture where there is in fact only surface tension. Think of the various tangential references that such a quatrain calls to mind: foremost among them would be the classic Golden Earring ditty "Radar Love." In this tune the narrator speaks of driving all night to get home to his putative baby, because he has heard her call to him over the airwaves themselves. The two have a thing, and it's called "radar love"; they've got a "line in the sky," as it were. And it is this very line which redirects the listener back to the idea of a line, of the line, of lines in general, but more importantly, of the lines most often seen in lyrics in particular and writing in general. From the muse comes the word.
Perhaps a subsequent line can answer our question: "Rip it up - get the feeling not the word." Perhaps Wang Chung is arguing that while we seemingly make reality with our words, there exists a deeper, "truer" reality based in our feelings. We need to get in touch with those feelings while the world around us, the one imperfectly "made" by our language, falls apart: "On the edge of oblivion/All the world is babylon/And all the love and everyone/A ship of fools sailing on."Let's not forget whence the band's name comes: it is onomatopoeia for the sound of the downstroke and upstroke across an electric guitar. And so, ironically, the very band's name references something beyond anything but the loosest verbal approximation. Faced with a bunch of fans who can't pronounce their name without resorting to air guitar performances, Wang Chung finally exhort their misguided cultus to "get the feeling not the word."
How do we get in touch with those feelings? By having fun, by "wang chung." "Wang chung" becomes a verb that is synonymous with celebration, and since the band is named "Wang Chung," then it becomes the epitome of celebration, of connecting with the "feelings" that are the heart of "true" reality. Thus, the most important question: Is Wang Chung enganging in self-idolatry, claiming to be the essence of reality?I would argue the opposite: that Wang Chung -- brutally honest in their grip on language's covalent generative power to conceive meaning and impotence to convey experience -- fall back on the idea of language and music as two modes immanent in what Joyce terms the "ineluctable modality of the visible."
Except that here, it's audible.
And except that we might be able to eluct it.
If we try real hard.
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