Fucking the Man
Does rock no longer concern itself with bothering "The Man"? With frying The Man's tiny little square brain? I mean, it used to be a war. A war we thought would rage for ever. Rawwwk VS The Man. Good VS Evil. Daddy VS Chips.
The Man would generally be personified (in rawwwk videos) by, well, a man. A small petty man. A man with a bow-tie and glasses. A man whose perpetually pursed lips signified square society's disapproval of rawwk's liberating craziness. A man whose glasses would be routinely shattered by the awesome power of shredded guitar.
Example? Check out the fogyish bank manager type at 0:52 in the awesome video for Judas Priest's awesome Breaking the Law (aka Breaking yer Specs):
Ho ho. Take that 4 eyes!
The Man, of course, is the eternal foe of wild, Bacchanalian joy. Singing, dancing, 10 minute guitar solos – The Man has no need for such things. His only loves (the wizened miserable old bastard) are money, order, piety and Werther's Originals.
45 years before Judas Priest broke laws (and blew minds) another impish rebel was pushing against the bonds of square Patriarchal oppression. I refer, of course, to Shirley Temple in Curly Top.
Singing? Raucous good cheer? Children's laughter? In the orphanage? Madame! This is an outrage! Shirley and pal hold firm though and tell him to get stuffed. Theirs is the spirit of rawwwk. It's Rob Halford's favourite movie.
So where are the 21st century heirs to the Halford/Temple legacy? Where are the glasses smashers?
November 30, 2009
4 responses to Fucking the Man
Hmm, wasn’t every Shirley Temple movie all about her pleasing daddy in one incarnation or another? The one with the bandaged dude she slobbered over sticks out in particular. I’ve always pegged her as a collaborator, a lap cat of patriarchy, if you will. And she was the torment of Picola Breedlove in Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.”
I’m kidding, of course.
Ha! Shirley was all things to all people, such was her curly-headed ability to beguile. Ever single one of her films has a radical subtext though. Every single one.
I do love American films from the early-mid 30s. You see the last flowering of a popular “Working Man/Woman” VS “Heartless authority figure” sentiment. One soon to be swept away when the Commies became the ultimate bad guys.
I don’t understand why they were robbing the bank in the first place. Seeing as they were there to recover their OWN Gold disc of ‘British Steel’. Surely they could have just sent Rob Halford in with 2 forms of I.D and a current utilities bill and they could have saved the trouble.
“You don’t know what it’s like” Screams Halford upon its retrieval.
“i just want a nice cup of tea and some sensible trousers but i’ve got a reputation to uphold”, he can be heard to sing as they drive off into the sunset.
@Devo
Halford also claims to be “out of work and down”. Eh? Gold record! You’re doing fine, Rob. It’s one lie after another.