Comments on: Choquez le singe ce soir

By: Russ

Russ — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 06:58:40 +0000

Hated that song in the 1980s, and still do. But I’ll take Your Eyes or Biko over anything (and everything) Lady Gaga’s done.

By: Caitlin

Caitlin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 20:20:08 +0000

Personally, I think “Games without Frontiers” is far more meaningful. Not only is Gabriel more insightful, but he manages to include a gorilla and the word “funky,” which is about as fun to say as “monkey.”

By: Dr. Virago

Dr. Virago — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 15:09:16 +0000

I just want to say I love Dr. Crazy’s theory, but mainly because *I* think the word “monkey” is hilarious. Just last night, as we were fixing dinner, I said to Bullock, “Can we get a monkey?” just because it was fun to say. His outraged, “NO! We CAN’T get a monkey!” (because I’ve asked this before) was even funnier.

I am easily amused. Also, I don’t think I’ve commented here before, but I’ve been lurking for a long while. *waves* at Historiann.

I always thought the song was about going cold turkey (b/c of the expression “monkey on your back”) but I guess I was wrong.

By: Dr. Koshary

Dr. Koshary — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 12:17:51 +0000

Peter Gabriel did his level best to be very weird in his music videos — really, more so than in his music, which I suspect he thought was oh-so-avant-garde and bound to explode the heads of the complacent bourgeoisie. Looking back on those videos now, I feel like he only got good results from his directors and designers some of the time, and it had nothing to do with how much sense the lyrics made.

Sledgehammer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqyc37aOqT0

Steam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyTLe7Li–s

Really, the best I can say for Gabriel’s video work is that he’s willing to throw just about anything on the metaphorical canvas and see if it sticks. The best I can say for his music is that he’s fiendishly good at writing catchy, hooky songs.

The worst I can say for him is that he bears some responsibility as an intellectual progenitor of spectacle-for-spectacle’s-sake music videos, a la Lady Gaga.

By: Comrade PhysioProf

Comrade PhysioProf — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:03:23 +0000

No! Well, ok, maybe.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:58:05 +0000

Isn’t that what’s still on your mind, 25 years later?

By: Comrade PhysioProf

Comrade PhysioProf — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:33:01 +0000

Personally, what I was thinking in the 80s was:

(1) Who’s got the kind bud?

(2) Where’s the party?

(3) What’s your name?

By: Western Dave

Western Dave — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:05:44 +0000

No, no, wait! It’s an homage to Donna Harraway!

By: Historiann

Historiann — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:54:46 +0000

Man versus man, man versus monkey, man versus. . . himself.

Or, it’s just funny to sing “SHOCK the MONKEY!” over and over and over. Especially if you sing SHOCK in that high voice, too.

By: Western Dave

Western Dave — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:21:06 +0000

Actually, it’s more than about jealousy. At least with the video. Gabriel is pointing to his inner primate (or primitive). Office worker drone Gabriel is a monkey in a cage who, when “shocked” into seeing reality through the experience of authentic emotion is transformed. He withdraws from the jungle/cubicle world (note the transformation of the cubicle into a jungle) to the cleaner world of the neoprimitive heaven that tattooed Gabriel inhabits. The reawakening of the inner primate (emphasized by the shot where Gabriel’s shadow is a monkey in a tree) and the lyric about falling out of the tree is Gabriel’s attempt to recreate the evolutionary descent from the trees to the savannah (and thus the path to civilization) but this time on an indiviudal level and not wind up back in the office/jungle but on the higher plane. Note the romanticization of the primitive here as the anti-civilized that recreates the nature-culture split that plagues the Western self.

What you all didn’t go there? I thought everybody learned how to do this cultural studies shit in grad school in the 90s. Or is it just because I lived with the American Culture students for too long.