Looking to Deep? Is it Possible

In English101 class we do a lot analyzing. We try and figure out of what the artists of songs mean by there music and there videos.  We come up with theories based on what the lyrics say, what the video say, and what the two say combined. In the end we always have at least 4 theories that all make sense. Sometimes 2 of them being polar opposites.

What Does This Mean?

What I've discovered by doing these exercises in class is that lot's of time you can make things say what you want them to say. Yes, there are times when it's clearly black and white what's being said, but other times you can make the artist say whatever you want. 

If I was an artist I'd want to be careful about making anything other than black and white. That is of course if I'm trying to get across a specific message. If I don't care what message I'm delivering is, then it doesn't matter what I do to deliver it.  

I don't think that the script writers of the music videos always have as much put into the videos as people take away. Yes, I'm sure there are some aspects in the videos that are supposed to express what the artist is saying with the song, but not everything. One of the videos we watched in class was "Marilyn Manson - Beautiful People" This video clearly a lot of work went into the visuals. Yet videos like "Miley Cyrus - Wrecking Ball" probably didn't have a lot of thought put into how the visuals connected with the lyrics. I could come up with a ton of meanings though. She could be tearing down the walls put up around women, making it a song about gender. It could be a song about doing whatever you want. Walls can be torn down but it's okay as long as you're being who you want to be. 

There are other meanings for "Wrecking Ball" that you could come up with if you actually put time into thinking about it. It could also just be that someone wrote that song, and to make more money Miley Cyrus needed a music video. So she put herself mostly exposed on a ball swinging back and forth knocking down walls. Two things guys like the most girls and demolition. 

Can we Prevent it?

Is there a way we can prevent overthinking? How do we know if we're just trying to make the song say what we think it should? The best way to prevent this is to keep the lyrics and music video together as one.  Once you separate them there become a lot more possibilities for meanings.  

That goes for anything that you're analyzing. If there are multiple parts, then keep them together. Another way is to look at what the beliefs of the artist or author are. Ten out of ten times they'll be writing towards their beliefs. (Unless it's for a college paper.) I'm sure if you looked hard enough you could find some exceptions, but I'm sure you'd find those exceptions by finding who flip flops what they say they believe.

What to Analyze 

We shouldn't even be spending as much time analyzing things from pop culture as we do. All of pop culture is highly disposable. What's popular today, won't be popular tomorrow.  If we are going to analyze things as deeply as we do, then why not look into Mozart or Beethoven? Look into the writings of Homer, or Aristotle?

We don't gain very much from analyzing all of the pop culture works. It's just people giving their view point of current cultural events to thousands, through songs or writing. To think that they know better than any other one of us would be a logical fallacy of authority. 

Conclusion

We can look to deeply into things. But we often end up looking for a meanings so deep that they don't exist, because of the society we live in. We don't have to though. We can avoid wasting our time by keeping the parts of a work together, and analyzing only things that matter.

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