Once again, the Dead Kennedys remain as relevant as they did when they wrote this song. They managed to pinpoint a disturbing aspect of our culture that still runs strong today, and sarcastically tear it to pieces.
The most commonly portrayed image of a "hero" is the man who is tough and rugged- physically enough to kill anybody, and mentally enough to have no qualms with killing anybody or watching his friends be killed.
Violent war movies and video games, designed for young adults who are just the right age to join the army, then fail to show some of the more horrific aspects of war, and because they are impersonal and "fake," people begin to disassociate killing with the feelings of disgust and terror that they should feel. And with video games in their infancy when this song was released, Jello really did show incredible insight by mentioning them- I'm not saying he predicted the future or anything, but realizing then the implications of their illusoriness really was brilliant.
In Don Quixote, one of the most well-known scenes is when Don Quixote attacks a field of windmills, thinking they are giants (throughout the story he performs dozens of brave and heroic acts against mundane objects, thinking they are "enemies.") What is probably meant in the song is that wars and enemy combatants don't exist in the way that people think they do- they enter war with an idea that they are fighting inept, nameless, evil henchmen, when those enemies exist only as much as Quixote's giants did.
And of course, we habituate children to the "normality" of war by bombarding them with toys and images glorifying it.
In the end, the people who lose are the people who buy into it and become cannon fodder- a tool used to push militaristic strategy. Actually, we all lose...
And yes, "bullshitter in an Indochina shop" is one of the most ingenious play on words I've ever heard.
Once again, the Dead Kennedys remain as relevant as they did when they wrote this song. They managed to pinpoint a disturbing aspect of our culture that still runs strong today, and sarcastically tear it to pieces.
The most commonly portrayed image of a "hero" is the man who is tough and rugged- physically enough to kill anybody, and mentally enough to have no qualms with killing anybody or watching his friends be killed.
Violent war movies and video games, designed for young adults who are just the right age to join the army, then fail to show some of the more horrific aspects of war, and because they are impersonal and "fake," people begin to disassociate killing with the feelings of disgust and terror that they should feel. And with video games in their infancy when this song was released, Jello really did show incredible insight by mentioning them- I'm not saying he predicted the future or anything, but realizing then the implications of their illusoriness really was brilliant.
In Don Quixote, one of the most well-known scenes is when Don Quixote attacks a field of windmills, thinking they are giants (throughout the story he performs dozens of brave and heroic acts against mundane objects, thinking they are "enemies.") What is probably meant in the song is that wars and enemy combatants don't exist in the way that people think they do- they enter war with an idea that they are fighting inept, nameless, evil henchmen, when those enemies exist only as much as Quixote's giants did.
And of course, we habituate children to the "normality" of war by bombarding them with toys and images glorifying it.
In the end, the people who lose are the people who buy into it and become cannon fodder- a tool used to push militaristic strategy. Actually, we all lose...
And yes, "bullshitter in an Indochina shop" is one of the most ingenious play on words I've ever heard.