The song's samples are from "The Violent Years", a juvenile delinquency film about an all girl gang who do all sorts of bad stuff (including raping a man they rob). The leader of the gang is a spoiled rich kid who's dad is always working (as a newspaper editor, ironically crusading against juvenile delinquency) and her mom is a vapid socialite who doesn't give a crap about raising Paula in terms of teaching her right and wrong.
The line/title "So What?" is a mantra/arc word of the film. The gang members use it as their standard reply when asked a question. The film ends with the girls getting involved with a police shoot-out and all but the main gang leader die, with the gang leader herself getting arrested and it being revealed that she killed a cop during said shoot-out. The above mentioned rape gets her pregnant too and she dies giving birth to the child, who then is put into foster care because a judge decides that the editor and the socialite are unfit parents given how they raised a monster.
The song goes deeper though and in a lot of ways, mocks the message of "The Violent Years"; Al's lyrics imply a more violent, nhillism that is tied into the whole idea "being born too late"/"make us saints". The idea that we are all inherently self-destructive and murderous and that society tries to use sedatives or sports and sex ("anal fuckfest/thrill olympics") to make kids channel this rage into other less destructive outlets, to which "so what" becomes less of a mantra and more of a rejection as far as him singing of a young man who is sicken by the hypocrisy of "killing is wrong" and longing to have been born in an era where men could kill and be saintified for their violence and him telling the world, at the end that he's giving into his urges and screw everyone else.
Which makes the monologues from "The Violent Years" more or less a stock reply of sorts: what the media and moral guardians would say about Al's character in the song; rather than actually try and find out why he is so violent, they blame the parents and brand him a thrillseeker/thrillkiller and seek to exploit his crime spree to guilt parents into spending more time with their kids to make them not become killers.
The song's samples are from "The Violent Years", a juvenile delinquency film about an all girl gang who do all sorts of bad stuff (including raping a man they rob). The leader of the gang is a spoiled rich kid who's dad is always working (as a newspaper editor, ironically crusading against juvenile delinquency) and her mom is a vapid socialite who doesn't give a crap about raising Paula in terms of teaching her right and wrong.
The line/title "So What?" is a mantra/arc word of the film. The gang members use it as their standard reply when asked a question. The film ends with the girls getting involved with a police shoot-out and all but the main gang leader die, with the gang leader herself getting arrested and it being revealed that she killed a cop during said shoot-out. The above mentioned rape gets her pregnant too and she dies giving birth to the child, who then is put into foster care because a judge decides that the editor and the socialite are unfit parents given how they raised a monster.
The song goes deeper though and in a lot of ways, mocks the message of "The Violent Years"; Al's lyrics imply a more violent, nhillism that is tied into the whole idea "being born too late"/"make us saints". The idea that we are all inherently self-destructive and murderous and that society tries to use sedatives or sports and sex ("anal fuckfest/thrill olympics") to make kids channel this rage into other less destructive outlets, to which "so what" becomes less of a mantra and more of a rejection as far as him singing of a young man who is sicken by the hypocrisy of "killing is wrong" and longing to have been born in an era where men could kill and be saintified for their violence and him telling the world, at the end that he's giving into his urges and screw everyone else.
Which makes the monologues from "The Violent Years" more or less a stock reply of sorts: what the media and moral guardians would say about Al's character in the song; rather than actually try and find out why he is so violent, they blame the parents and brand him a thrillseeker/thrillkiller and seek to exploit his crime spree to guilt parents into spending more time with their kids to make them not become killers.
The song doesn't say "Die"! It says "Que". It was sampled from Scarface at the end of the movie where he's battling the Colombians.
The song doesn't say "Die"! It says "Que". It was sampled from Scarface at the end of the movie where he's battling the Colombians.