This is an application of a few ideas from some of the Classical literary critics to an earlier song from Green Day, called “80″, which appeared on their first full-length album Kerplunk!, realeased by Lookout! Records in 1992. I love “80″. It has always been one of my favorites–it’s a great example of how the combination of forceful tempo, sweet melody and slapstick imagery can carry a tragic, passionate sentiment, which is what I love about melodic punk in general. In any case, there are a few ways to surmise how Classical critics like Plato, Aristotle, Horace and Horace might have judged this Green Day song. Below is a clip of the song I found on Youtube, in which the creator of the clip was good enought to include the lyrics.
Before arriving at an outright decision that poets should be barred from his ideal city, Plato talks with Adeimantus about what kinds of poetry should by no means be admitted, seeming to allow, for the moment at least, that there will indeed be poetry spoken, and that it is a matter of censoring what the poets say: “Adeimantus, you and I are…founders of a city; and founders need to know the patterns on which poets are to compose their stories, and from which they must not be allowed to deviate…” Ironically, concidering the charges brought against his mentor, Plato is concerned with the corruption of the youth of the city; he has of course seen the power of poetry to distort the formation of their reasoning and morals by its way of presenting young men with fictional versions of reality which are not necessarily reasonable and moral, not necessarily condicive to good conduct. Therefore, “we must supervise the making of myths.” (Murray, 32)
To this end, we might presume that as Plato did not approve of renderings of the gods that had them acting criminally and irrationally, and renderings of heroes in which they weep and cower, he would not have condoned any such depictions of vulnerability to women, emotional instability and self-mutilational tendencies as “Everything she does questions my mental health / it makes me lose control—I wanna hurt myself.” Nor would Plato have thought suitable to the education of young men a line like “I must admit that I enjoy myself / 80 please keep taking me away”, a gesture of surrender to drunkenness and confusion.
Aristotle, on the other hand, may actually have appreciated this kind of thing for its therapeutic value. Particularly if he had been able to see how many teenagers related to this kind of thing, how it seemed to give them an outlet for some of their loneliness and boredom, and even a reason to laugh at it, he might have called it catharsis (Murray, xxxiii), whereby the young Green Day fan is able to vent and even consumate many of the bothersome and conflicting emotions he is frought with, really by having the song live these emotions on his behalf in a sense, perhaps similar to how the ancient Athenians were able to let Aeschylus’ characters live the life of their fears and tortures by giving them voice and structure—there is a tragic elevation in the pleading chorus line “If anyone can hear me, slap some sense in me!” which is not far from the pain depicted by Euripides when he puts Medea beyond the consolation of courage: “…lost and utterly undone. My enemies bear down on me full sail. And I can reach no harbor from my ruin.” (Brooks, 9)
Beyond what Plato and Aristotle might have had to say about “80″, I think Horace is also relevant, and this has to do with a qualm I have actually had with this song for a long time—longer than I’ve been aware of a critic like Horace. The lyrics about love in the song don’t ultimately jive with the overall theme of the song; love and women don’t seem to have enough to do with the personal torments of being “strung out and frustrated” on account of anxiety to warrant inclusion among such themes. Really, all the mentions of love and “she” in the song are like the pairing of “snakes with birds, or lambs with tigers” that Horace forbade. Actually, the line “Is there any cure for this disease someone called love / not as long as there are girls like you” is a song lyric of the highest caliber. But the real tragedy in the song–expressed in the chorus cited above and compared to scenes from Aeschylus and Euripedes–is one of personal anguish, not relationship trouble or infatuation with the opposite sex. So Horace wouldn’t have approved; he would have seen the catchy love lyrics as “one or two purple passages tacked on to catch the eye” Indeed, “what is the point when you are paid to paint a shipwrecked man swimming for dear life?” (Murray, 98)
Brooks, Jeremy. Medea and Other Plays. London : Methuen London, 1991
Murray, Penelope. Classical Literary Criticism. London : Penguin, 2000
