Thursday, January 17, 2013

The Continuing Story of [ . . . ] Forever

It does not take a genius to work out that The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill and Strawberry Fields Forever both have a prophetic message that, as long as God is on Our Side, HAL will not stop in Vietnam, especially after such a horrible loss.

Taymor uses an interpretation for Strawberry Field [of blood] that I am sure John would agree with totally, even if he did not specifically "intend" that message, for indeed John LOVED to have people go into mortal battle over the meaning of his songs, and sit on the sidelines "Watching the Wheels Go By".

But with Bungalow Bill I figure she stepped lightly and wrote-in Bill in code, so as not to get her movie banned, which was what FF Coppola ran into with Apocalypse Now where he had to wait 10 years after 1969 to release it and another 22 years to include the "how does it smell to you soldier" bit in the Detox version.

But back to 1968, Dylan was already public enemy #1 with HAL for suggesting God might STOP wars, per:

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.”

Taymor had already made two very clever references to God On Our Side, starting with Lucy's explanation of how we thank God at Thanksgiving for helping us kill the Injuns, per:

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

Then we see Lucy's parents are off to Europe to have a vacation with their new friends while LBJ HAL takes over Hitler HAL's BBQ duties in Nam, per:

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And then we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

With all that preliminary stuff squared away I will turn to Bungle-O Bill.

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