When I read Sellnow’s description of incongruity, the tune that instantly came to mind was the mystically boppy “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People. The song was the debut single for the Los Angeles indie band and spent eight consecutive weeks at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2011. Its light, snappy, airy beat had folks of all ages dancing or at least tapping their feet, and whistling along with the whistling parts. Oh yes, there are catchy whistling parts, too.
Then there’s this: The song is about a homicidal youth dreaming of pulling off a mass shooting.
“Robert’s got a quick hand …
“He’s coming for you, yeah, he’s coming for you …
“Better run, better run, faster than my bullet.”
More than a decade later, my wife was blissfully unaware of the lyrics and what they convey, though she’d been caught up in the groove numerous times. She’s certainly not alone. It’s one of those songs that Sellnow described: music and lyrics that “contradict one another, which tends to alter the meaning that would have been conveyed via either lyrics or music alone.” I’m guessing thousands—maybe more—got caught up the beat of “Pumped Up Kicks,” sang, hummed, and whistled along, and maybe assumed the song was about sneakers.
In a rhetorical analysis, the meaning here is undeniably tragic. Robert, the main character, is alienated and harboring violent fantasies of killing. While it’s not overtly stated, the implication is he’s contemplating a school shooting with his father’s gun. The song was released a little more than a decade after the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado and one year before the Sandy Hill Elementary shooting in Connecticut, to name just two of the too-many such tragic occurrences in recent years.
Robert is not about to beat the odds, per Sellnow’s comic interpretation. This is the tragic virtual experience of a teen on the brink of hopelessness and deadly self-destruction. This meaning is situated within what Sellnow calls “dramatic illusion.” The song looks ahead to an unresolved future, where the signs point to an ominous ending.
When tragic, dramatic illusion is housed incongruently in an upbeat, intensity-driven musical pattern, Sellnow says a few things can happen: “Listener appeal can be broadened, meaning can be misinterpreted, persuasive appeal can be strengthened, and meaning can be altered.”
What’s your take on the impact of those dynamics in “Pumped Up Kicks?” Did anyone else (in addition to my wife) miss the meaning entirely? Did the groove of the tune alter your feeling about the message?
Writer and producer Mark Foster told USA Today in 2011 that the song in no way condones violence, but rather serves as “an amazing platform to have a conversation with your kids about something that shouldn’t be ignored … to talk about it in a loving way.”
Rhetorically, I find an undeniable parallel between the way a dark message is housed within a snappy beat in “Pumped Up Kicks” and the way youth violence so often goes unseen in a culture where we might be led to believe young people are just fine. The incongruity of the song hides its despair, and provides commentary about a real-life darkness that may live beneath society’s surface layer.
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