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Deconstructing
'C'est la vie' by B*witched
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Jump to: Lyrics | In-depth analysis,| Download the song Throughout the entire Space School Cornwall Eclipse trip, Tak could be found, in turns, humming, singing or mumbling the first few lines to 'C'est la vie' by B*witched. This insinuating song managed to worm its way into my mind, and now I've memorised the first few lines. With the aid of Tak's excellent transcription of the song, we can bring you the lyrics to this song, an in-depth analysis and also (woo-hoo!) you can listen to the song for yourself, through the wonders of mp3.
Oh Ohh Hey Hey x 2
Any errors can be attributed to Tak. In-depth analysis (supplied by me) Exactly why is 'C'est la vie' such a memorable song? What about it has caused Tak to incoherently sing it every minute of every day? And what vile, subversive meanings is it trying to plant inside our minds? With questions of such importance to humanity apparent, I had no choice to investigate further the lyrics of this song. Remember that this song was targeted directly at young teenagers, and even younger kids. With that in mind, I'll proceed.
Ah Ohh Hey Hey x 2 Obviously the singer and/or the lyricist was in a state of happiness at this point, evidenced by the primal sounds being made. But where did this state of happiness come from?
Hey boy sittin in your tree So not only does this girl (the singer) want the 'boy' to come to tea, but her mother also. Surely this hints at some twisted inter-familial relationship between the girl and her mother? Then again, we can't be sure yet. Perhaps the mother just wants to talk to this boy her daughter has been talking of so much.
Don't be shy, straighten up your tie This is strange. This 'boy' has a tie on, perhaps signifying age or formality, yet he is sitting in a tree house. Tree houses, as you know, are usually associated with pre-adolescents, who are generally not found wearing ties in their spare time. Two scenarios exist: a) The boy has just returned from his place of education (school) and has not yet changed out of his school uniform, which includes a tie. b) The boy is working for some undercover surveillance operation, spying on individuals or movements from his 'tree house' which is in reality a sophisticated audio/visual intelligence monitoring operations centre. Evidently the former is more likely, but the latter cannot be discounted yet. Finally, the fact that that 'boy' has been told to straighten up his tie gives further validity to the reassuring fact that all the girl's mother wants to do is to inspect this boy. Let's move on.
From these two last lines, we can determine that the girl is of limited intelligence and/or indecisive - she wants to know what to do, even though she has told the 'boy' to perform a number of tasks (get down from treehouse, straighten tie, etc.). Also, one would expect that the girl would be able to ascertain the size, and thus occupancy possibilities, of the tree house since she can see it, providing she is actually talking to the boy in the tree house. That is the most likely possibility. However, it is also possible that the girl is writing to the boy, or even phoning or emailing him these instructions, and thus cannot see the treehouse. If the latter two situations are true, they only lend further credence to the fact that his tree house is a government-sponsored surveillance house. After all, most, if not all, pre-adolescent owned tree houses do not have Internet or phone line connections.
Now we come to the crux of the song. These two lines are seemingly innocent talk about viewing houses. But if you look past the smokescreen, past the deceiving message, you can see that it is of a decidedly sexual message. 'House with windows and doors' can only relate to the female anatomy, and in some kind of pre-sexual game she offers to exhibit her anatomy if the boy reciprocates. However, taken at a literal sense, the fact that she asks the boy to show her his house reveals that she has not yet seen it - so she must be communicating with him via phone or email. Then again, when she says 'house' she may mean his proper ground-based house instead of his treehouse. Even so, if she has seen his tree house, it would be safe to assume she has seen his permanent house. Unless! Unless his treehouse is very far from his permanent house, or screened off perhaps by a row of trees, in which case there is no uncertainty about the boy's clandestine doings. It is already apparent that deconstruction of this song will be problematic at the very least - as demonstrated above, the lyrics have layers upon layers of different meanings and connotations. What's more, the different meanings are targeted at the particular elements of society who are actually listening to the lyrics - this is emblematic of a master lyricist.
These five lines uncover more of the puzzle of the song. She demands to be let inside the house, so that the 'fun can begin' - fun of an undoubtedly sexual nature! She says she will be 'the wolf today' thus alluding to some sort of sexual games she plays. There is no doubt now that the singer, a girl, is nothing but a nyphomaniac. More disturbing is the use of the words 'blow you away'. One can only imagine as to what activities are in her mind when she said this.
We can see now that the boy must be of a young age, if he still plays with toys, girls and boys. Still, it is a little strange that the girl refers to 'the girls' and 'the boys' instead of simply 'girls' and 'boys'. She is certainly referring to a particular set of girls and boys whom the 'boy' in question already knows. An inner-circle, perhaps? Wait a second. Upon further study, the true meaning of these two lines have come clear! Playing with 'girls' and 'boys' is not playing of an innocent nature, but playing of a wanton sexual nature! The use of the words 'the girls' is referring to 'women of ill repute' (that's prostitutes to you and me) - does he 'play with the girls'? Shockingly, she asks whether he plays with 'the boys'. Now, we do not encourage homophobism here, but the use of both female and male persons of ill repute is frowned upon generally. With this in mind, the second line becomes clear. When he becomes 'lonely' i.e. not seen 'the girls' or 'the boys' for some time, he falls back onto his 'toys'. The more refined readers of this may be mystified as to what these 'toys' are, but I can assure you that men and women of the world are under no illusions as to what dastardly implements the girl is speaking of.
The first line is of no interest to us. The second line is of far greater importance, and also conceals a double meaning. This talk of 'queen' and 'king' only speaks of dominance games, and who is the alpha-leader in their games. From then on, the entire song repeats exactly. In the writer's opinion, the singer and lyricist is simply attempting to press their subversive message into our minds. As Gertrude Stein once wrote, 'there *is* no such thing as "repetition," because when you say something the second time, it's not a repetition of the first thing, it's a whole new meaning you are conveying through that very act of repetition'. And so here we have a repitition of the song - not the same as the first half, not just reinforcing the message. As yet, the writer cannot decipher the hidden intent behind this repetition, but one day the meaning will come clear. Now, we have all the pieces of the puzzle, but we just have to put them together. We have a boy/man, a surveillance expert in a tree house monitoring station. We have a girl/woman of questionable repute, who talks regularly of non-conformist sexual matters. She wants him to 'straighten up his tie' and see her 'mother.' Hypothesis one Surely this situation is nothing other than the story of some secret enemy female agent, posing as a nyphomaniac to ingratiate herself with this surveillance expert? She threatens to show him to her 'mother' - obviously the press, or a higher authority - unless he 'straightens his tie' - that's spy talk for paying her off, or co-operating by sharing his information gathered from his tree-house. Hypothesis two To the uneducated eye of those this song is intended for, this song is merely a childish play about a boy and a girl. But to the inquisitive, it is a subversive song encouraging the youth of the world to engage in non-standard and unhealthy sexual activities. This can only be the work of an enemy nation which does not speak English (yet how else would they have such expertise in writing the song) or the work of a terrorist organisation within the English-speaking world. Hypothesis three The song is trying to spread a virulent 'meme' (a popular idea, like all those urban myths) among the population. This malignant meme as already claimed Tak as one of its victims, reducing his intelligence just to mumbling it constantly and causing other people to be infected. Maybe this meme was generated spontaneously, maybe it's evolved from a combination of memes, or maybe... maybe it is of alien origin! Who else could engineer such a deadly meme as this? And who else would be resistant to its charms? Hypothesis four It has come to my attention from the latest issue of 'Nature' that there exists a phenomenon known as BLIT, the 'Berryman Logical Image Technique.' In short, based on the hypothesis that the human brain is essentially a sophisticated computing machine, the laws of Godel state that it should be possible to introduce a self-contradictory idea that would cause the machine - the brain - to crash. Up until now, these ideas were only postulated to be able to be conveyed through images - fractals and other regressive structures. Yet after consulting with scientists from MIT, Cambridge, CERN and Tokyo, I have concluded that the lyrics of 'C'est la vie' may represent a new type of BLIT that deals with music. The music is so complex, so infinitely open to analysis and inspection, that the brain simply is unable to represent it in a conceptual form, thus resulting in its shutdown, or death. So far, I have been able to avoid this scenario by listening to the music through special audio filters. Others have not been so fortunate - news has just been received that fourteen researchers in the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories lapsed into a vegetative state upon exposure to the music. It was suggested that this was the natural state of university students, but such facetious remarks are despicable in the face of what may signal the very end of human civilisation. I
can but speculate upon the origin of this BLIT. It may have been designed
by a rogue hacker, or an advanced AI. A more radical idea is that it was
spontaneously generated as soon as the Internet reached a certain critical
stage of development - a phase change of global consciousness, if you
will. Still, no matter where this deadly thing came from, I urge
you not to listen to it.
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