It may just be that we are all growing up, but it seems more and more that getting along with each other is becoming the equivalent of getting teeth pulled.
Even the annual tradition of thanksgiving gatherings have become a joke in recent history as many people dread the political gab and difference of opinions on social issues. Social media has also become a battleground with so called 'friends' taking the idea of a friendly debate a little too far, throwing around sources and insults like a common play thing. Its all exhausting.
Growing up, this was never a concern. Forget fighting the good fight for a few moments; try to remember your upbringing and the childhood friends. I can remember talk about politics at the lunch table of my elementary school, and claiming to be a republican to the rest of the kids there. I'd bet my bottom dollar that none of those 4th graders even knew what a republican was exactly, but that's just the thing. We were more concerned with riding our bikes out to the park, playing with plastic light sabers, and getting chased around the playground by the girls we claimed to be disguised by. It was a simpler time growing up in the suburbs.
Fast forward to my college days where a twelve page paper is demanded of me over thanksgiving break, I can't help but see parallels in the paper I'm writing and the changes we experience when we grow older. For this paper I had decided to cover Arcade Fire's album The Suburbs and its rise to prominence.
For years I've listened to this great album without giving it much thought, without analyzing the words that the narrators are saying. What I found convinced me that this work is relevant to our society now, encompassing all generations, even six years after its initial release.
"But in my dreams we're still screamin' and runnin' through the yard"
Arcade Fire has developed an album in which we, the listeners, see the world through our own personal experiences, rather than the experiences of the narrator. This is due to the use of nostalgic language that helps to bring us back to our childhood. Retrospection is the key to understanding their message. Much like the narrators of the song, get lost in those memories of the neighborhood kids and how much easier it was to get along. Memories from learning how to ride a bike to learning how to drive a car, everything about the suburbs we grew up in provides a stark contrast to what we are witnessing right now with the many divisions out in the real world.
"When I'm by myself, I can be myself and my life is coming but I don't know when"
This album has been able to speak to the emotion of anxiety that a lot of us felt in transitioning from teenagers to young adults. In a lot of songs off the album, there are moments when the narrators are attempting to resist societal pressures, but end up succumbing to them in the end. Stand in line, do as your told, work a 9 to 5 job, its all overwhelming at times especially when you're meant to do them alone. That being said, Arcade Fire also covers the aftermath of retrospection. How do you feel when you look back to your childhood given the nature of a divisive society?
"This town's so strange. They built it to change. And while we're sleeping all the streets, they rearrange"
If I had to choose one song off this album that speaks to this transitional point in many people's lives, it would be Suburban War. It covers the bond between the neighborhood kids and its disintegration. If we apply this song to today, the parallels are very much alive. We may have friends that we've lost as a result of all the responsibility we chose to take on. We may have friends that we've been forced to sever ties with because of the direction that they've chosen to take. We've put ourselves into boxes and categories that don't dare to intermingle with one another, and in doing so, the experience of playing and having a good time with the neighborhood kids is exactly that: a distant memory.
