Nicole LaReau
Feed-Prompt 2d
In the novel Feed,
there is a haunting passage towards the end of Violet’s life in which she
expresses to Titus all of the adventures she wants to have before she dies.
After describing all of the exciting, flashy activities to Titus, she says “[e]verything
I think of when I think of really living, living to the full – all my ideas are
just the opening credits of sitcoms…[w]hat am I, without the feed? It’s all
from the feed credits. My idea of real life” (Anderson 311). Almost
immediately, my mind flashed to the opening credits of Full House-the very picture of American perfection-and its theme
song. “Everywhere You Go” eerily fits the picture that Violet paints in it’s
shining perfection. Lyrics like “Whatever happened to predictability. /The
milkman, the paperboy, evening TV? /How did I get to living here? /Somebody
tell me please!” mirror the nostalgia Violet feels for memories she has never
even experienced, such as going on Disney rides and going to the zoo. The Feed,
constructed from an artificial archetype of nostalgic history, has fed her
these memories. Sitcoms from the eighties and nineties, like Full House, have this same element of
idealized nostalgia for our contemporary. The relevance of this song is
disturbingly accurate.
Hi Nicole,
ReplyDeleteYou are right that the Full House Credits do rely on nostalgia for fake pasts. For example, I was a kid when Full House was first airing, and I never grew up with a milkman, etc., but those lyrics were supposed to speak to my desires for some sort of lost way of life. I do wonder about the tone of the song in juxtaposition with Feed. It would be good to embed an audio/video recording of the theme song so we can listen to it alongside your analysis. Images from the credits could be helpful too. There's also the remixed version for the Netflix reboot--nostalgia on top of nostalgia-- that could be worth considering.