Monday, October 18, 2010

Lyrics and Xenophobia?

Do the songs and song lyrics connect with the concept of xenophobia?  If so, how?  Also,  feel free to comment regarding other connections with science fiction.  Please include some references to songs and song lyrics in your response.  Please finish this blog response by 2:30p.m. on October, 18th.

22 comments:

  1. I believe personally that the songs connect with xenophobia a lot. For example in the song zombies ate my neighbors there is a line that says, "grab a knife and nail the backdoor shut" this definitly shows how atleast the song writer thinks that aliens are dangerous only because they don't understand them. Why does society in general think of aliens as being bad when we have no idea what they could be. I believe its because people have a natural fear of the unknown... xenophobia.

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  2. Yes i think that the song lyrics do connect with xenophobia. The zombie song is against zombies and zombies are feared by people because of how they live. People fear the unnatural and all these songs have lyrics about the unknown and things that people are scared of.

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  3. I think that on a very basic level that all of these songs had at least something to do with Xenophobia. For example, “Zombies Ate My Neighbors” has to do with fighting off Zombies which is related to Xenophobia because of its relation to being afraid of the unknown.

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  4. The only song I could hear the lyrics of was Zombies Ate My Neighbor. This song ended early, but it definately connects with xenophobia. I identified fear, doubt, and desperation before the song ended. These are some of the same behaviors you would probably witness in an xenophobic person.

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  5. “Zombies Ate My Neighbors” goes along with xenophobia because it deals with zombies attacking a town, and the singer and friends hiding from them because the zombies are going to kill everyone. This song relates to science fiction because it follows the general “zombies are attacking us all, watch out!” theory. It also portrays the unknown as deadly and wanting to harm everyone. “This isn’t funny anymore, no, no this means war!”
    “Spaceman” was more of an upbeat sounding song that dealt with aliens being “only in your mind.” This song was more about a journey with the aliens, but having nobody else believing him.
    A lot of the other songs were more like “I’m watching the aliens come down right now.” This relates to xenophobia because most of the time, people are scared of what they don’t know…and we don’t know anything about aliens.

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  6. I personally think that most of the songs connect to the concept of xenophobia quite a bit. For example, the song Spaceman presents fear over alien interactions with humans, and the song Zombies Ate my Neighbors shows fear over what we can consider in a matter foreign, by boarding up doors and windows to keep out intruders, and even fighting back in fear if it comes down to it. We tend to have a negative feel about aliens, since they are a foreign form of life to us and their existence and is currently impossible to 100% know if they exist or not.

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  7. The songs connect to xenophobia when they sing about science fiction, like zombies, starman, spacemen and things that have to do with outerspace. Zombies ate my neighbors sings about a attack of zombies and how he defends from the zombies. Starman sings about a man in the sky which we need to respect.

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  8. The song Zombies ate my Neighbors connects to xenophobia in the fact it talks of fear of zombies, which are slightly foreign and are frightening to us. "THIS MEANS WAR." The people in the song are going to kill what they are afraid of or don't understand. Clear xenophobia

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  9. The first song has a very apparent fear of zombie’s even though they are never mentioned in the lyrics. As far as the second song goes I couldn’t hear any of the lyrics so I have no idea. For Spaceman by the Killers I thought that they accomplished a very decent 80’s ish sound.” But when they cut me open, I guess I changed my mind.” I would have been afraid at the point that they took my blood type but I guess that being cut open is where Brandon Flowers draws the line. This is the most obvious example of xenophobia out of the songs we listened to.

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  10. Yes these songs can exhibit xenophobia. They talk about stereotypical views about aliens. They talk about Abduction and space travel. For example in the don henley song it talks about conspiracy and aliens. The killers song Also exhibits stereotypical xenophobia by talking about fear of the aliens and the foreign

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  11. These songs connect to xenophobia because they talk about topics that are unknown and unfamiliar to our lives and society. These songs even more importantly relate to science fiction because they have themes about things that are popular extrapolations in our culture. For example the ideas of zombies and spacemen are ideas that are a little more “out there” because they aren’t necessarily part of our lives but use ideas of extrapolation.

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  12. David Bowie's Starman has lyrics that I think connect to Xenophobia, like,
    "There's a starman waiting in the sky
    He'd like to come and meet us
    But he thinks he'd blow our minds
    There's a starman waiting in the sky
    He's told us not to blow it".
    This is like Puppet Show, because the 'Starman' is telling us not to 'blow it', or not pass the test. I think the Starman is scared to come down to Earth because he'll frighten our narrow perspective on the universe and even our own world. I do think there is a lot of Xenophobia even in our own world, in countries, states, and even school. We see it with racism, homophobia, cliques, and grade levels. Homophobia is one of the biggest xenophobic problems, and it can compare with the above lyrics. The Starman doesn't want to come down because he thinks people will fear him, like how gays can be afraid to come out because their friends and family could fear him.

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  13. All of the songs tell a story or at least give an impression that they are trying to avoid others due to their differences. The first song, "Zombies Ate My Neighbors", described some people locking themselves in a room and bolting the door shut. This was done because of Xenophobia. People were scared of foriegn ideas and concepts, and in this case different people.

    Also, the idea of other lifeforms in outerspace wanting to communicate and interact with Earth was brought up in the song, "Starman", by David Bowie. This song shows how the Starman wants to come to earth, and says it would be "all worthwhile" for him to come. This idea was also shown in the story we read earlier, "The Puppet Master".

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  14. The lyrics of these songs connect to Xenophobia by either running away from the unknown or fighting back against it. Also alot of the songs talk about strangers and how they come into the peoples lives and that they are scared or confused about it. Like from Mr. Spaceman "Must be those strangers that come every night
    Whose saucers shaped light put people up tight
    Leave blue-green footprints that glow in the dark I hope they get home all right".

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  15. The songs and the lyrics connect with xenophobia because one song talks about a “star man” and star men don’t exist so it has the essence of science fiction because the song is talking about something that doesn’t exist and probably never will. "Must be those strangers that come every night
    Whose saucers shaped light put people up tight
    Leave blue-green footprints that glow in the dark."This quote also has the concept of xenophobia because when they talk about those strange people, they obviously do not want to accept these people. So they have fear of the unknown which is xenophobia. "Government conspiracy; cover-ups and lies
    Hidden in the desert under endless skies" This also presents xenophobia because now it is not just the individual who is scared of the unknown but the government is getting involved. So now the government is telling the people what to think about the unknown. Also that it is bad and not worth our time. Each song represents xenophobia in a unique way. The songs are telling us that why bother in exploring what we do not know when we are perfectly happy with what we do know. Each song expresses that idea in a different way.

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  16. Spaceman by The Killers identifies xenophobia. It paints a picture of the spacemen being bad people, abducting him and cutting him open, but then it turns it is all in his mind. The fear was just his subconscious not accepting the strange. He was xenophobic.

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  17. I believe that the songs connect with xenephobia. Thier not here, their not coming says, "Anxious eyes turned upward
    Clutching souvenirs
    Carrying our highest hopes and our darkest fears." This shows xenephobia because the artist is saying how people look towards the sky in fear of the unknown and also in hopes of good coming from the unknown. But this artist also says that the people clutch souvenirs holding onto what they know while afraid of seeing the unknown.(Xenephobia)

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  18. I think that the lyrics did relate with xenophobia. In the “zombie ate my neighbors”song it talks about starting war a war and fighting with the zombies. I agree with the previous people that we fear the unknown and we defend our self's when we are not sure of certin things.

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  19. These songs all show xenophobia in some way. Most of the songs talk about seeing a light and not knowing what it is. For example; in the song "Mr. Spaceman" the singer says he sees a bright light and he thinks it is a saucer with a spaceman but he doesn't know for sure.

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  20. I didn't get a chance to read through all of the song lyrics we were given, but I did read "Zombies ate My Neighbors. This song relates to the idea of xenophobia because it is all about the fight against these "zombies".We have no real general knowledge of zombies or how it would be if they existed, but we have these preconceved notion of evil beings walking the earth looking to kill people. So as humans we resorts to violence right away, alot like the story "Random Sample".

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  21. The song Zombies ate my neighbors is an interesting example of xenophobia. I relate zombies to aliens, because they are potentially fictional. Whether or not they are real as a community the human race are terrified and very judgemental about unknown aliens and zombies.

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  22. The song spaceman depicts an alien abduction to which the abductee is horrified which is clearly evident upon the comparison to the aliens and the devil. This depicts Xenophobia because the spaceman's lack of understanding automatically assumes that the aliens intentions were to harm him and he becomes parinoid. In the song Zombies ate my neighbors the entire song is based on the takeover of the neighborhood by zombies to which the narrator and his commrads must fight them off by any means necessary.

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