The Fear

This past week I had to take my grandma to a doctor’s appointment, while I was waiting for her my best friend called me and told me to listen to a song she had just heard. The song was called “The Fear” by Lily Allen. Before my friend started to play the song for me she told me to listen to the lyrics very carefully because she thought that the song represented her very well; as well as about a billion other men and women in the United States who love to consume.



After listening to the song one specific part of the lyrics stood out to me:


"Life’s about film stars and less about mothers
It’s all about fast cars and cussing each other
But it doesn’t matter cause I’m packing plastic
And that’s what makes my life so fucking fantastic
And I am a weapon of massive consumption
And it’s not my fault it’s how I’m programmed to function"

Hearing this song made me a little worried for my friend since she seemed so excited about how she felt it represented her. Honestly, I couldn’t figure out why she would be so happy about being a weapon of massive consumption. However, the very last line of the section above made me think about how Kawamura said that “Ideas about fashion are spread through the population by organized means of mass propaganda” (86). Or in other words, people do consume fashion, among other things, because they grew up around massive propaganda, which basically programmed us to function to buy, buy, buy.

So even though I'm still a little worried for my friend, because she's so enthusiastic about a song in the world that blames her spending addiction to propaganda rather than her own inability to not buy; I'm also quite happy to know that there are still artists out there that are making music with a message. There are way to many songs about love, war, and drugs, and even more songs especially now that don't even really have a purpose. But with "The Fear" I feel like Lily Allen is trying to help her listeners realize that we over consume. Additionally because of this addiction we are losing our perception of reality and are becoming drones; being told what to buy, how to look, how to act, and how to feel.



Keri Yee

Blog #5



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Kawamura, Yuniya. "Production, Gatekeeping and Diffusion of Fashion." In Fashion-ology.

Allen, Lily. "The Fear." <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-wGMlSuX_c>