I actually meant to write about it, anticipating an anti-Lily dogpile, but I just got back from a mostly Internet-free trip to Vegas and had to put it off till yesterday, and then I was jetlagged and ended up napping through the deadline.
Anyway, I think they're being pretty generous over there, at least compared to the utter fucking fiasco that was "Not Fair." (Perhaps a career and a Prince Charming are acceptable things for women to want, whereas if you want a man to, you know, treat you like an actual person with actual desires instead of just a particularly comfortable hole in which to put his penis, you should just shut your face and be grateful he doesn't beat you, you whiny stupid bitch.)
I am a bit puzzled by the comments that nobody at 22 or 30 (the protagonist isn't even 30 yet, though!) really believes that 30 is the end of the road, or that there's no difference between "an alright job" and "a career" -- of course nobody believes that they're going to cease to exist after a certain age, but it is easy to believe, at 26, that you've missed your shot at whatever it is you could have been. Because -- and that's the point -- at 22 you could have been anything, but at 26 you now are something. And something is a lot more limited than anything. It's right there in the song: when she was 22, the future looked bright.
And of course it isn't like you don't actually have time to change at 26, or 36, or 46, or like an alright job might one day lead to a career -- but it can feel that way, because while every year the Next Big Thing in writing (or acting, or politics, or music) is 22 (or 20, or 18, or fucking nine) every year you get farther and farther from that age. Like, when you started reading Gawker, you were 20 years old, and the authors and the whiz kids that everybody was buzzing about were a few years older than you, you looked at them and you thought, psh, you could write a novel as good as that in the next few years. You'd have them beat. And at 22 you were still reading Gawker, and the ones everyone was buzzing about where the same age as you, and suddenly, mixed in with the confidence that you could write a novel as good as that was this bitterness about how you hadn't, because you know what, some people have to work for a living, and their dads can't get them an internship at a publishing company, and whatever, these kids aren't actually that amazing for being so talented so young, they're just fucking lucky. And as time passes, 22 starts to look like the border of your ability to accomplish something, and be special for it, and you know you've crossed that border and are walking farther and farther away every day, and if you don't have an amazing career by now then what is there left to do? What is there left to look forward to? Maybe you can still fall in love. Maybe you can still get married. Maybe you need to go out and meet as many people as you can. (Okay, I've never been particularly relationship-oriented, and I've never actually thought that last bit -- but I have friends for whom that is the goal, and I can understand why it would be.)
Anyway, I guess I'll go dump my comments about the video on that thread, and see if anyone has anything to say about that.
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Anyway, I think they're being pretty generous over there, at least compared to the utter fucking fiasco that was "Not Fair." (Perhaps a career and a Prince Charming are acceptable things for women to want, whereas if you want a man to, you know, treat you like an actual person with actual desires instead of just a particularly comfortable hole in which to put his penis, you should just shut your face and be grateful he doesn't beat you, you whiny stupid bitch.)
I am a bit puzzled by the comments that nobody at 22 or 30 (the protagonist isn't even 30 yet, though!) really believes that 30 is the end of the road, or that there's no difference between "an alright job" and "a career" -- of course nobody believes that they're going to cease to exist after a certain age, but it is easy to believe, at 26, that you've missed your shot at whatever it is you could have been. Because -- and that's the point -- at 22 you could have been anything, but at 26 you now are something. And something is a lot more limited than anything. It's right there in the song: when she was 22, the future looked bright.
And of course it isn't like you don't actually have time to change at 26, or 36, or 46, or like an alright job might one day lead to a career -- but it can feel that way, because while every year the Next Big Thing in writing (or acting, or politics, or music) is 22 (or 20, or 18, or fucking nine) every year you get farther and farther from that age. Like, when you started reading Gawker, you were 20 years old, and the authors and the whiz kids that everybody was buzzing about were a few years older than you, you looked at them and you thought, psh, you could write a novel as good as that in the next few years. You'd have them beat. And at 22 you were still reading Gawker, and the ones everyone was buzzing about where the same age as you, and suddenly, mixed in with the confidence that you could write a novel as good as that was this bitterness about how you hadn't, because you know what, some people have to work for a living, and their dads can't get them an internship at a publishing company, and whatever, these kids aren't actually that amazing for being so talented so young, they're just fucking lucky. And as time passes, 22 starts to look like the border of your ability to accomplish something, and be special for it, and you know you've crossed that border and are walking farther and farther away every day, and if you don't have an amazing career by now then what is there left to do? What is there left to look forward to? Maybe you can still fall in love. Maybe you can still get married. Maybe you need to go out and meet as many people as you can. (Okay, I've never been particularly relationship-oriented, and I've never actually thought that last bit -- but I have friends for whom that is the goal, and I can understand why it would be.)
Anyway, I guess I'll go dump my comments about the video on that thread, and see if anyone has anything to say about that.