OK Computer by Radiohead is one of the best albums to come out of the 1990s. The album is heavily critical of late stage capitalism and the overconsumption of technology (if only they knew what the 2020s would hold </3). There is one track on the album in particular that displays this criticism, in my opinion, the most intensely in comparison to all of the other tracks, that being “Fitter Happier.”
“Fitter Happier” is a spoken word track placed over an instrumental, narrated by “Fred” which is a software element in SimpleText which was found in 90s Macintosh computers. Lyricist Thom Yorke described the monotonous voice as the “most emotional” he had heard in a long time. According to Yorke, these lyrics came from a place of writers’ block, where the only thing he could manage to write out were lists of words that took him a long time to string together in relation to how he feels.
Here’s a link to the album version of the track!
This track (I don’t think I can call it a song) is very startling sonically and very haunting lyrically. It demonstrates a staunch ideological awareness. This song touches on the capitalistic oppression that occurs under the United States’ brand of capitalism, and while the band is not American, capitalism is still a major ruling force around the world and people in many countries have to sell their souls to it. Ideology, specifically Marxism, highlights and emphasizes this.
Ideology, in itself, refers to a set of ideas, thoughts, and beliefs held by a mass amount of people that determine how they navigate their existence. Ideologies are generally social, philosophical, economic, and/or political. Marxism is an intricate ideological system that, at its core, looks toward social change. In Literary Theory: The Complete Guide, Mary Klages puts it succinctly by writing, “Marxists want to analyze social relations in order to change them, in order to alter what they see as the gross injustices and inequalities created by capitalist economic relations.”
One of the key aspects of Marxist Ideology, best explained by Mary Klages, is the concept of multi-pronged alienation, which leads to the formation of false consciousness. She writes:
In addition to alienating the laborer from his or her labor power, capitalism also forces the worker to become alienated from him or herself. When a worker has to sell her or his labor power, she or he becomes a commodity, something to be sold in the marketplace like a thing; the worker who is a commodity is thus not fully human, in the philosophical sense, since she or he cannot exercise free will to determine her or his actions. (Yes, this part is coming from a humanist model, where people still have free will to govern their actions). The worker who is forced to exist as a commodity in the labor market is alienated from her or his humanness; in selling one’s labor, that labor becomes alienated, something separate from or other than the laborer, something divided from the person who produces it.
In a nutshell, Marxist ideology understands the need humans have to dissociate in order to cope with being forced to commodify themselves to succeed in capitalism. He acknowledges the absence of choice that we have in our participation in capitalism and how easy it is to become disillusioned with reality, if we do not invent ways for ourselves to cope with it (the false consciousness).
Thom Yorke’s lyrics in “Fitter Happier” perfectly encapsulate this sort of disillusionment that humans deal with under a capitalist regime. I will include 2 screenshots of the lyrics here:
The lyrics read as someone writing back a list of orders that have been constantly repeated to them. It reminds me of those dystopian types of books and movies that I read and watched back in middle school, like “The Giver,” in the sense that the society takes place under a hyper-controlling government regime, that claims their goal is one of ‘ultimate satisfaction’ and ‘happiness,’ but in enacting that, they’re being oppressive. It kind of also relates to my last post about the show Pluribus, which I also examined under this lens, in the sense that the governing forces (in this case the government, in that case the Hive Mind) are promoting optimism in a threatening and overly sanitized way that does not allow any room for individuality or real feeling.
Live performance from 1997! (Why was I -6 years old</3
Under capitalism, we are expected to be mindless followers of what we are told in order to maximize our production quotas. In “Fitter Happier,” we are being told by the governing voice (whom I will just refer to as “Fred”, since that is the name of the vocal software, and the speaker of the piece is not Thom himself, but rather this governmental force) that we must follow these rules in order to maintain ourselves to best fit in with their ideal standards of productivity. In the opening lines of the track, it states:
Fitter happier
More productive
Comfortable
Not drinking too much
Regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week)
Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries
At ease
Eating well (no more microwave dinners and saturated fats)
While, yes, it is a good thing to attempt to maintain fitness and dietary wellness for the sake of your own physical health, “Fred” is only promoting these activities in order to boost productivity and to get along with coworkers better (which will, again, in turn, boost productivity). It is important to be healthy under “Fred”’s regime (aka capitalism) because that is how you increase the surplus value you create for the company. You must maintain the integrity of the commodity (yourself), so that you can ensure it will retain its value (in the eyes of the corporation), which is determined by its ability to perform well (create surplus value).
We are seeing this now more than ever with the stark rise in wellness culture content. People have shifted their primary capitalist output from flashy clothes and shoes to wellness gear and lifestyle. We have commodified health and it is now used as a signifier of wealth (I could get into the binary structuralism of it all, but that would be a complete tangent). It has been deemed necessary to go to the gym every day and buy excessive expensive supplements and exercise shoes and clothes. People online boast their long workout routines, tight meal-prep schedules, and their incredibly difficult to achieve and maintain physiques. All of these things, however, can only come with excessive time, which the average person does not have because they need to spend time working. The people who boast these lifestyles are wealthy—the only way they can afford luxury gym memberships, fancy gym clothes, shoes, food, and supplements and having the time to stick to these intense regimens is by having a lot of money. Plus, people are posting these videos and promoting these products to earn themselves more money—it’s a vicious capitalist cycle. Health has become the new signifier of wealth.
Just count the number of products being used in all of these videos meant to promote a healthy lifestyle. It’s genuinely frustrating to see, like I actually can’t keep talking about this whole thing because it’s upsetting, plus I don’t want to derail from the topic too much more.
The lyrics continue to demonstrate a very sanitized version of what living must be like in the lines, “Will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in the wall) / Favours for favours / [...] /
On Sundays ring road supermarket.” This is highlighting the very shallow lifestyle promoted as perfection under capitalism. You have to make sure you are a “good person.” Thom writes this as something you can tangibly calculate at a physical moral bank. It is important to add this to your list of errands. Am I being a good enough person? Let me do a favor for John so that John will do me a favor next time! Including these lines (almost right) next to the one about going to the supermarket on Sundays in a typical US suburban area (as noted by the “ring roads” aka beltways), shows that “Fred” sees being a 'good person' as something you can make yourself by adding it to your weekly chore list, instead of as something that just occurs within someone’s natural actions.
This is the video for “Paranoid Android” which connects thematically to this track and also features the “Fred” voice in the background!
Next, the lyrics, “No longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows / Nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate / Nothing so childish” describe a forced rejection of childishness, which is also something that we are expected to do under capitalism. They do not want humans to be in touch with any part of themselves that did not contribute to society. We must learn to reject our fears, as they hinder our productivity.
I think the most poignant lyric, however, that really sheds light on Thom’s own disillusionment with capitalism is the simple 3 word line, “Concerned, but powerless.” In this line. We deviate from the voice that is instructing us on how to be and we are hearing directly from a place of Thom’s own distress. People who have not been able to form a strong enough false consciousness to protect themselves from acknowledging and accepting the true horrors of capitalism. When you aren’t able to do this, however, and you understand that you are exploited by capitalism, you feel a sense of powerlessness, knowing that the only way to synthesize a way out is for everyone to understand and reject their exploitation and reject capitalism. This, however, will never happen because too many people accept capitalist propaganda.
(One of these pro-capitalist propaganda images literally came from an Israeli newspaper article that defends capitalism, like yeah, of course YOU guys are defending capitalism, I hate it here)
The last line is perhaps the most visceral and emotional. “A pig in a cage on antibiotics.” This lyric is drawing a parallel to the farming industry, only we are the pigs. We are treated like animals with the sole intention to provide “food” (wealth) for our oppressors. They pump us with antibiotics, which in this case is both literal and also representative of the weird ingredients they put into our food and mental health medication, in order to keep us docile and extra primed for working in order to best maximize their profit. And, of course, we are kept in a cage so that we can see the outside world, but we will never be allowed to get there. We are kept under the boot of the elites and we are only allowed room for air when they want us to and where they will let us.
Video for “Fake Plastic Trees” from 1995’s The Bends, which also shares similar thematic elements
All in all, this track describes the mechanical attributes that best describe a capitalist’s version of a perfect person; this is what we must be in order to thrive. To someone with no literacy skills, this could perhaps be seen as capitalist propaganda, but to anyone with half a brain, it is clear that this track serves as a critical commentary on capitalist ideology and what it is like to be forced to turn ourselves into machines that resemble human ideals in order to survive. It’s really depressing, frankly, and I am having a miserable time writing about this. This track is so bleak and it’s from over 30 years ago and unfortunately things have only gotten and will continue to get so much worse. Somehow, people are more and more willing to bow down to capitalism and refuse to reject the propaganda of their oppressors. I suppose the interpellation aspects behind capitalist propaganda have gotten much stronger with the rise of social media. Now, everyone believes that every ad (which are now more covert than ever) they see is directly for them. Critical thinking skills are at an all time low and everyone has been lobotomized. Where can we go from here? I’m so tired.
Video for “No Surprised” from OK Computer, which also shares thematic elements
Author's note: I don't think this post makes any sense but I found it incredibly difficult to articulate myself properly and I feel like this is the best that I could do, so sorry if this is sucks and is unintelligible
Comments
Post a Comment