“When you mess with us” it is interesting that Radiohead chose to use the word “us”, this implies that the narrator is representing a group, not just himself. The chorus gives the listener the image of the Narrator being quite pleased at the expense of the group of people, in this case the man and the girl, as they have had negative consequences put on them. Here is a very obvious use of repetition of the phrase “This is what you’ll get”, and the effect that this has is that it re-enforces the message that narrator is trying to convey to the listener. This is what you’ll get/this is what you’ll get/this is what you’ll get/when you mess with us. The man and the girl mentioned are representing the people the narrator has intolerance towards. By saying “And we have crashed her party”, the narrator is saying that the Karma Police, or negative karma will act upon not only the young girl and the young man, but all people that the narrator judges and despises, thereby upsetting them, and “crashing their party”. The Narrator has judged both the man and woman on small aspects of their personality which are no way crimes, but still wishes bad karma, or the “Karma Police” to act on them. It appears that the narrator doesn’t like the hairstyle of a young lady, and in his eyes, is a bad person. The lines “Her Hitler hairdo is making me feel ill, and we have crashed her party” again show the narrators intolerance to people who are different to himself. The second stanza re-enforces the first stanza, and shows clear repetition in the first two lines, only replacing “Arrest this man” with “Arrest this girl”.
It is as if the narrator is dobbing in the man to the Karma Police. It is clear that the narrator hates the sound of his voice because “He’s like a detuned radio”. The lyric “He buzzes like a fridge” refers to how the narrator can’t understand him, and he carries on and on. The next lines of the song show the use of similes, “He talks in maths, he buzzes like a fridge, He’s like a detuned radio” The listener of the song can then deduce that the narrator wants the “Karma Police” or a negative consequence to act on this man for apparently doing nothing at all. We can then see that the lyric “Karma Police, Arrest this man” is a cry from the narrator, claiming that negative consequences should be delivered to this ‘man’, because in the narrators’ eyes, this man has done something wrong, and therefore deserves the negative consequence. Because there is obviously no such thing as the karma police, the use of the term “Karma Police” is used metaphorically as bad karma, or negative consequences. In simple terms, what goes around comes around. So good actions will give the person who carried out the action a positive consequence, and if someone was to carry out a negative or bad action, then they would receive a negative consequence. It means that an action that one takes, whether it’s positive or negative, will eventually come back to the person who carried out the action and the effect of it as well.
Paranoid meaning full#
Karma is a concept developed in ancient India whereby a full cycle of cause and effect takes place. From this Stanza, we can hear that the song is being sung from the point of a narrator, who is requesting the “Karma Police” to arrest someone. This is the first stanza in Karma Police. General CommentKarma Police/Arrest this man/He talks in maths/He buzzes like a fridge/ He’s like a detuned radio.
0 kommentar(er)
