Danny Elfman and His Many Personas

-


Image result for oingo boingo logo
Oingo Boingo's most popular logo
Throughout Danny Elfman's lucrative career (most know him as Jack Skellington or that one guy who composed the na-na-na-na Batman theme) he has played satirical roles of so many kinds of people. He has played the role of a devout Christian man, a pedophile, a government skeptical, a strict follower of the government, a recluse, a stalker, a romantic, and quite a bit more. The thing is that he's not a visual actor— he does all this through fronting his (former) band Oingo Boingo.
                                                                      Image result for oingo boingo
Easily my favorite  band, Oingo Boingo provides so many perspectives in their music that every song is something you can think about. For example, in Wake Up (It's 1984) the lyrics attribute Elfman to a well intentioned class of government skeptics while on the same album, the track No Spill Blood directly counters the previous track by being about conforming to the government."Big brother's watching, we watch him back
We see right through his disguise"
Wake Up (It's 1984)

"The rules are written in the stone
Break the rules and you get no bones"
No Spill Blood

These opposing views exist throughout the eight Oingo Boingo albums. Two more tracks that are running in separate directions are Fill the Void and Private Life, though these are from two separate albums. The main theme of Fill the Void is to convey the idea that you should not just follow the crowd and what is shown, while Private Life gives the perspective of a recluse who simply wants someone to pull him out of his own individualism.

"They want to fill the empty spaces
But I won't let them consume me
With the rest of the lifeless faces"
Fill the Void

"This is my private life
I have no friends to fear
I've got no problems no cross to bear
If you can find me
Come and get me out of here"
Private Life

Image result for little girls oingo boingo
Scene in the music video for Little Girls, one of the few music videos produced by Oingo Boingo
                                                        
Fill the Void came before Private Life so I have always enjoyed thinking that perhaps they're the same character wanting to fill the empty spaces" now. Many conflict comes from Danny Elfman's lyricism as you go through his discography. It may be political or absurd, as in Oingo Boingo's Little Girls that quite literally depicts him as a pedophile, but I feel most tracks have a good message or are attempting to make you think about your situation by Danny simply performing as a .

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cucumbers are like people

-
Image
Have you ever met someone who seemed spiteful? Rude? Angry at the world? I have, and I have also seen them transition into that sort of individual. A sad process and sometimes cannot be helped by you because you do not hold that sort of connection with them. That's what makes people like cucumbers. Everyone starts off plain and kind of sweet (I had a cucumber once, I think it tasted sweet?). They live this way until one day they're soaked in foul events, similar to how a cucumber is soaked in vinegar to eventually become a pickle. It's tragic and one would rather not see it occur, but what is one to do? You can't exactly just pull them out of the 'pickle jar' because this new personality (or attitude) will permeate from within them. At the same time you can't just leave them in the 'pickle jar' otherwise they just continue suffering and might even make cucumber into a pickle. This is the duality of humans as there is a wrong you feel the need ...
Read more

Bundy and Bundy

-
Image
Ted Bundy has always been a figure that fascinated me. He's a serial killer, which is awful, but at the same time he functions as a family figure. Someone people look up to, admire, and even love . How he manages this is interesting, oftentimes being called by his interrogators as a "chameleon". This reptilian title comes from the fact that Bundy fit in throughout everywhere he went in society because he could adapt his personality to be pleasing to whoever was around him, and he was smart enough to play off of personalities to garner credibility and fool his community into enjoying his presence. He has an elaborate expressed and unexpressed self that I feel don't necessarily have even a static existence as a result of his chameleon-like traits. His expressed self was that of a family man or a good looking and charming man, but the individual characteristics of those changed. And on the inside, we cannot be sure his unexpressed self was a single entity due t...
Read more

Anastasia and Doubles

-
Image
An interesting public figure is that of Anastasia-- not the princess, her impostor. Following an execution of a royal Russian family, there remained one female who was believed to have survived. There are many stories, but the one I learned it by is that when the executioners were disposing of the bodies of the royal family, Anastasia was knocked out, but not killed by the conflict and she was dumped out a window and landed on her family's corpses to live. Nearly a decade later "she" was found in a foreign country with what many believe to be amnesia (she did not declare herself royal or the likes). She would later claim the ties to the royal family and gain popularity. That may sound like a good ending, but in reality many believe she was a poser and simply was a look-alike playing off the tragic death of a princess. This ended up being true once DNA testing equipment was more sophisticated. I find that fascinating that someone could pull one over on an entire coun...
Read more