You will find me if you want me in the garden
Apparently they have popular culture now, too. What'll they think of next? Maybe they'll think of writing an article (in which I read that this song has been everywhere for the past, like, two months; I just heard it today) that obviously can't think of a good way to approach its subject, which is, really, just the song in question, and so employs a ridiculous conceit that at least allows the author to pad out the article with some half-hearted historical bloviating (summer hits are an old-fashioned idea, like, I guess, primogeniture and the aristotelian unities).
More bloviation would perhaps serve the article well, since when the author does turn to talking about the song itself, s/he says some ridiculous things, like that Rihanna has a "girlish voice" (never mind the depths she reaches in the repetitive parts at the end of each chorus) or that she's singing a "breezy love song", "a lightweight pop confection" in which the fuzzy (so-called "goth") keys (&, IMO, though this may just bespeak ignorance of the idiom, the flat, somewhat sinister (sounds broken) cymbal crashes) serve as conceptual counterpoint to the main thrust of the song, rather than being of a piece it.
But really, nothing could be further from the truth. "Umbrella" is an expression of an extremely weak hope in an extremely bleak world, and a knowing one at that—it's not just an expression of a hope that happens to be weak but also an acknowledgement of just how weak that hope is. In this, of course, Rihanna is not without antecedents. The really vital part of the lyrics comes in the chorus, where one would expect the core thematic material to be sounded, but even in the verses we find support for this reading. The very first two lines (ignoring Jay-Z's introductory bit, which serves, as far as I can tell, no purpose whatsoever, except perhaps to establish rain as a bad thing ("when the clouds come we go") as opposed to, say, a symbol of rejuvenation) serve to vastly deflate our expectations: "You have my heart / And we'll never be worlds apart". Not being worlds apart is, one would like to point out, quite compatible with still being quite far apart indeed. In the second verse the worldliness of the world is explicitly recognized as being corrupting ("these fancy things") if not outright harmful (the war; references to bad hands being dealt); at the end she expresses once again the quietism already emphasized in the chorus ("So go on and let the rain pour").
The relevant portion of the chorus perhaps ought to be quoted at length:
Now that it's raining more than ever
Know that we'll still have each other
You can stand under my umbrella
(That's not much length, but it's enough.) What is this except a reiteration of the Arnoldian plea, "let us be true to one another", a cry for a separate peace even while acknowledging the flimsiness and temporariness of such a solution? We are here as on a flooding plain: but at least we've got an umbrella. And, of course, just as Arnold's imprecation does not really make much sense, given that "the world … Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light / Nor certitude, nor peace" (you're going to be true to your love in that world?), so too Rihanna's attempt to carve out some happiness comes off as at least a little self-deceived: as if an umbrella were a roof, as if even a roof would suffice!
I like the video too. Pointe work!
Comments
on 2007-07-19 14:02:54.0, Daniel commented:
I've read the first part of this post three times now, and I'm just not seeing the connection with Sources of the Self.
and, further, on 2007-07-19 17:30:32.0, ben wolfson commented:
Look harder.
and, further, on 2008-01-10 11:07:23.0, Devo commented:
Came to this post from Grammar Police. Nice to see Arnold coming into conversation. It's funny that the melancholy of a Christian sage in a secularizing world would mesh with anxst over the place of romance within a metastacized consumerism (though, I guess that drove Austen's fiction, too). But there's a big difference between finding yourself stuck between the ignorant armies of history and entropy and fretting about celebrity culture.
and, further, on 2008-01-11 15:31:46.0, LL Smooth J commented:
So Rihanna is like a hotter Matthew Arnold? That's just what they said about Swinburne.
and, further, on 2008-01-11 15:35:04.0, ben wolfson commented:
So who says she's hotter?