"under my thumb" is a vicious way of thinking, old testament kind of justice, eyes poked out left & right. if you believe there's due cause for mick's spleen, you'll cite the opening lines:
under my thumb,and even if you don't believe there's due cause, it's disquieting how easily one slips inside the song, which is down to the first-person narrative & the handclaps. i'm not sure what the ethics involved are here, but i don't think there's anything wrong w/ singing along--perhaps we've all felt like mick does here at one time in our life, and this is just our way of sublimating.
the girl who once had me down.
under my thumb,
the girl who once pushed me around.
imagine, however, being underneath the thumb. that is, imagine living this song.
imagine, too, that the first verse has been excised; instead there's scant reasoning behind his actions, at worst, petty reasoning, at best.
imagine that you've been told flat-out that it's enjoyable to make you squirm, and that may be the least offensive thing said or done.
lastly, imagine telling that first person, "i love you."
alert de saussure! we've got a serious slippage of signs here. when i speak to my friend, i feel like i need a translator. she says to me how it was "dumb" to try to undergo behavior that might effect a change in the romantic crisis and i am left severely nonplussed. here, the person in "love" isn't speaking a language unknown to herself, pace stendhal, she's speaking a language unknown to me, full of phrases i'm familiar w/--"love," "dumb," "mistake," "wrong," "relationship,"--but, in context, it all sounds scatological.
or, in other words, severely fucked. here are the rest of the lyrics, just so we know the type we're dealing w/.
it's down to me.our beloved dog, it seems, hasn't learned any new tricks, and is in all actuality forgetting those she used to know. and to what end?
the difference in the clothes she wears.
down to me, the change has come,
she's under my thumb.
under my thumb,
the squirmin' dog who's just had her day.
under my thumb,
a girl who has just changed her ways.
it's down to me, yes it is.
the way she does just what she's told.
down to me, the change has come,
she's under my thumb.
under my thumb,
a siamese cat of a girl.
under my thumb,
she's the sweetest, hmmm, pet in the world.
it's down to me,
the way she talks when she's spoken to.
down to me, the change has come,
she's under my thumb.
under my thumb,
her eyes are just kept to herself.
under my thumb, well i,
i can still look at someone else.
i can't help but think of isabel archer in the portrait of a lady, that this is precisely the sort of song gilbert osmond would sing if he wouldn't doubtlessly find rock & roll too crude for his sensibilities. you wonder what sins isabel has committed that james hasn't shared w/ us ... until one realizes that in her v. refusal to leave osmond, not to abscond w/ caspar goodwood, whose kiss sends white lightning through her frame, she's committing a sin of pride. at that point, one must cease to think of her as a victim, for she is no longer someone whom something is happening to and has become someone actively courting heartache & disaster. one is forced to face that she may no longer be the same person; that, while it may not be irrevocable, she still has changed as utterly as her language.
& guess whom it's down to?
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