Last Year's Troubles

This song doesn't seem to need much explanation. Vega contrasts the romanticized way poverty and crime are depicted in Dickens novels (and the movie versions thereof), old ballads, operas, and other entertainments with the poverty and crime of our day, which we see for ourselves and in our news.

"Maybe it's the clothing," she says, "the earrings, the swashbuckling blouses," and the "petticoats." Even their "rags are so very Victorian."

Criminals used to be daring, robbing people on the highway or at sea. Today, a "pirate" is someone who illegally downloads a movie-- hardly a role Erroll Flynn could sink a cutlass into.

Overall, those old problems "shine up so prettily" and "gleam with a luster they don't have today."

Meanwhile, today's homeless "just don't give it their best," she smirks sadly. Also, there seems to be a difference in place as well as time. The above comment is about "the ones here at home." "Here," she repeats, meaning America, "it's just dirty and violent and troubling."

Is there more or less "trouble" now or "last year"? "It would be the same, would be my guess," she concludes.

Which is worse, the threat of debtor's prison for bankruptcy and being hanged for pickpocketing... or the fear of being shot for your sneakers or having to live near a drug den? "Trouble is still trouble," she decides. As for crime, "evil is still evil."

So why are last year's troubles romanticized?

Because everything eventually is. Time softens all tragedy. Conquerors like Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun were played for laughs in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Night at the Museum.

Even Hitler is has been a sitcom character already (it was called Heil, Honey, I'm Home, and thankfully it was quickly cancelled. But this year, Netflix launched one called Look Who's Back). And anyone strict about anything-- from grammar to soup-- is called a "Nazi."

Meanwhile, the heroes are played with, too. There is a movie called Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, and a new photo app can put your face on Benjamin Franklin's head.

We romanticize the past. Already, the 1980s victims of AIDS are compared, in the musical Rent, to the Bohemians of  La Boheme, which was set in the 1840s. Rap somewhat romanticizes today's urban poverty.

We gave an Oscar and Tonys to a singing Oliver Twist years ago... and this year a rapping Alexander Hamilton looks to sweep the Tonys.

Someday, people will look at today's leaders with the same bemusement. Lord only knows what they will have Barack Obama sing on Broadway in 100 years.


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