Machine Ballerina

In Goodfellas, Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) has a famous scene. He tells a funny story, and someone replies, appropriately enough, "You're funny!" Instead of accepting the compliment, he flies off right off the umbrage handle: "Funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh?"

Here, the speaker asks a similar question of her, we presume, boyfriend: "Am I an afternoon's pastime?" But her question is about being used as, well, as sex toy, a "skin trampoline."

And... that's the song. Just her asking, in various ways, if he thinks of her as a plaything. The rest of it is more plaything metaphors-- she even uses Pesci's words, "amuse" and "clown"-- but also: "A thing on a string," "a toy," "a soft piece of clay," "machine ballerina," "soldier of tin," "a puppet," "MAD magazine," "pinball machine," and "puzzle."

Also, a "birthday phone call" and... more to the point, a "pin-up" and "fantasy girl."

Does she only exist for his "royal... approval... perusal... and possible refusal"? Well? Does she? No answer is recorded.

One clever turn of phrase is a pun on the cliche "in fits and starts." She says she, in his eyes, is made of "puzzling parts/ but none fits or starts."

It's not all physical-- there is some banter or repartee-- "We match wits," she allows... "but not hearts." Even when it's intellectual, it's not emotional.

What the song asks is not an unimportant question, or even a bad metaphor for the experience of being a strung along in a merely physical relationship.

But the song never gets beyond that question, only asking it again and again. She never says, "Well, it seems that way to me, and here's what I think about it," let alone "... and here's what I am going to do about it."

Until she climbs out of the toybox and stalks out the playroom door, it seems she is stuck repeating the same phrases over and over. Like one of those "talking" dolls with a pull-string.


Next Song: Solitaire