There's No Church In the Wild
There’s something haunting about “No Church in the Wild,” the hypnotic new song by Kanye West and Jay-Z. I first heard the song in the trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, and the more I listen to it, the more I realize how perfectly it captures the spirit of Gatsby’s decadent world and also some–some–disturbing elements of our own.
The music video for the song, directed by Romain Gavras, was filmed in Prague across the backdrop of the city’s neoclassical architecture (Prague’s National Theatre is the beautiful building you keep seeing). The video’s fiery images of protesters and policemen violently clashing on the streets will no doubt call to mind the riots in Greece and London, the Occupy Wall Street protests, and even the bloody demonstrations of the Arab world–which explains why some critics have rushed to interpret the song and its video in political terms:
Gavras is no stranger to politically themed projects: He and M.I.A stirred up controversy two years ago with the video for her single “Born Free,” which graphically depicted governmental oppression of redheads. Of course, M.I.A. is known for her political flame-throwing, so the imagery for “Born Free,” while jarring, did not seem entirely out of place. But Jay-Z and Kanye don’t protest wealth on their record, they celebrate it. Kanye’s verse seems especially incongruous over the backdrop of a (seemingly all-male) political protest. “And deception is the only felony,” he declares, “So never [expletive deleted] nobody without telling me.”
The narcissism of the lyrics seems to cheapen the imagery deployed in the video. So what’s going on?…
Of course, there’s no reason artists should refrain from depicting both the attraction of wealth and the dark side of affluence. Indeed, watching this video, it’s impossible not to think of the last place we heard this song: in the new trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby. At this point, however, Kanye and Jay-Z’s grasp on the tension between those two subjects doesn’t quite match Fitzgerald’s, to say the least—and Romain Gavras isn’t helping.
Slate‘s Aisha Harris has trouble making sense of the meaning of the song and the video because her political explanation is too surface and misses the point.
The song is not about politics. It’s about culture–or, what happens when culture degenerates and society breaks down. The riots represent disorder and chaos, themes that lace each lyric of the song, each shot of the video. When the video flashes to images of neoclassical sculptures, which symbolize order and harmony, the contrast with the violence is stark. Do you see the protester jumping to his death in this scene?
Meanwhile, the pagan god of light, truth and order–Apollo–sits, watching over these scenes of death and fury. Nietzsche called Apollo “the marvellous divine image of the god of individuation and just boundaries.” But there are no boundaries here. No individuals. Just a mob. Dionysus is Apollo’s antagonist, and it’s his influence that’s present throughout this song, not Apollo’s.
The hat-tip to neoclassicism and the pagan gods brings to mind the classical world itself, and the birth of Western civilization from Athens to Rome to Christianity. In its lyrics, the song contains references to Socrates, Plato, the Platonic dialogue the Euthyphro, Jesus, and the colosseum:
Is Pious pious cause God loves pious?
Socrates asks, “Whose bias do y’all seek?”
All for Plato, screech
I’m out here ballin’, I know y’all hear my sneaks
Jesus was a carpenter, Yeezy, laid beats
Hova flow the Holy Ghost, get the hell up out your seats
Preach
For the record, the dilemma of the Euthryphro (in the words of Socrates) is as follows: ”Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” Not bad, Jay-Z.
The next part of the song is the hook:
Human beings in a mob
What’s a mob to a king?
What’s a king to a god?
What’s a god to a non-believer?
Who don’t believe in anything?We make it out alive
All right, all right
No church in the wild
The point is we’ve come a long way since the days of Plato and Socrates.
Western civilization, especially it’s art and culture, has always been caught between two elements: the Dionysian and the Apollonian. Nature versus civilization. Mind versus body. Passion versus reason. Earth god versus sky god. Destruction versus creation. Chaos versus order. There is constant tension, both in human nature and in society, between these two forces.
Listening to this song, and seeing the image of Apollo first in a fighting post and then just sitting there (above) having surrendered, it seems pretty clear that Dionysus has won. Or that’s the message anyway–that he’s won and has been winning for a long time, as Jay-Z’s reference to Rome’s gladiatorial games (“blood stains the coliseum doors”) makes clear. We’re in the wild, enslaved to nature and its pagan ruler, and there’s no Church, no moral order, here.
So what’s left?
Bacchanalia. “I live by you, desire / I stand by you, walk through the fire.”
Nihilism: “What’s a god to a non-believer? / Who don’t believe in anything?”
Materialism: “Thanksgiving disguised as a feast / Rollin’ in the Rolls-Royce Corniche.”
Decadence. “Cocaine seats / All white like I got the whole thing bleached / Drug dealer chic.”
A new religion of hedonism:
We formed a new religion
No sins as long as there’s permission’
And deception is the only felony
So never [have sex with] nobody wit’out tellin’ me
And, of course, pain: ”When we die, the money we can’t keep / But we probably spend it all ’cause the pain ain’t cheap. Preach.”
As Camille Paglia has written, “In nature we are convicted without appeal.”
The nightmarish language of the song with its images of total social breakdown reminds me Yeats’ famous poem, The Second Coming and its talk of “rough beasts” and “mere anarchy” being loosed upon the world (read the poem here).
Both have a savage quality about them. Both refer to this thing in us that’s half-man and half-beast. Both are describing a world defined by chaos and disorder. But is this the world we actually live in? To a certain limited extent, perhaps. But I think the key is that it’s limited. I have my objections to the type of decadence and materialism described in the song, but when I ride on the subway and see a young guy give up his seat to a pregnant woman, or go to a wedding to participate in a celebration of love and commitment, or even listen to “No Church In the Wild,” which is subversively critical of the culture it describes, it’s clear to me that we’re (still) more than our animal natures, even if we are we’ve come a long way since the golden age of Athens.
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Jun '10
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
The Passion of the Anarchist? I'm not impressed.
May '12
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
Meh...terrible music and video from a video director that takes himself way too seriously.
Sep '10
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
"Not bad, Jay-Z." Are you joking? This songwriter thinks the Euthyphro dilemma is "Whose bias do y'all seek"?!? That's not just bad; it's stupid.
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
I like the song, but I enjoyed it even more after reading the masterful job you did parsing its meaning, Emily.
Aug '10
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
Kanye doesn't have the brains to do anything more than throw firebombs. He's not trying to set up a new culture, or cleverly comment on the existing one. Maybe Jay-Z was aiming higher, as he put together a verse of random historical and philosophical references; but Kanye's half of the halting lyrics in that song are all about meeting a girl at a club.
Kanye is like Kurt Cobain: he throws random lyrics together without much thought, and lets the music carry the single. The difference is Cobain admitted he sometimes put together nonsense just to get words on paper for a track, while Kanye declares himself a genius.
The best parts of that music video were the sculptures. Fitting that the frozen expressions of a dead, ancient culture overshadow the feeble attempts of a younger, live culture to express itself in a self-important fit of pique.
Dogsbody beat me to my other rant. That one line got commentators falling all over themselves to declare Jay-Z was an intellectual, and everything around it was similarly deep. I like Jay-Z, but he and Kanye tested new limits of meaningless pretention on Watch The Throne.
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
Emily, thank you so much for this post. I loved reading it and loved watching the video after reading it and then loved reading your thoughts again. I'm convinced by your arguments about the song's meaning and I thank you for unpacking it all for us, too.
So 20 years ago or so, I got in the habit of rapping the Second Coming. "Turning and turning in the widening gyre! The falcon can not hear the fal-con-er. Things fall apart. The center can not hold. (drop drop) Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world!"
Yes, I was a weird kid. Anyway, I totally see the similar qualities here. And I think the video captures the song perfectly and I'm so impressed that it's being used in Luhrmann's trailer that I may -- may -- have to revisit my reticence toward seeing his version of the movie.
But seriously -- great post. One of my favorites I've read here.
Aug '10
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
One more thing: it's worth noting that "No Church In The Wild" had 10 writers and 3 producers. It guarantees that whatever message someone was trying to convey, it was going to come out garbled or meaningless. The random references make sense if you view the song as the output of a committee's first level brainstorming session. (The entire album has the same problem, with some songs going up to 12 writers or 6 producers.)
Neither Kanye nor Jay-Z get to call themselves deep thinkers when they have 8 other guys to share credit with.
Aug '10
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
Hmm... is there something about conservative women that makes them less hostile to hip-hop than conservative men, or are some gals just suckers for any reference whatsoever to WB Yeats?
The hypocritical promise of a utopia of sexual license is an excellent match for the images of men turned into tyrants and rioting for no apparent reason.
If forced to choose, I'd much rather listen to this than bubblegum pop. And portrayals of nihilism as self-evidently doomed strike me as less depraved than stuff that pretends vice has a wholesome, squeaky-clean face.
Edited on June 20, 2012 at 4:09amNov '11
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
1. Camille Paglia rocks! I wish she would start posting again. Maybe it's because she's working on her new book, but never seemed like she was unable to multitask...
2. Yeats? Also rocks. But don't you think there's a key difference between The Second Coming's vision and Jay-Z's? Namely, that Yeats wasn't exactly celebrating the arrival of the beast. If Yeats were Jay-Z, the poem would have read
or something to that effect.
That is, if Jay-Z is aware that he's being a godless decadent hedonist, isn't that much worse than simply accidentally being one (like all the other, less intelligent rappers)? I guess I don't buy the 'subversive criticism' angle of it, that's verging on the quisling to me ('oh, i was really serving the country by betraying it - i was betraying it ironically!')
Nov '11
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
3. I would strongly suggest y'all check out Dennis Prager's Torah classes, and specifically his lesson on the first few lines of Genesis, and the history-changing import of the line, "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth." You can find some of his thoughts here, on the nature/civilization duality, just scroll down a bit.
Nov '11
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
4. Finally, as a shout-out to the skeptics, and because I too think that Euthyphro reference comes out of nowhere and leads him nowhere, I leave you with the immortal words of Jamie Lee Curtis.
Nov '10
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
The "hook" about the mob reminds me of the OWS slogan "This is what democracy looks like".
It always occurs to me, "no, that's what mob rule looks like!"
In fact, that would make a nice counter-chant for when these guys show up at conservative events.
As for church and wild, "wild" means something a bit different to me. I've been "in the wild". We've got lots of wild up here in Canada. And there doesn't need to be a church in the wild. The wild is a church.
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
Adrian
That is, if Jay-Z is aware that he's being a godless decadent hedonist, isn't that much worse than simply accidentally being one (like all the other, less intelligent rappers)? I guess I don't buy the 'subversive criticism' angle of it, that's verging on the quisling to me ('oh, i was really serving the country by betraying it - i was betraying it ironically!') · 1 hour ago
I've been thinking about this a lot lately with Lena Dunham's "Girls." If it's subversive criticism of hedonism, materialism, decadence, it's brilliant. I believe it is just that. But if it's designed to be aspirational? Oh man, that would be sick.
Aug '10
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
Maybe it is the Yeats, then.
Maybe growing up around Yeats means not being able to unsee his particular tragic of pervasive decay. The clouds about the fallen sun. Adam's curse. The rough beast is only the most famous of them -- the Kim Kardashian of Yeats's imagination, if you will.
For me, even the words "no church in the wild" remind me of Sailing to Byzantium. No rapper or studio can take credit for that, I know. It just is.
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.:
So 20 years ago or so, I got in the habit of rapping the Second Coming. "Turning and turning in the widening gyre! The falcon can not hear the fal-con-er. Things fall apart. The center can not hold. (drop drop) Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world!"
I sometimes sing a Yeats poems to myself, or recite one in the car to stave off road rage. Doesn't quite beat rappin' Mollie H, though.
Nov '11
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately with Lena Dunham's "Girls." If it's subversive criticism of hedonism, materialism, decadence, it's brilliant. I believe it is just that. But if it's designed to be aspirational? Oh man, that would be sick. · 1 hour ago
I too have mixed feelings about it, but I'm at the point where I almost don't care what the intention is. Think of Paul Schrader movies, like Taxi Driver, meant to teach us a lesson about evil by displaying it to us. I think all they end up doing is glamorizing evil, and getting lots and lots of eyeballs to see it. Better for everyone's souls all around to not even be exposed to it in the first place, regardless of whether there's a moral hidden under the grime somewhere.
(cont'd)
Nov '11
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
I believe in the soul, and that it can be corrupted. Really bad pop culture analogy time: think of it like Voldemort and his horcruxes, with each new act of evil splintering his soul, slowly taking its toll and making him less and less human. I think we do something like that to ourselves when we seek out the ugliness around us, whether in rap or on HBO. There is plenty of sin and evil in the world, we are a fallen people, we don't need our music to remind us of it - we do need, however, to be reminded of the good, and the beautiful, and the true, since those are sorely lacking in the everyday commotion of life.
Dramatic conclusion: I don't care how good a person you are, if you spend all day listening to rap and watching full frontal, part of you is going to get messed up. In the case of supremely well-grounded and intelligent women like Mesdames Smith and Hemingway, it might only be a very small part of you, but in the case of the vast majority of the audience, it will be an irreplaceable loss.
Aug '10
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
Midget Faded Rattlesnake:
The hypocritical promise of a utopia of sexual license is an excellent match for the images of men turned into tyrants and rioting for no apparent reason.
Sure. But suggest the link to Kanye, and you'll get a blank stare in return.
There is a difference between references in a song and an actual, structured message. Reading the lyrics, I see references; I see no message.
Jay-Z, as part of his personal re-branding into a quasi intellectual, loads up a verse with references to Socrates and philosophy he picked up while auditing a course with Cornel West. Like any good mix of random and surrealist images, you can read plenty of meaning if you just squint at it long enough.
Then there's a bridge, and Kanye, oblivious as usual to anything outside his own head, drops a completely random verse that has nothing to do with anything that came before it. You can see the lines one of the other 8 writers shoe-horned in to match the song theme; they stand out like a bad jump cut in a movie.
There's no message to communicate here. Just thinly themed random imagery.
Aug '10
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
Adrian:
Dramatic conclusion: I don't care how good a person you are, if you spend all day listening to rap and watching full frontal, part of you is going to get messed up.
And if you don't?
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
Adrian
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately with Lena Dunham's "Girls." If it's subversive criticism of hedonism, materialism, decadence, it's brilliant. I believe it is just that. But if it's designed to be aspirational? Oh man, that would be sick. · 1 hour ago
I too have mixed feelings about it, but I'm at the point where I almost don't care what the intention is. Think of Paul Schrader movies, like Taxi Driver, meant to teach us a lesson about evil by displaying it to us. I think all they end up doing is glamorizing evil, and getting lots and lots of eyeballs to see it. Better for everyone's souls all around to not even be exposed to it in the first place, regardless of whether there's a moral hidden under the grime somewhere.
(cont'd) · 9 hours ago
But certainly there's a different between exploring these themes artistically to make a point about morality and just being exposed to something. I mean, crime scene photos of a brutal murder are different than Macbeth.
Feb '12
Re: There's No Church In the Wild
My Sunday School class worked through a Great Courses series on the History of Christian Theology last year. One of the things that struck me was a contrast between then and now. The ancients feared animals, and so the goal of civilization was to tame the beast and live on more rational plane. Modernity fears the machine, and so we embrace our passions and emotions, embrace the animal, to show we're more than just rational beings.