Reply to Ted Lasso

Forum Index » Entertainment and Pop Culture

Reply to "Ted Lasso - Season 3"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Loved the Phillip Larkin poem!!  Hurray for writers!![/quote]

I kind of liked Mae's rendition of the poem, but I think I really don't like the poem itself. Yes, parents give their kids baggage; but I think, often, they tend to fix the baggage their parents gave them and just mess their kids up in new ways (while also strengthening them in new ways.) The Larkin poem strikes me as a shitty, simplistic kind of nihilism. [/quote]

Huh, I think the poem captures that nuance. “They may not mean to but they do,” after all.

I’ve also always read the final lines of the poem as a joke, even though Larkin’s own biography indicates that it is serious to him (he never had kids). Larkin was a terribly lonely and misanthropic person. On one level This Be the Verse is simply him complains about his mum and dad and the way they messed him up. But most people have kids, and despite the truth of the poem, don’t regret it. Part of the nuance of the poem for me is that it’s author is saying something true — parents always mess up their kids one way or another no matter their best intentions — but then taking the “wrong” lesson from it. So I read the poem and agree but choose to instead be hopeful, to go ahead and have kids with all my good intentions to not mess them up, even though Larkin is 100% right that I WILL f**k them up.[/quote]

I think the part I dislike about the poem is the idea that we pass along all of the problems that our parents gave us while adding new ones. As if we don't learn from the mistakes our parents made (even if we make new mistakes of our own in the process). It kind of dovetails with the general trope in society that the next generation is somehow always worse than the current generation. As if humanity has been degrading since Eve got us kicked out of Eden. I'm projecting a lot of my own shit onto this poem, but that's kind of what poetry is about. I absolutely detest when people complain about "kids these days."

Anyway, no complaints at all about the poem's use in the show. I thought that scene worked really well. And I'm happy to have heard and read that poem, even if the poem makes me unhappy. If that makes any sense. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics