I wouldn't agree with a lot of the above. The song doesn't set our narrator "above" the Greek girl. By the end of the song our narrator has reached the same position that she holds at the start, claiming to want to live with common people "like you", except before the song's end he's stooped lower than she has.He catches her eye *because* she studies "sculpture" - that's what he is to her, an object of some aesthetic interest, but without, ultimately, any sexual interest. Not "poor" enough, nor (therefore) "cool" enough, or so he'd like to think.
The rejection sends our narrator off on his rant, which is more about his *own* fascination / revulsion for the "common people" than it is about hers (if indeed she has such strong feelings).
By the point at which he's calling the "common people" as witnesses to the Greek girl's failings, he's not only romanticising them and aestheticising them, as she does, he wants them to sing along with his own condemnations. Which is spiteful, cheap, and nasty - but these qualities are, perhaps, not uncommon.
― Neil Willett, Thursday, June 16, 2011 12:05 AM (21 hours ago) Bookmark
more interesting than owen hatherley's reading at any rate -- i don't think we should identify with the narrator rly.
idk, im middle-class, i've never pretended to be otherwise, 'common people' is directed against people who do; so i guess i can go on my merry way? i don't mind people liking this pretty mediocre piece of music. never liked the 'deliberately tinselly' vibe of 95-era pulp.