Literal meaning of sentence "Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow"

[Kolridg]

Dear All,

Learning English and reading lyric of David Bowie song "Life on Mars" I collided with lack of understanding regarding the line: "Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow". When I see examples in my dictionaries / example directory they only prompts "grow UP" means become an adult, and only one example among dozens of "become adult" showed that "grow UP" means to grow something, for example plant or animal. And since it is only example with such wise in the reference books I have I still lean towards it is meant Mickey Mouse has grown into a cow... Especially according to this topic here where one man says "TO BE A BIT OF A COW" is ordinary UK definition to call something unpleasant, what is appropriate for the general sense of the song (i.e. Mickey Mouse should have grown into a cow to follow the song's general sense).

I think especially native speakers would be helpful with their answers.

 

[emsr2d2]

You will hear this a lot on this forum - don't use song lyrics to help you learn English. They frequently don't follow grammatical rules. The lyrics are usually written to fit the rhythm and rhyme of the song. In addition, there are some songwriters who are simply wonderfully eccentric. I would say Bowie is one of them.

 

[jutfrank]

I'm a huge David Bowie fan.

This song is quite surreal in its imagery so the line is very much open to interpretation. The song is certainly not meant literally. I take the line to be saying that Mickey Mouse has grown up into a cow (on America's tortured brow). That is, he has become a cow.

Why a cow? Well, a cow is something that you can milk. Something productive and valuable that can bring wealth. For America, the Disney media machine has become a rich and valuable source of wealth and culture.

 

[Tdol]

I think it has the idea of a cash cow too. I could be wrong- many of David Bowie's lyrics are impenetrable.

 

[jutfrank]

I think it has the idea of a cash cow too. I could be wrong- many of David Bowie's lyrics are impenetrable.

That's what I was driving at. His lyrics are not impenetrable - you just have to get to know how he thinks and writes.

 

[Kolridg]

Thank to everybody for the replies, including your emsr2d2 advice on the fact songs often can be out of regular grammar, so when colliding with serious problems in the translation you should be awake it could be just that kind of case.

I think both interpretations of the cow suit, and one doesn't clashes with another - he can quite be a big cow and at that this very cow can be productively milked!

By the way, I still confused with another part of the song, precisely with the first two lines:

"It is God-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair."

Again, very few examples in my reference books interprets "God-awful" like disgusting / repulsive, while most examples offer it in sense of "awful, very bad". So I wonder what is meant exactly: either watching TV is a very small digusting thing for that poor girl or her love affair with the friend about whom the further lines tell is just an unsophisticated thing which would have taken very little time and she then might come back to home duly (I guess she intentioned to chat for a while with her boyfriend according to further lyric). I would be much oblliged for bringing light on this duality in my understanding. For foreigner, differing different meanings in the same word is the most treat of difficulty of the English, especially when both suit the sense...

Thank you.

 

[jutfrank]

My interpretation:

It's a God-awful small affair to the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling "No!" and her daddy has told her to go

For the girl in question, it's a very trivial matter. It's not a big deal. We don't know what happened exactly but we can assume she has gotten into some kind of trouble with her parents, for whom it is a big deal. They are angry with her and are now kicking her out of the house because of it.

 

[Kolridg]

Perhaps, so it is jutfrank, thank you for your advice. Yet I guess they don't kick her out of house, but order her to sit home, and nothing left for her than "to be hooked to the silver screen."


It's a God-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling no
And her daddy has told her to go

But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen

 

[jutfrank]

No, she doesn't stay home. She leaves the house to get away from the situation at home, (walks through her sunken dream) and since she's forced to be alone for a while (her friend is nowhere to be seen) she decides to go to the cinema (the silver screen), finding the seat (in the theatre) with the clearest view.

 

[Tdol]

That's what I was driving at. His lyrics are not impenetrable - you just have to get to know how he thinks and writes.

Yeah but- he did have his cut-up phase when he followed William Burroughs in chopping up texts to see what chance would throw up. He can be a great lyricist, but considering that many fans don't even know what Station to Station meant, there were some comprehension issues.

 

[Kolridg]

No, she doesn't stay home. She leaves the house to get away from the situation at home, (walks through her sunken dream) and since she's forced to be alone for a while (her friend is nowhere to be seen) she decides to go to the cinema (the silver screen), finding the seat (in the theatre) with the clearest view.

Yeah, now I understand it is just so since "daddy said her to go" and the "she found seat with the clearest view". (Earlier I supposed it was an armchair that was most close-located to TV among others).

Well-a-well, and "Now she walks through her sunken dream" must be she dissapointedly walks through her wrecked dream? (Second variant could be a walking immersed into dreams, but it looks unlikely, to my mind, as I can hardly imagine she might have been dreaming at the time when all plans failed - matter in home she wanted to be attending and meeting with her friend).

 

[Kolridg]

And still what does going through sunken dream mean? I found only two examples in my directory on it - and both says it means a figure remaining a kind of immersed in dream. But reading literally it is a dream what is sunken, but not a figure. As for me, for foreigner it only can mean a wrecked dream, but no any signs that "sunken" could relate to a person too.

Earlier I collided only different meanings in words, and if it turns out now that said about a girl who is simply walking immersed in her dreams, with no referring to a wrecked dream, I will be a bit surprised, however will be obliged to accept it.

P.S. Promiss this is the last question I put regarding the subject. Thank you.

 

[Barb_D]

Koridg - don't say you "collide" with something you don't understand. You can "run into."

There is one meaning of "run into" that means collide, but the other meaning is "meet by chance."

Context tells us which one.

I ran into an old friend at the grocery store -- you probably did NOT hit her car with your car.

 

[jutfrank]

For me, sunken dream carries at once a sense of illusionment/disillusionment.

On one level, she is depressed and disappointed (sunken) by the negative event implied in the very first line. There is some kind of romantic idea of life that has been disillusioned and now she yearns to escape the reality of the world she is confined within. A theme that recurs so often in 20th century art, and in Bowie's work, is the alienation of the individual in postmodern society.

But yet to where can she escape? If not out into the world, to where? To another world?

She ends up at the cinema, attempting to escape the world through the magical illusion of the movies. Ironically, this is still not enough for her. For the film is "a saddening bore", which "she has lived ten ten times or more". Is this art imitating life? Or does life imitate art? Where is there left to flee? The sense of alienation deepens. "Is there life on Mars?"

Bowie was heavily influenced by the 20th century surrealist movement in art and literature, which made heavy use of vivid dream imagery. He was also interested (and I feel that this a key influence of this song) by the work and ideas of the French Situationists (See Society of the Spectacle; G. de Bord) and the postmodernist thinker Jean Baudrillard and his notion of hyperreality, (See Simulacra and Simulation; J. Baudrillard) of which Baudrillard uses Disneyland as the perfect example of what the postmodern environment has become to us, where the line between the real world and the movies, between what is real and what is imagined, between waking life and the dream world, has vanished. The girl with the mousy hair is trapped inside the spectacle. This is her sunken dream.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality

 

[Kolridg]

Quite interesting mention, and what is most important sounding just right, thank you.