MovieChat Forums > Beaches (1989) Discussion > Does anybody understand Oh Industry?

Does anybody understand Oh Industry?

posted 14 years ago by hbotzong
8 replies | jump to latest

I love that song, but if anyone knows the meaning or has their own interpretation, I would love for you to share. Thanks! =)

[–] djtracid 14 years ago

It always seemed to simply be a woman who was devoted to her factory work (I assume somewhere at the top) and never paid attention to the faceless drones that ran it, but eventually was "eaten up" by the machine and became another faceless drone. I might be totally off, but that's kind of what I always got out of it. She essentially let the company take her life, until it consumed her completely.

It takes 46 muscles to frown but only 4 to flip 'em the bird...

[–] coutterhill 14 years ago

I always thought it was about pollution and how we keep making things that pollute the Earth and people more. Cruel rains refer to acid rain, phosphorus is used in explosives, pesticides...just my opinion.

[–] mpop314 14 years ago

I think its a combination of both the interpretations that have been given. Its just about the general evils of industrialization, how it chews up the workers, but also chews up our world

Its a really weird song compared to everything else in the movie. Beaches was my moms favorite movie when I was a kid, and I heard all the songs a lot whenever she had the soundtrack on, but I always thought this one was really cool.

[–] JessaCita 14 years ago

Oh, man! I totally forgot about this part of the movie. It used to give me nightmares when I was younger! I just watched this scene on YouTube, and to be honest, it still creeped me out a little!

[–] RashomonLaStrada 14 years ago

I thought it was a comment on the overly pretentious off-broadway political intellectual type of musical political performance art pieces of the 70s... I didnt think we, as a movie audience, were supposed to be engrossed in it beyond that.

"The good end happily, the bad unhappily, that is why it is called Fiction."

[–] SataiDelen 12 years ago

I agree with you. There's a Charlie Chaplin film (at least, I *THINK* it's a Charlie Chaplin film. I forget the name of it, but it's a silent film) and this scene/song reminds me of that film. It's also about Industry, and the mindlessness that goes with it in the form of workers who are expected to conform and stop thinking, and the faceless corporate people who run the businesses, etc.

[–] pazuzusjc 13 years ago

Its about Capitalism run a muck, and all the joys that it brings comes at a cost, the world left in perpetual atrophy and finally its destruction.

[–] SataiDelen 12 years ago

Thank you. I was just coming here to ammend my post, because after watching that scene again, and listening to the "reviews," at the after party, it's said that CC plays "Mother Earth," and that would explain the song, too. Particularly the words, "Oh Industry, whatever will become of me?" It's Mother Earth questioning her role in the world now that people are turning away from nature, and moving toward artificiality. In the end, she dies (or so it seems), and is absorbed into the faceless, polluted world that now exists.

That's my new interpretation, anyway, lol.