'Exemplary' at 7th grade is about thinking beyond the obvious and digging deeper into the text and looking for precision of ideas, evidence, reference to other topics covered in class. Read this answer below from Neel and see some of the ideas he found. If this level of thinking seems a bit scary, look at the video below this post. You CAN get here... with practice.
Watching this video, I saw myself as that boy. I thought that I was him. The wings, the air, the logo, I fell for it all. I was him. I was him. This video (missing source here) is one of great importance, and most likely goes out to the shoe enthusiast audience, and as a message that shouldn’t be taken lightly. This boy, this human is portrayed as a consumer across the course of this book. The word consume was repeated three times over the course of this novel. It’s trying to represent that we consume the bait. We take what looms in our presence, and make ourselves think that things are bigger than they actually are.
In the first verse, on the sixth line, it stated: “It’s gonna make me fly,”. The use of this word ‘gonna’ is so extremely vital in explaining how the world falls for marketing. We all see things as more than they really are. We all believe that greatness is gonna come. Good things are gonna come. Things will be what they’re meant to be in a while. Greatness will be achieved. Because in truth, what Macklemore is really trying to say is that separate things can’t give you greatness. It doesn’t what you have, but who you are. You can only achieve greatness because you, yes you, have to do something to achieve it.
This boy’s fascination with what companies are trying to sell to him is similar to the conventional female fashionista archetype. They both are trying to seek attention, and want people to notice them and for people to be fascinated. They both think that this will give themselves greatness. It’ll make them achieve what others can’t. In the third verse, the line ‘I was trying to fly without leaving the ground,’ represents how objects were not going to get him greatness. He hadn’t sacrificed enough to deserve that.
Throughout the song, Macklemore talks about how his shoes aren’t worth it. Though in between these lines, he reassures himself and tries to make himself buy into what he previously was; lines like ‘We are what we wear. We wear what we are,’ and ‘What I wore, this is the source of my youth,’, which were in the sixth and last verse respectively, shows that he’s moulding himself into a new person, but he’s looking back and trying to realize whether he made the right choice or not.
In the sixth stanza, Macklemore really speaks out against consumerism. He says he is part of a movement, and this movement is telling him to do certain things, and he’s consuming it. He specifically states ‘... and Phil Knight tricked us all,’ referring to the founder of Nike, and how he’s making individuals buy into this. Macklemore also states in that sixth stanza: ‘They told me to just do it,’, referring to Nike’s motto and how they influence people in consumerism. Making them think that things are bigger than they actually are. It’s almost admirable to see how they’ve marketed things to make them seem bigger and better than they actually are; but also shameful that we fall into this trap. Perhaps Macklemore what is trying to explain that a human shouldn’t be fooled by companies like how people fell for sirens in myths, to explain that humans are defined by their qualities and not by their chattels, to further explain that people become who they are because of what they have done, an idea which is almost invisible in modern-day, extant society.
Win +1 if you can tell Neel a way he could improve this piece
