Me and my Mom were driving around the other day, listening to music, talking, etc. I was flipping through music when Hero came on. I wasn't necessarily in the mood to hear it, so I skipped it. My Mom quickly told me to go back to it because, when she heard it played in 500 Days of Summer, she started liking it a lot more.

We started talking about it, how it fit really well in the movie, and how sad it was/is. She then told me that it seems to her like the character in Hero is talking to themselves, telling themselves that they aren't worthless, that they have a purpose, and that everything will be alright, trying to urge themselves forward.

But then they start thinking about people "cheating", and being lazy, and how greedy the world can be in general, which starts depressing them again, making them think otherwise.
Anyway, what do you guys think this song means? I tend to like what my Mom said a lot, I just need to reflect on it a little bit more.

i love this song! it's always struck me how few lyrics there are, and how much they're repeated. I totally get what your mom was saying, Raph. really interresting, though it lacks a certain finality that we're used to from Regina. but who knows?

"power to the people
we don't want it. We want pleasure
and the TV's tryin to rape us
and i guess that they're succeeding
and we're goin to these meetin's
but we're not doin' any meetin'
and we're tryin to be faithful
but we're cheatin'..."

these lines seem soo spot on with the way America is going.. less and less freedom of press/speech, shamelessly biased news reports, and school/learning/any kind of work regarded as a chore rather than an oportunity.. we certainly don't want power, and we're all about the pleasure (i can't speak for other countries, sorry).

"the tv's tryin to rape us" fits with what i said above-rape referring to removal of our power, leaving us helpless and violated. Rape is a strong word, and i'd take this line as literally as possible from Regina, considering she's gotten rid of hers... initially i took this quite literally, thinking of the correlation between scandalous tv shows and teen pregnancy, but i don't know that this is the track Reg was on for this song, and it's kind of a stretch.

"we're goin to these meetings
but we're not doin any meeting"
this one's tricky, and really fits with any context you want to place it in. Literally, aything you can think of, this line is along for the ride. Intuitively, it made me think of a couple things: 1. dating, but everyone feels obligated to act a certain way, so they're not truly meeting each other, and 2. religion/church. The meetings are church services, in which case, the "not meeting" would either refer to church members being phony (like the daters), or they're not meeting God.. which opens up all sorts of things...

i'm kind of babbling, so i'll come back another time, maybe after a nap haha sorry...

"Hero of the Story" is supremely ironic. It pitches the contrast between the planned structure of life with the Hero narrative representing the individual, experiential journey. The individual subject--dubbed the "hero" by himself--paradoxically bolsters his self-confidence on one hand with "no one's got it all" in the face of the flaws he undoubtedly shares with the rest of the people (mentioned in the main verse quoted above by BLTW) and on the other hand "I'm the hero of the story, don't need to be saved" in response to others' recognition of those flaws. The "story" is the personal narrative one puts together for oneself to make the events of life comprehensible--the coherence and predictability of the forms of this narrative clash with the realities of life and even the aims of the people themselves, who do silly, contrary things like "goin to these meetin's but...not doin' any meetin'" and renouncing freedom--the great "power to the people"--in favor of languishing in front of the tube (which the avg. American does for 6 hours per 24). How much do the great political values America claims--such as "power to the people"--mean on an individual level, anyway? How free is freedom?