this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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There’s plenty of stories from other countries about the cunning hero outsmarting the fae or similar. Just that in America, the hero always wins vs other countries where there are also many stories where the hero gets killed.
A famous legend in my culture is of a humpbacked man stumbling across some magical fuckers and they take pity on him and take away the hump in his back. He is so happy and chirpy he sings their praises and jumps with glee, so they give him a worse hump for being an annoying cunt.
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe, two of America's most famous writers, both based their bodies of work on people paying the price of losing to temptation/sin. Although to be fair I couldn't think of any popular songs about that.
I know it's not a popular take, but I don't like Poe or Hawthorne. I always felt like their shallow exploration of death/edgy topics really only appealed to the immature or unintelligent reader.
I can see their work on a shelf between The Nightmare Before Christmas and a Dashboard Confessional CD- maybe a Jr High textbook as well.
I wouldn't use them as an example.
Well, the problem isn't that your take is unpopular, it's that it's confusing. You say they only appeal to the unintelligent or immature but you also say you don't like them. I'm sure you can see the contradiction.
It's unpopular because instead of just saying you don't like them or personally think they lack depth you go straight to insulting their readers and fans.
Thats only because they write with emotion in mind, in my opinion. They are trying to evoke feelings and cause dissonance, not lay out an intellectual thesis on the subject.
Im sure they can't hold a candle to your own peerless prose, king.
But america is special
/s
Johnny admits to knowing that taking the bet was a sin and commits it anyway. Johnny gets the golden fiddle, but the devil gets his soul in the end anyway. What's 60 more years to an eternal being? The song can still be a cautionary tale you just need to finish it.
Johnny admits to knowing that taking the bet was a sin and commits it anyway.
No, he admits that it might be a sin.
The boy said, "My name's Johnny and it might be a sin
But I'm gon' take your bet, you're gonna regret, I'm the best there's ever been"
That means he's acknowledging its a sin but he will do it anyways. You are thinking it says it might be a sin or might not, but thats not how the sentence goes.
I definitely read it as an acknowledgement of a risk rather than an admission of wrong.
Either way he's saying it doesnt make a difference, if it was a sin or not he'd still do it.
There's a big difference between saying "I understand this is a sin, but I'm doing it anyway" versus "I think this might be a sin, but I'm doing it anyway."
The sentence can be interpreted either way.
Point kinda holds, though. Ignoring the long-term consequences for short-term gain seems to also feature heavily in America.
The county was founded by generations of people who came here with little thought to long term consequences, so it tracks
ah yes, that short term Constitution that never held up /s
That was the second one. The first one was the Articles of Confederation. Lasted 8 years.
Hell, even the constitution is like a handful of good ideas, some terrible ones, and a README about how to make a pull request to add more features.
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Eh? The wager was Johnny either gets the fiddle or loses his soul, why would he go to hell anyway?
No human is without sin, after all.
Exactly. Johnny wins the contest, so he gets the fiddle. If he had lost, he would have forfeited his soul.
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The devil in the song is in a bind and ready to make a deal, which is a little different from other Faustian tales.
Maybe the lesson is that you don’t make good music when you’re under pressure.
Or that gold fiddles sound bad.
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It's rooted in the tradition of American machismo and braggadocio. Hyperbole is a huge part of the American oral tradition. You go to any small town in the Southern US and the old timers will have some tall tales that beggar belief and they will tell them too you as if it were the gospel with no winks or nods.
I think Devil Went Down to Georgia is supposed to be viewed as a boast by Johnny himself. "I'm a really good fiddle player." "Oh yeah?" "Yeah, this one time I beat the Devil himself." "I told you once you sonofabitch, I'm the best there's ever been."
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According to conventional wisdom, Johnny damned himself by accepting the bet in the first place. The devil "loses", but that just cements Johnny's sin of pride.
The devil might not have gotten Johnny's soul the day of the contest, but make no mistake, he does eventually get the soul.
Nah. Conventional wisdom says he can either
- the the priest all about it and do some chants
- find himself a baptizer and spend the rest of his time Jesusing real hard.
Johnny's options will depend on his local wise man, but I suspect either way he'll also be strongly encouraged to buy some merch.
he’ll also be strongly encouraged to buy some merch.
Eh, they usually don't see merch as much as ask you to subscribe to their crowdfunding (ideally for 10% of your total income) for performative Jesusing done bi-weekly.
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If you ignore all the folk tales about people one upping the devil or the local equivalent... everywhere, yes, it's a uniquely American trait.
Don't those involve creative approaches and tricking or otherwise outsmarting the devil or local equivalent?
This is just Johnny being better than the devil and having a massive ego about it. That specific situation tends to be punished.
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