Living in a World of “Little Boys With Their Porno”

 

• by Jason Morehead
• December 5, 2013

Earlier this year, Arcade Fire released their highly anticipated double album Reflektor to considerable fanfare. While much of the subsequent attention has been focused on songs like the title track, ”Here Comes The Night Time,” and “Afterlife” — and understandably so — there’s one song on Reflektor that has stuck with me since my earliest listening sessions, but that seems to have flown under most critics’ radars: the bluntly titled “Porno.”

“Porno” begins with slinky synths and disco-lite beats over which Win Butler intones “You take the makeup off your eyes/I’ve got to see you, hear your sacred sighs” to his lover. Given the song’s title, we listeners brace ourselves for a sordid tale of lust and debauchery. However, when the chorus arrives, the band performs a bit of musical sleight-of-hand, turning “Porno” into something approaching a lament.

You can cry, I won’t go
You can scream, I won’t go
Every man that you know
Would have run at the word “go”
Little boys with their porno
Oh, I know they hurt you so
They don’t know that we know
Never know what we know

Later, Butler sings:

But the cup it overflows
Little boys with their porno
But this is their world, where can we go?
Makes me feel like something’s wrong with me
Makes me feel like something’s wrong with me
Can you see me?

 

Throughout the song, Butler laments the damage done by pornography —

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