#Overanlysing music

[jarhara]

Explaining the "Genetic Opera"

Yes, I’m not kidding, I am trying to over-analyze Repo!

Here goes my little ramble

I feel like Repo! Is the sort of movie where it’s “style over substance” don’t get me wrong, I love it’s style and how “In your face” it is with it. But this movie does have substance, it just got lost in all the style and I don’t even think that’s because we watching it are distracted by the style, it’s because the production team had so much fun being “in your face”.

So what is Repo! about, aside from a dystopian world where you can finance any surgery but also live in constant fear of organ repossession?

I think it’s mainly about inheritance, physical things like the GeneCo company, genetic things like the blood decease but also the sort of things that make you the person you are despite how you change your look.

The line of “make your genetics your bitch” at the end of “we started this opera shit” might as well be GeneCo’s official tag line, because aside from the replacement organs they provide, this is their main market. Everyone can look how they want to look without having to be defined by your genetics dictating a certain level of family resemblance. This leads into Amber’s addiction to plastic surgery. While she seems to be proud of begin the GeneCo heiress, she doesn’t seem particularly proud to be Rotti’s daughter. She changes her name and face but she still wants his money and power. Pavi’s stolen faces might be something similar, always hiding his own face. Rotti sings about how his children aren’t worthy of his legacy and how they denounce him but he doesn’t see that genetics go deeper then looks. His children are horrible people, because he’s a horrible person too. Rotti wants Shilo to be his heir because he only sees Marni in her, someone he loved more then he ever loved any of his own children (and perhaps their mother too)

Shilo starts off the movie thinking all she’ll ever be was defined by her mother and her father perpetuates this with his “I let your mother die, I can’t let you die too” approach. But she’s so focused on the diseases she supposedly inherited from her mother, she doesn’t realize until the end of the movie that she also inherited something that again goes beyond the things GeneCo can change, her father’s strength and good heart. It’s true that Nathan did things just as horrible as the Largo’s but he did so out of love which seems to be a gene almost completely lacking in the Largo family tree.

“Genetic Emancipation” seems a little contradicting considering all this but my interpretation is that you might have certain inclinations based on what you inherited from your parents, but you can still decide not to act on it. Shilo choose to embrace her father’s love but not his violence. I also think showing the Largo siblings finally working together to try and lead GeneCo that they are at least trying to embrace the good sides Rotti had and inherited to them.

Given how extremely late I am to this party, I might just be spewing hot air here.. . Repo! Is a lot of things and “clever” and “profound” are not that high up on the list ^^° some parts of the inheritance motif are pretty ham-fisted and others seem to be drowned out, so I just wanted to condense all my thoughts about the “moral of the genetic opera“ in one place.

[air--so--sweet]

Was listening to Power Up and Wait, which is the last piece of original score that plays in the show,and I realised that it's made up of other pieces of the series' score. I think I've figured out the different pieces but I'm not completely sure, know next to nothing about music, and all the pieces, except one, have been reworked significantly so if anyone knows more than me please let me know if I've got this right.

I think 0:00 - 1:54 (though it begins to transition to the second piece around 1:43) is The Race Against Time. This is the one I'm the least sure of, the piano is really throwing me off...

I think 1:55-4:12 is Apocalypse (it begins transitioning into this at 1:43). It has a much slower tempo initially and then returns to it's usual tempo at 2:42. If you listen to Apocalypse from 2:33-5:30 you'll hear the parts I think are similar.

And, then, starting at 4:13 we get V's Orchestra. This I am 100% certain of. V's Orchesra and V's Orchestra II are my favourite parts of the season 1 score (and maybe the entire series score overall) and this was the part I recognised on first listen which then caused me to go back and spend a ridiculous amount of time picking apart the rest of the track. The part used here appears in both tracks so I've just included a video that has both.

I don't know if anyone else even cares about this but I absolutely adore Jeff Russo's scores and TUA was the first score that he composed that I ever heard. Also, I just love the idea of using existing pieces to make the final piece we hear on screen, it's so beautifully full circle and I don't think I've seen anyone do anything like that with music before.

Edited to add: I've now noticed Hostile Family Reunion also features reprises of Apocalypse and V's orchestra. Is this going to become me overanlysing every track in the score?

[magicalkookmin]

DoNt OvErAnLySe. JuSt FaNgIrL aNd HaVe FuN. Becoz ur oppas are just machines for your entertainment and don't have any feelings. And don't ever assume they might be conveying their feelings with music. That is completely delusional, and discussing about it us drama seeking behavior. How can you think they might need our love and support right now. That's just insulting to your oppas. It's just words they don't mean what they sing. So enjoy the new content coz that's all it is. Content.

I kNoW.. how could they ever possibly have human feelings? I would be completely insane if I thought my idols had ever experienced... emotions.