Word: banality
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Side two is as banal, both lyrically and musically, as side one. More grating guitars, more monotonous synth-pop, and more droning dub. "This is England" tries to incite some national spirit; "Three Card Trick" advocates teen rebellion: "You won't fall for that just like your mummy and your daddy did." "Play to Win," "Fingerpoppin," "North and South," and "Life is Wild" offer more of the same pathetic drivel that permeates the entire disk...
...only problem is that Subway isn't as smart as it would like to be. In fact, it really isn't smart at all. Visually, stylistically, thematically, et cetera, it comes up empty in the Brains Department. The script is banal. The acting, deadpan-dull. And the images clutter up like so many hip books on a crowded coffee table. With the possible exception of Gremlins, Joe Dante's unintentionally horrific testament to the decline of Western Civilization, Subway may be the most completely offensive, manipulative, and downright irritating picture in recent memory...
...Langs' study assured their patients that their husbands or wives were the really crazy people. After a terrifying nightmare, one patient was told by his therapist that his dream was creative and rich and that he need not worry much about it. Bucking up a patient with such banal cheeriness, Langs believes, is a way of denying turmoil and ignoring real problems...
...fact, Reagan's popularity is so easily explainable as to be utterly banal. As top campaign adviser Richard Darman noted at a post-election Kennedy School of Government roundtable, when the economy is prospering and you're at peace, you're 80 percent of the way there...
...deaths of young infantries in World War I: "The Children of England would never be slaves/ They're trapped on the wire and dying in waves/ The flower of England face down in the mud/ And stained in the blood of a whole generation." The song would be harmlessly banal had he not tacked on the final stanza: "Mid-night in Soho Nineteen Eighty-Four/ Fixing in doorways, opium slaves/ Poppies for young men, such bitter trade/ All of those young lives betrayed/ All for a children's crusade...