I woke up with the chorus of Avril Lavigne’s punk/pop hit Sk8er Boi stuck in my head. Here is the result.
Regret powers common romantic tropes throughout media. What if they were the one? What if I could have it better? Why did I have to go and screw that up? They are pervasive, if overplayed, yet persist because of their relevance; the thread of regret tying them together is something nearly everyone understands.
Well-formulated regret is a quick and simple way to do evoke some sympathy for a protagonist, as long as its sincerity is established and the actions that caused the regret are not too atrocious. We learn the core of the regret, and watch a character struggle their way through its internal and external consequences. Some may identify with the cause, but nearly all can at least identify with the emotion.
And if the regret is not well-founded? Then, you get Sk8r Boi, a song rife with a smug look at someone else’s life full of apparent regret at what could have been. But, we should take a step back to look at the broader context of the song.
Looking back at a song from 2002, particularly one meant for a teenage audience, provides a similar experience of whiplash as the scene from 21 Jump Street when the main characters enter the high school for the first time. Except this is the reverse. We are in a modern age, looking back at the clique-filled version of a high school with enough pretension for years to come.1Of course pretension has only shifted, cliques are less direct; things aren’t really that different, but the outspokenness of 20 years ago (and earlier) is notable.
Sk8r Boi tells a brief story of two girls and one boy (boi?) over the span of five years. The titular boy made an advance upon one of the girls, who we come to find out was a ballerina. Due to the pressures of her clique, she decided to refuse him despite having mutual feelings. Five years later, the second girl — our narrator — reveals that not only has this boy achieved some level of fame as a musician playing on MTV, but she is with him! Meanwhile, the ballerina is alone at home feeding her baby, ruminating on what could have been. Calling up her old group of friends, the same ones responsible for rejecting the boy oh so many years ago, they all decide to go to the show together. In the final verse, the narrator really rubs it in her face:
Sorry, girl, but you missed out
Well, tough, luck that boy’s mine now
We are more than just good friends
This is how the story ends.
Our narrator gets control of who plays protagonist, and in her mind it is clearly not the ballerina. Her regret is due to misguided judgement, a lack of foresight, and no strength of character. At least, that’s what a modern interpretation might be were it not for the next four lines in the final verse. They shed a very different light, one that only makes sense in light of the era in which the song was released:
Too bad that you couldn’t see
See the man that boy could be
There is more that meets the eye
I see the soul that is inside
I’m sorry narrator, but this is bogus. You openly admit, in your omniscience about this story, that the first girl did have some feelings. Either you are backing out on that, or more likely, the claim is that if she had seen “the man that boy could [have been]” perhaps the ballerina would have had the force of will to tell her friends off and go after the boy.
Soul has nothing to do with it. This is a matter of prospects, and the focus on how some punk could turn into someone “worthy” later on in life really counteracts whatever point is attempting to be made.
The narrator’s smug telling of this story is, when looked at just moderately closely, rather gross. Perhaps the regret is not as well-founded, because the source of regret is likely based on the boy’s current success. But how does that make the narrator any better? Now that he is successful, he is desirable; that’s not exactly a higher moral ground.
Yet, Sk8r Boi is an accurate reflection of the thoughts many of us have as we navigate relationships in our lives. Despite our best intentions, we can be shallow; we make judgements based on semi-absurd criteria and are influenced by our own friends. While the distinct cliques implied by the song make these relationship values clearer, the general theme has remained the same. The criteria has stratified to the extremes, either focused on subtleties that went way beyond someone’s hobbies with a skateboard, or much larger topics that were previously somewhat taboo.
And as we go through our lives determining with whom we wish to spend our time, we will lose people along the way and the regret will sit there. Hopefully, we don’t have someone singing our internal dilemmas at us with an air of self-righteousness.
- 1Of course pretension has only shifted, cliques are less direct; things aren’t really that different, but the outspokenness of 20 years ago (and earlier) is notable.