Weezer – Weezer (Blue Album)

The thing nobody seems to ask about the boy who cried wolf is why Bubby would do such a thing. What would prompt an otherwise standard-issue ten-year-old – likely even-tempered and straight-laced – to, on seemingly unconnected days, run through the village screaming about a wolf he’s seen? Aesop blames it on boredom and naughtiness, common childhood maladies, but eventually faults the kid: liars will never be believed, even when they speak the truth.

But could it be that the kid really did see a wolf who disappeared into the shadows upon seeing a village’s worth of humans pouring into the grassy knoll that housed his prey? That what kept the sheep alive was the crack team of ancient Greek commonfolk rushing to protect them? That the boy’s relief was mistaken by the inconvenienced villagers as mischievousness. 

Central to all fables is the idea of an all-seeing, moralising narrator: a roving, indifferent eye to whom the motivations of key players are transparent. As far as fables are concerned, life is Triple H vs. Stone Cold, heel vs. face, boy vs. villagers, wolf vs. sheep. It’s evil vs. good, and all it takes for evil to triumph is for the otherwise good to commit a single evil act, for face to turn heel. All it takes for the sheep to be slaughtered, for instance, is for Bubby to lie. Aesop has no sense of proportion, no sense of colour, just black and white.

Surely an all-seeing eye also sees the elderly grandmother in the hut by the well encouraging the villagers to listen to the boy: he’s clearly terrified, he’s most certainly seen something. Surely it sees the village honcho complain about the village’s lack of resources and, frankly, its lack of patience for this shepherd boy’s now months-long shenanigans. Surely it sees them dally as the wolf peeks out of the bushes to find his prey unprotected, unsuspecting, not a human in sight. Surely it watches idly as nature takes its course: wolf eats sheep, humans argue. Surely this story is as much about a bunch of villagers who allow a boy’s sheep to get slaughtered as it is about him crying wolf.