All of us have our phobias or fears. Thom Yorke is not an exception. This is what happened to this artist (N66 singer in Rolling Stone e-zine):
“After leaving school, Yorke postponed going
to university for a year. During that time
he worked a few jobs and was involved
in a car accident that made him wary
of any kind of mechanized transport.”(wikipedia)
At least two songs of York are full of phobias of a car accident.
In “Karma Police” he portrays a person who tries to get away from the vehicle and as he stops, and falls to his knees he sees that the vehicle left a mark of the gasoline on the ground. The person takes safety matches and puts the car on fire. This could be a way of York’s visualization of his phobias of getting into a car accident and the way of revenge, which comes out to us as viewers as something unexpected.
We ask who is that runner whom York portrays? Is it himself or a person who represents some strata of society? I think that why he burns the car explains York’s way of coping with his accident trauma. Imagine, many things could have happened when the runner (in “Karma Police”) was out of strength and the chasing car stopped. Yet York consciously or subconsciously chooses revenge over other methods of getting out of the nervous breakdown. The last scene we see then – the car is in flames. Full stop.
Car theme do not end up with “Karma Police”. In a famous “Rabbit In Your Headlights” video we are faced with the similar phobias of car accidents, but the victory of man over machines comes out in an unexpected way. We see a man is going talking to himself on the highway. After being hit multiple times by cars, he throughs his coat on the road. What could help him in his desperation? Final car crash against his back stuns us: the man stays intact while the car is blown up into pieces.
This shows yet another way of York to cope with his fears. Instead of repression, he chose fighting back, violent technique used in the “Karma Police” video. That shows in itself his worldview: “Man is stronger than machines. Who can help you? You yourself can.” Whoever sees the picture of Christ here is deeply mistaken I suppose. There is not a iota of humility in a madman’s T-shaped stand. Christ came not to give out self-help tracks. You either find your whole strength in Him, or your don’t find it at all.
Think of this yet, all of this idealistic nonsense is being injected into the brains of young people and they see it as something “cool”, acceptable and sub-culturally entertaining. Isn’t it the time to stop entertaining ourselves to death? Isn’t it the time to get to the Person who can really help you with your phobias and stop celebrating what came out of person repressions?