What is the Reflex?

For those of you 80s babies, I’m sure you danced to the tunes of Duran Duran’s Reflex once upon a time. And while many of us hardly paid attention to song lyrics back then, being a older today means we have a bit more time to dissect the songs.

Which brings me to the question a friend of mine and I have been pondering about for the past twenty eight years: What is the Reflex?

The Lyrics

Before we go down the dark and complicated road of trying to make sense out of the unfathomable, let’s take two things in to consideration. The first is to look at the lyrics, which I listed down below.

The Reflex

You’ve gone too far this time
But I’m dancing on the valentine
I tell you somebody’s fooling around
With my chances on the dangerline
I’ll cross that bridge when I find it
Another day to make my stand
High time is no time for deciding
If I should find a helping hand

[CHORUS]

So why don’t you use it?
Try not to bruise it
Buy time don’t lose it
The reflex is an only child he’s waiting in the park
The reflex is in charge of finding treasure in the dark
And watching over lucky clover isn’t that bizarre
Every little thing the reflex does
Leaves you answered with a question mark

I’m on a ride and I want to get off
But they won’t slow down the roundabout
I sold the Renoir and the TV set
Don’t want to be around when this gets out

[CHORUS]

Oh the reflex what a game he’s hiding all the cards
The reflex is in charge of finding treasure in the dark
And watching over lucky clover isn’t that bizarre
Every little thing the reflex does
Leaves you answered with a question mark

The Band’s Take

Now that we have gone through the lyrics, the second part is to find out exactly what Duran Duran had in mind when it brought this song to life.

Well, after combing the internet and watching an interview of the band, Simon Le Bon, Duran Duran’s lead vocalist, said it all. He has no clue as to what the song means. And after going through the lyrics myself, I don’t blame him.

At least Spandau Ballet’s penchant for stringing multiple idioms together was artful and somehow made sense to teenagers back then. But the Relfex is something that, even nearly three decades later, just boggles the mind.

So now that these two things are out of the way, it is time for us to ask the one question that has been asked by more discerning listeners when the song was released in1984: What the heck is the Reflex anyway?

The Obvious Take

Hmm… Let’s start with the obvious and work out way down to the imaginative, shall we?

One of the lines gives us an idea by stating that “the Relfex is an only child and is he’s waiting in the park.”

Being a young lad back in the relatively clean and innocent 80s, this conjured an image of a kid waiting in a playground. He was most likely sitting on a swing, legs floating above the ground, with his head facing down with a sad face.

As to what he was doing there, the next line states that “he is in charge of finding treasure in the dark.”

With this line, the image suddenly changes to a child with a map, shovel, and lamp actively searching through grassy field within the park.

But instead of finding recently dug up holes in the ground, the next lines states that he is just watching over a Lucky Clover, bringing back my original image of a child staring down at a four leaf clover while his legs are dangling over them in that stationary swing.

And that’s where the obvious part ends.

Every other line in the song becomes quite confusing. And the last two lines actually reflect my confusion by stating “Every little thing the reflex does leaves you answered with a question mark.”

The Imaginative Take

So now we cross over to the imaginatively absurd.

You know, I’d love to go into a seemingly intellectual tirade of saying that the Reflex was everyone who grew up in the 1980s.

Being part of one of the most iconic times meant living in the fast lane; taking on the grownups with our vibrant, yet innocent, look at life. Righting the wrongs our parents did and making a name for ourselves in the process.

We’d walk a tightrope and flirt with crossing danger lines and we wouldn’t think too much in to the future, preferring to cross whatever bridge we came across then.

But even if we were under extreme pressure to make a decision on something, we wouldn’t have. We would not have made decisions because we knew that doing so while being backed up against a corner was not the best time to make. So we had to buy some time and play it cool.

We’d play it cool because we had the power in our hands because if we overplayed that hand, we just might get hurt and end up with a high pitched voice.

[Shame on you if you are thinking about…]

Now growing up in the 80s meant that life moved very fast. Maybe not as fast as today’s click and point youth, but fast enough that our cars would make everything seem like a blur as we navigated around that roundabout.

And once we decided on selling our parent’s prized painting, it would have been time to disappear because Mom and Dad are going to be none too happy.

But then I won’t go into that tirade.

The Reflex

So what the heck is the Reflex anyway?

Well, just like Simon Le Bon, I have absolutely no idea of what the Reflex is. And quite frankly, I have no desire to find out what the heck it is because if I did find out, life as we know it may come to an end.

At least we found out what the Matrix was; the Reflex is something I don’t think we will never know about. It’s almost like Big Foot and the Lochness Monster put in to a song by the Bards of King Arthur.

And since I’ve wasted enough of everyone’s time trying to fathom the unfathomable, I’m just going to pull out my Duran Duran CD, grab the keys to the car, and run it at full volume as I barrel down the highway on this nice sunny day.

Why ruin a good day and a good song by over thinking things? It’s not like it’ll open up the secrets of the world for me anyway. And even if it did, it’ll just destroy a great song from a great time and we’ll end up losing much of the 80s because of that.

So I’ll just leave it as it is. And if you do find out what the Reflex is, just keep it to yourself, I don’t want to know.

[The Reflex, flex, flex, flex, flex….]