fbenario 4 Feb 22 2010, 02:41 AM wrote:
I also find Timothy's work on this point valuable as a teaching tool to increase our understanding, even though Hoi may have slightly the better of this argument.
Thanks for valuing my contribution even if you don't agree.
But I maintain that there is massive co-ordination in all the media and entertainment industries.
Perhaps it takes a leap of faith to believe in the level of co-ordination in the media that I suggest...
I don't know exactly what I am about to post, but the precise construction of this post does not matter: This is not a fragile, contrived argument that only works from one angle- it is the truth, which remains the truth not matter which angle you view it from...
To recap:
Bat for Lashes (Natasha Khan) the pop star is a figure who is meant to
simultaneously charm and repulse. She is a scape-goat, meant to be a lightening rod for our anger and fear.
Likened to Lily Allen by the tabloids, Bat for Lashes becomes a scapegoat for the latent fear aroused by Allen's song - "THe Fear".
Khan's single "
Daniel" is essentially twinned to Allen's single "The Fear" in which
Allen sings of being a suicide bomber. Released a month later, the video contains imagery which looks like the
aftermath of a suicide bomb. (including the de rigeur
teddy bears )
stills from Daniel video by Bat for Lashes:
The video involved alot of creepy black creatures attatching themselves to Khan
(fear, hate, anger?)
Khan's words describe her idyllic memories and longing for a character called Daniel.
The images tell a different story however.
This is the image we see at the moment she sings:
"we laughed and laughed and laughed..."
This represents Khan as rather a cruel figure, to laugh at the aftermath of some kind of disaster - like those muslims who alledgedly celebrated 9/11.
Khan also sings of her longing to go "
Home"
This is very important.
Let me cut to the chase and state something that may sound very strange.
Natasha Khan is E.T.
(or rather ET and Khan are equivalent symbols in the entertaiment world).
She is alien - she does not belong here (Western countries).
She is an imitator and is making us sick (like Elliot became sick) and she must "go home" before she kills us.
ET is a creature that
simultaneously charms and repulses us:
Here ET is dressed as a blonde woman, not dissimilar from Khan's alter ego Pearl
Pearl:
I'll flesh this out gradually.
In interviews, Khan expresses admiration for 80s films such as Karate Kid, ET, Goonies etc.
The video for her song "What's a girl to do" is explicit with this. It is influenced by the bike chase in E.T.
What's a girl to do video:
While the ET aesthetic of the music video is explicit, we are not meant to notice that her position in this bike formation puts her in the place of ET himself. It is hard for us to consciously realise that a beautiful girl is being connected to an ugly alien! (even though the colour of her skin in contrast to the other colours in the video is very E.T.)
ET at front of bike formation:
Whichever angle you look at it, Natasha Khan is being portrayed as an alien ET figure...:
Here is a still from the DVD extras of the ET 20th anniversary edition with no manipulation of colours by me:
It's pretty similar to the cover of Khan's album Two Suns:
There is a dynamic between
Drew Barrymore (child star of ET),
Natasha Khan and
Ellen Page (star of Hard Candy, Juno and Whip it) that is used to steer us in this direction:
Many celebrity magazines have made comparisons between drew barrymore and Natasha Khan, - this steers us to associate Khan with the E.T. star, drew barrymore.
THese images from "Bella Sugar" compare Barrymore and Khan's facepaint:
And these from Tongue in Chic:
The comparison is pretty thoroughly made in celebrity-land.
And then, Ellen Page stars in Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, "Whip it"(2009) :
(incidentally, this mirrors the lashes/whips/scapegoat theme in Bat for lashes' name).
Once Barrymore and Page are associated, there is a very big deal made out of the
Kiss and sexual nuances between Barrymore and Page:
This Kiss inevitably evokes that memorable scene in E.T. where drew Kisses E.T.:
But surely Barrymore Kissing Ellen Page would imply that Page was E.T., not Khan (if anyone at all)?
Well, not if efforts have been made previously to ensure that we associate Page with Khan using some very distinctive visual cue... (a red hoody for instance such as the one Elliot wears in E.T.)
How about this:
This is Ellen Page starring as a sadistic girl in Hard Candy, wearing a red hoody.
and sitting in a car in her red hoody.
WHile here is Bat for Lashes (with its connotations of sadism) in the video for Daniel, wearing a similar red hoody.
and sitting in a similar car:
So. In ET (1982) - Barrymore kisses ET creating an iconic image. In 2009 this image is re-created when Barrymore Kisses Page, exept due to Page's association with Khan (due to red hoody and other cues), we associate the ET aspect of the re-created scene, with Khan.
Furthermore:
The Red Hoody was a feature of the ET interactive toy produced by Tiger Electronics for Universal Studios in 2000:
While entertainers like us to think there is subtext to their work - some aspects of this are meant to remain secret because they are evil.
It is this secret level I am demonstrating.
E.T. being muslim in a burqa.