FanDeAliFee
05-03-2011, 09:14 PM
What is the symbolism of the iconic red high-heel shoe, the central prop of Alizée's <i>En Concert</i> DVD?
I am jumping the gun here because I don't have time to write the complete essay on this topic I have long intended. But the matter has come up in <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=203007">discussion</a>, so here is a quick and dirty brief.
Let's "cut to the chase" (or the <i>chaussure</i>?) - Shoes, especially slippers, are the shape of the human vulva when its owner is sexually excited. (Didn't you ever wonder why women are so much more fond of shoes than men? The same goes for flowers, with their delicate open petals.) And high-heel shoes are something even more. By appending a long hard shaft, they suggest sexual congress (and I don't just mean a US Senator diddling a teenage page.) Finally, when anyone gets sexually excited, blood rushes to the surface of various body parts, inducing a blush - so red shoes are just like shoes, only more so. (And all these ideas are hardly original to me.)
<table cellspacing="10"><tr valign="top"><td width="296"><img src="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/PeekingOutFromUnderStaircase.png"><center><big><big><i><a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=201875"><p>[Everyone Knows] Alizée</a></big></big></i></center><p><big>Who's peekin' out from under a stairway<br>callin' a name that's lighter than air?<br>Who's singin' out to give me a rainbow?<br>Everyone knows: a-LEE-zay!</big></td><td width="330"><img width="330" height="400" src="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/BritneyShoe.jpg"><i>There was an old woman who "lived" in a shoe; she had so many children, she didn't know what to do.</i></td></tr></table>
In the original telling of <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>, Dorothy's shoes are silver, not <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_slippers">ruby-red</a>, as in the 1939 MGM film. It is reasonable to believe that the color change was motivated by the innocent ambition to gratuitously exploit the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolor">Technicolor</a> process. Red is the most exciting color - the color of blood, of violence, of sexual excitement, of (adolescent) menarche, even of political revolution.
But that's not to say that once this decision was taken, the sexual import of red would go unnoticed, or even perhaps unexploited. See, for example, the essay: <a href="http://www.turnmeondeadman.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=66&Itemid=79"><i>Symbolism of the Ruby Slippers</i></a>.
<img width="500" height="333" src="http://thedailypump.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/ruby-slippers-wizard-of-oz.jpg">
Did you think the Oz story was totally innocent of sex? Think again my friends. Mylène Farmer and Serge Gainsbourg did not pioneer the use of ambiguity to suggest what cannot be directly stated on account of the extant public mores. Art has been addressing censorship for millennia through the use of analogy which enjoys plausible deniability, typically concerning political or religious matters.
Getting back to Oz, consider, for example, the character the 1900 fantasy novel <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz"><i>The Wonderful Wizard of Oz</i></a> called the Tin Woodman, originally an ordinary man named Nick Chopper - not Dick Chopper, if you please! He had made a living chopping down trees. His ax, cursed by the Wicked Witch of the East, chopped off his limbs one by one. Each time one was lost, it was replaced by a tin prosthetic. Finally, nothing was left of him but tin.
An important question is, did he lose four - or five - limbs? Is the throbbing organ he lacks a heart? Is this woodman short on wood? In the video clip below, he sings of his inability to woo the girl on the balcony. Can he shoot any arrows of his own? Can he lock it with a zipper? Should the lyrics have been <i>If I only could get hard</i>? (Note that the canonical abstract "heart" symbol is profoundly erotic, and not just romantic, as attested to in great detail at <a href="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/SexSymbolism/"><i>Sex symbolism, biomimetic and not: The secret "shame" of Tinkerbell</i></a>.)
<table width="640"><tr><td align="center"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGbfs6HZDNo" target="_YouTube"><img src="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/DorothyLooksDown.jpg"></a><br>Dorothy looks down - but not so far as to piss off the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code">Hays Office</a>.</td></tr></table>
You know of course that the Tin Woodman was literally stiff because he had rusted. Then how can his story pertain to the inability to get stiff, the opposite issue? Well, you see there is nothing which so resembles a photograph as much as its photographic negative - all the SHAPES are EXACTLY the SAME! But you get to say, "Oh, no, it's the very opposite, how could you suggest that?" That is why it is art.
Right after he hears Mademoiselle Juliette, the Tin Woodman's song rhymes <i>beat</i> and <i>sweet</i>. Obviously it is unlikely he would use <i>meat</i>, being that he is metal and not flesh. But somehow, that simple, common word is not that far away.
And I hope you noticed that when he did his dance, that as a result of beating on himself, the Tin Woodman's top ejaculated steam. (I bet some guys here have done something like that themselves.) That said, by the end, he nearly flopped over and had to be rescued by his friends - he just couldn't manage to stay "up", poor fellow. (This was before Bob Dole of Kansas made celebrity endorsement <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlfE695MFHc">TV ads</a>.)
Check out what Dorothy does during the Tin Woodman's act. We can only wonder about what she and the scarecrow are whispering - perhaps they've never seen a money shot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cum_shot) before - but other things are very obvious. She sure warms up when the Woodman proclaims he could be gentle; what girl wouldn't? And did you notice the apple (http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=151971) she holds up toward him in her hand? Did you ever hear of this woman named Eve and how she shared her apple with someone, who lost his innocence (http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=152474) in consequence?
It is not unusual to use a zipper to seam a cloth surface. But how very strange that the Tin Woodman should choose to sing about employing one to open and close his tin surface! And when he handles this hypothetical zipper, it operates vertically, not horizontally, as one closing off a blood pump way up in his chest might equally well do. Note he "locks" it by zipping it DOWN - which causes Dorothy to look down along the Tin Woodman's body. I know I enjoy it when a pretty young woman does that to me, don't you? Observe again the artistic subterfuge of opposition: the Tin Woodman is indeed zipping a vertical zipper downward - as you might do with the zipper on the front of your trousers - but the defense pleading innocence is that he said he was locking it - not unlocking it!
And I hope you remember the manifestly campy behavior of the Cowardly Lion in the film, exhibited within the video clip below. (A far more ambiguously effeminate moment for him comes later in the movie, when he <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul2r7Cxc6U8">sings</a> <i>If I were King of the Forest, <b>not Queen</b>, not Duke, not Prince.</i>) These sorts of antics help explain how Judy Garland could become a gay icon and her rainbow the symbol of gender identity freedom.
<table width="640"><tr><td align="center"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98W7zg2ByKY" target="_YouTube">
<!-- #t=20s no longer works! and this video cannot use EMBED and so exploit &start= syntax --><img src="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/LimpWristLion.jpg"></a><br>The Cowardly Lion's wrist gets rather limp when he admits he is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy">"dandy"</a>-lion.</td></tr></table>
Let me again stress that <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> is of more than passing and accidental importance to the career of Alizée! That's because, as I comically - but I hope persuasively - argued long ago at <a href="The difference between Alizée and Mylène"><i>The difference between Alizée and Mylène</i></a>, the music video <i>Moi, Lolita...</i> is 90% L. Frank Baum and only 10% Vladimir Nabokov - and even the latter is mainly via Serge Gainsbourg and his <i>Pauvre Lola</i>, as I <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=202124">learned</a> myself only this year. (Corsaire, you are explicitly invited to offer us a better English translation of <i>Pauvre Lola</i> than my very feeble effort!)
While the 1939 MGM film only permits the lion to handle his tail once it has become limp, Monique Mufraggi's 1997 stage production with 12-year-old Alizée is far more bold, as I have already explained at <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=200388"><i>Mylène owes Monique a LOT of money!</i></a>
<table width="588"><tr><td align="center"><img width="588" height="324" src="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/RedShoesParis29March2010.jpg">
Alizée meeting with the Alizée America delegation at the Virgin Megastore in Paris on 29 March 2010. Her high heels, sexier than the blunt heels worn by Judy Garland (see above), recounts the giant staircase prop of her <i>En Concert</i> DVD.</td></tr></table>
In the thread <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5373"><i>Other shoes Alizée has lost: EZ-DIY fan-art</i></a>, I had invited you to have fun with me by proving that Alizée's badge of femininity is as grand as they come!
And long years ago, it would seem that Alizée's understanding of the symbolism of shoes was in full bloom, if only (perhaps) at a subconscious level. The page <a href="http://oldfanpage2.alizee-fanpage.com/fr/node/666">here</a> translates from French to English <a href="http://www.alizee-forum.com/gallery/albums/promo2001_jan-mar/super02.jpg"> <i>Les 15 petits secrets d'Alizée</i></a>, published 01/2001, writing:<blockquote><i>In love, Alizée says she's a little jealous and even "very exclusive": "I'm Corsican, you don't betray me!", she says. She's also very generous with her boyfriend. After her trip to New York last summer, she gave him a gift: "A pair of shoes that you can't find in France."</i></blockquote>Obviously, she didn't want her pre-Jérémy boyfriend of the time sticking his "limb" in another French "shoe" next time she was away on a trip!
<table border="5" color="black" width="50%"><tr><td>Sadly, copyright issues have undone the amusing little visual joke I had made <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=149056">here</a>. The prologue to the once-linked <i>Heart of Glass</i> music video by <i>Blondie</i> used night-time street shots of New York City, including one featuring the <i>Ed Sullivan Theater</i>.</td></tr></table>
<object width="340" height="285"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA_SstpZOlY&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1&s tart=0&showinfo=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iA_SstpZOlY&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1&start=0&s howinfo=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="340" height="285"></embed></object>
<hr width="50%" size="3" color="black" align="center">
Alizée was also asked in this interview " how was the idea of the shoe born and what meaning does it have? "
It's the second question. ;)
http://www.alizee-forum.com/content.php?740-Star-Plus-2004-01
The material in question, apparently published in Star Plus during January 2004, which we shall stipulate as accurate (whether it is or not), reads this way:<blockquote><i>How was the idea of the shoe born and what meaning does it have?
A: It's to recall to mind the album. In the beginning, it was a drawing done by Mylène who was drawing allusion to Alice in Wonderland. The high heel also represents femininity. I'm often asked if I'm a teenager or an adult. I'm between the two, no longer an adolescent, but not yet a woman.</i></blockquote>Alizée is correct: The high heel shoe certainly does represent something feminine. But to me, in this instance, it seems she was running her mouth without the heavy engagement of her non-trivial brain. But I give her a pass - few people don't do that once in a while.
The success of Lewis Carroll means that Alice is now a well-known stock character, about whom lots of derivative material exists. So a reference to "Alice in Wonderland" is ambiguous. But these days, one can easily search the full text (http://books.google.com/books?id=XlsVAQAAIAAJ) of the original work, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: And Through the Looking-Glass. When you search for the word shoe, there is one measly hit (http://books.google.com/books?id=XlsVAQAAIAAJ&dq=Alice's%20Adventures%20in%20Wonderland&pg=RA1-PA181#v=onepage&q=shoe&f=false). You do better searching for the word shoes, because you get seven hits (http://books.google.com/books?id=XlsVAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Alice's+Adventures+in+Wonderland&hl=en#v=onepage&q=shoes&f=false). But none of them are especially important, much less pivotal.
On the other hand, the ruby slippers are very pivotal in ...Oz, the play in which Alizée portrayed Dorothy at Monique Mufraggi's school. This tale (less the important footgear, not to mention a tornado) forms the basis for the visual plot of the Moi, Lolita... music video which made Alizée a household word.
By the way, within the last month, Ms. Mufraggi mistakenly remembered Dorothy's name as Carter, when the fact that it was Gale is a very meaningful pun. The year 1997 is now a long time ago, and she gets a pass from me, too.
I am jumping the gun here because I don't have time to write the complete essay on this topic I have long intended. But the matter has come up in <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=203007">discussion</a>, so here is a quick and dirty brief.
Let's "cut to the chase" (or the <i>chaussure</i>?) - Shoes, especially slippers, are the shape of the human vulva when its owner is sexually excited. (Didn't you ever wonder why women are so much more fond of shoes than men? The same goes for flowers, with their delicate open petals.) And high-heel shoes are something even more. By appending a long hard shaft, they suggest sexual congress (and I don't just mean a US Senator diddling a teenage page.) Finally, when anyone gets sexually excited, blood rushes to the surface of various body parts, inducing a blush - so red shoes are just like shoes, only more so. (And all these ideas are hardly original to me.)
<table cellspacing="10"><tr valign="top"><td width="296"><img src="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/PeekingOutFromUnderStaircase.png"><center><big><big><i><a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=201875"><p>[Everyone Knows] Alizée</a></big></big></i></center><p><big>Who's peekin' out from under a stairway<br>callin' a name that's lighter than air?<br>Who's singin' out to give me a rainbow?<br>Everyone knows: a-LEE-zay!</big></td><td width="330"><img width="330" height="400" src="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/BritneyShoe.jpg"><i>There was an old woman who "lived" in a shoe; she had so many children, she didn't know what to do.</i></td></tr></table>
In the original telling of <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>, Dorothy's shoes are silver, not <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_slippers">ruby-red</a>, as in the 1939 MGM film. It is reasonable to believe that the color change was motivated by the innocent ambition to gratuitously exploit the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolor">Technicolor</a> process. Red is the most exciting color - the color of blood, of violence, of sexual excitement, of (adolescent) menarche, even of political revolution.
But that's not to say that once this decision was taken, the sexual import of red would go unnoticed, or even perhaps unexploited. See, for example, the essay: <a href="http://www.turnmeondeadman.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=66&Itemid=79"><i>Symbolism of the Ruby Slippers</i></a>.
<img width="500" height="333" src="http://thedailypump.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/ruby-slippers-wizard-of-oz.jpg">
Did you think the Oz story was totally innocent of sex? Think again my friends. Mylène Farmer and Serge Gainsbourg did not pioneer the use of ambiguity to suggest what cannot be directly stated on account of the extant public mores. Art has been addressing censorship for millennia through the use of analogy which enjoys plausible deniability, typically concerning political or religious matters.
Getting back to Oz, consider, for example, the character the 1900 fantasy novel <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz"><i>The Wonderful Wizard of Oz</i></a> called the Tin Woodman, originally an ordinary man named Nick Chopper - not Dick Chopper, if you please! He had made a living chopping down trees. His ax, cursed by the Wicked Witch of the East, chopped off his limbs one by one. Each time one was lost, it was replaced by a tin prosthetic. Finally, nothing was left of him but tin.
An important question is, did he lose four - or five - limbs? Is the throbbing organ he lacks a heart? Is this woodman short on wood? In the video clip below, he sings of his inability to woo the girl on the balcony. Can he shoot any arrows of his own? Can he lock it with a zipper? Should the lyrics have been <i>If I only could get hard</i>? (Note that the canonical abstract "heart" symbol is profoundly erotic, and not just romantic, as attested to in great detail at <a href="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/SexSymbolism/"><i>Sex symbolism, biomimetic and not: The secret "shame" of Tinkerbell</i></a>.)
<table width="640"><tr><td align="center"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGbfs6HZDNo" target="_YouTube"><img src="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/DorothyLooksDown.jpg"></a><br>Dorothy looks down - but not so far as to piss off the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code">Hays Office</a>.</td></tr></table>
You know of course that the Tin Woodman was literally stiff because he had rusted. Then how can his story pertain to the inability to get stiff, the opposite issue? Well, you see there is nothing which so resembles a photograph as much as its photographic negative - all the SHAPES are EXACTLY the SAME! But you get to say, "Oh, no, it's the very opposite, how could you suggest that?" That is why it is art.
Right after he hears Mademoiselle Juliette, the Tin Woodman's song rhymes <i>beat</i> and <i>sweet</i>. Obviously it is unlikely he would use <i>meat</i>, being that he is metal and not flesh. But somehow, that simple, common word is not that far away.
And I hope you noticed that when he did his dance, that as a result of beating on himself, the Tin Woodman's top ejaculated steam. (I bet some guys here have done something like that themselves.) That said, by the end, he nearly flopped over and had to be rescued by his friends - he just couldn't manage to stay "up", poor fellow. (This was before Bob Dole of Kansas made celebrity endorsement <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlfE695MFHc">TV ads</a>.)
Check out what Dorothy does during the Tin Woodman's act. We can only wonder about what she and the scarecrow are whispering - perhaps they've never seen a money shot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cum_shot) before - but other things are very obvious. She sure warms up when the Woodman proclaims he could be gentle; what girl wouldn't? And did you notice the apple (http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=151971) she holds up toward him in her hand? Did you ever hear of this woman named Eve and how she shared her apple with someone, who lost his innocence (http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=152474) in consequence?
It is not unusual to use a zipper to seam a cloth surface. But how very strange that the Tin Woodman should choose to sing about employing one to open and close his tin surface! And when he handles this hypothetical zipper, it operates vertically, not horizontally, as one closing off a blood pump way up in his chest might equally well do. Note he "locks" it by zipping it DOWN - which causes Dorothy to look down along the Tin Woodman's body. I know I enjoy it when a pretty young woman does that to me, don't you? Observe again the artistic subterfuge of opposition: the Tin Woodman is indeed zipping a vertical zipper downward - as you might do with the zipper on the front of your trousers - but the defense pleading innocence is that he said he was locking it - not unlocking it!
And I hope you remember the manifestly campy behavior of the Cowardly Lion in the film, exhibited within the video clip below. (A far more ambiguously effeminate moment for him comes later in the movie, when he <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul2r7Cxc6U8">sings</a> <i>If I were King of the Forest, <b>not Queen</b>, not Duke, not Prince.</i>) These sorts of antics help explain how Judy Garland could become a gay icon and her rainbow the symbol of gender identity freedom.
<table width="640"><tr><td align="center"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98W7zg2ByKY" target="_YouTube">
<!-- #t=20s no longer works! and this video cannot use EMBED and so exploit &start= syntax --><img src="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/LimpWristLion.jpg"></a><br>The Cowardly Lion's wrist gets rather limp when he admits he is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy">"dandy"</a>-lion.</td></tr></table>
Let me again stress that <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> is of more than passing and accidental importance to the career of Alizée! That's because, as I comically - but I hope persuasively - argued long ago at <a href="The difference between Alizée and Mylène"><i>The difference between Alizée and Mylène</i></a>, the music video <i>Moi, Lolita...</i> is 90% L. Frank Baum and only 10% Vladimir Nabokov - and even the latter is mainly via Serge Gainsbourg and his <i>Pauvre Lola</i>, as I <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=202124">learned</a> myself only this year. (Corsaire, you are explicitly invited to offer us a better English translation of <i>Pauvre Lola</i> than my very feeble effort!)
While the 1939 MGM film only permits the lion to handle his tail once it has become limp, Monique Mufraggi's 1997 stage production with 12-year-old Alizée is far more bold, as I have already explained at <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=200388"><i>Mylène owes Monique a LOT of money!</i></a>
<table width="588"><tr><td align="center"><img width="588" height="324" src="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/RedShoesParis29March2010.jpg">
Alizée meeting with the Alizée America delegation at the Virgin Megastore in Paris on 29 March 2010. Her high heels, sexier than the blunt heels worn by Judy Garland (see above), recounts the giant staircase prop of her <i>En Concert</i> DVD.</td></tr></table>
In the thread <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5373"><i>Other shoes Alizée has lost: EZ-DIY fan-art</i></a>, I had invited you to have fun with me by proving that Alizée's badge of femininity is as grand as they come!
And long years ago, it would seem that Alizée's understanding of the symbolism of shoes was in full bloom, if only (perhaps) at a subconscious level. The page <a href="http://oldfanpage2.alizee-fanpage.com/fr/node/666">here</a> translates from French to English <a href="http://www.alizee-forum.com/gallery/albums/promo2001_jan-mar/super02.jpg"> <i>Les 15 petits secrets d'Alizée</i></a>, published 01/2001, writing:<blockquote><i>In love, Alizée says she's a little jealous and even "very exclusive": "I'm Corsican, you don't betray me!", she says. She's also very generous with her boyfriend. After her trip to New York last summer, she gave him a gift: "A pair of shoes that you can't find in France."</i></blockquote>Obviously, she didn't want her pre-Jérémy boyfriend of the time sticking his "limb" in another French "shoe" next time she was away on a trip!
<table border="5" color="black" width="50%"><tr><td>Sadly, copyright issues have undone the amusing little visual joke I had made <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=149056">here</a>. The prologue to the once-linked <i>Heart of Glass</i> music video by <i>Blondie</i> used night-time street shots of New York City, including one featuring the <i>Ed Sullivan Theater</i>.</td></tr></table>
<object width="340" height="285"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA_SstpZOlY&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1&s tart=0&showinfo=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iA_SstpZOlY&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1&start=0&s howinfo=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="340" height="285"></embed></object>
<hr width="50%" size="3" color="black" align="center">
Alizée was also asked in this interview " how was the idea of the shoe born and what meaning does it have? "
It's the second question. ;)
http://www.alizee-forum.com/content.php?740-Star-Plus-2004-01
The material in question, apparently published in Star Plus during January 2004, which we shall stipulate as accurate (whether it is or not), reads this way:<blockquote><i>How was the idea of the shoe born and what meaning does it have?
A: It's to recall to mind the album. In the beginning, it was a drawing done by Mylène who was drawing allusion to Alice in Wonderland. The high heel also represents femininity. I'm often asked if I'm a teenager or an adult. I'm between the two, no longer an adolescent, but not yet a woman.</i></blockquote>Alizée is correct: The high heel shoe certainly does represent something feminine. But to me, in this instance, it seems she was running her mouth without the heavy engagement of her non-trivial brain. But I give her a pass - few people don't do that once in a while.
The success of Lewis Carroll means that Alice is now a well-known stock character, about whom lots of derivative material exists. So a reference to "Alice in Wonderland" is ambiguous. But these days, one can easily search the full text (http://books.google.com/books?id=XlsVAQAAIAAJ) of the original work, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: And Through the Looking-Glass. When you search for the word shoe, there is one measly hit (http://books.google.com/books?id=XlsVAQAAIAAJ&dq=Alice's%20Adventures%20in%20Wonderland&pg=RA1-PA181#v=onepage&q=shoe&f=false). You do better searching for the word shoes, because you get seven hits (http://books.google.com/books?id=XlsVAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Alice's+Adventures+in+Wonderland&hl=en#v=onepage&q=shoes&f=false). But none of them are especially important, much less pivotal.
On the other hand, the ruby slippers are very pivotal in ...Oz, the play in which Alizée portrayed Dorothy at Monique Mufraggi's school. This tale (less the important footgear, not to mention a tornado) forms the basis for the visual plot of the Moi, Lolita... music video which made Alizée a household word.
By the way, within the last month, Ms. Mufraggi mistakenly remembered Dorothy's name as Carter, when the fact that it was Gale is a very meaningful pun. The year 1997 is now a long time ago, and she gets a pass from me, too.