[2010-01-05] Alizée in TECHNIKART Magazine

[FanDeAliFee]

Originally Posted by Deepwaters

Watch the video I linked of "It's Not Fair." In that song, Allen is singing in quite graphic terms of a thoroughly inadequate, inconsiderate lover. "Lying in the wet spot in the middle of the bed," "spending hours giving head," references to the classic wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, I can see where Alizée would say that she could never do anything like this because she's too modest.

I think that's what she meant by "trashy."

I agree with you, Deep. Alizée favors a more modest, circumspect, implied sexuality, of which I think the <i>Mademoiselle Juliette</i> music video is our best example. For example, the women in the bathtub are surely nude, but not even their breasts are visible to the camera. Someone's hair is indeed being tenderly handled, but not a more intimate body part.

Originally Posted by Deepwaters

These are not subjects for polite conversation in mixed company, however much one may sympathize with the poor dear.

I think that is true for pre-Baby Boom generations and some of the Baby Boom itself. But among Americans, I have found that the later someone was born, and the more formal education they have, the more likely they are to treat such a taboo with contempt or even amusement. The subject of the sexual selfishness of men has long been a staple of chat shows, and not just those led by professional sexologists like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Westheimer">Dr. Ruth Westheimer</a>.

Now, I'm not unaware that when you make things like the overt discussion of sexuality or display of a body-part taboo, people socialized in that way find breach of the taboo arousing - because they have been <i>conditioned</i> to associate abrogation of the taboo ONLY with socially-permitted intimate sexual experiences they have had, or to which they have aspired, if juvenile.

Let me give you an example. The dominant public culture where I live is militantly Victorian in many ways - although I will allow that a young woman wearing shorts in public won't be imprisoned, much less lynched. (By the way, there are also enormous amounts of unwanted pregnancy and unmarried cohabitation, but those are putatively private, after all. The former surely is unfortunate fallout from the shame, i.e. fear of violent social reprisal, which is a consequence of such repression of communication.)

A few years ago, a public library manager in this area said that she aspired for her children to have access to a good sex education. About a year or two later, I found some time to requite her aspiration, and prepared an annotated bibliography heavy in vetted online resources, which I e-mailed to her and copied to several others, men and women, who serve on the community advisory board for the library. I quoted an expert who opined that what we need to do is educate parents about sex, so they in turn can thoroughly and frankly educate their children without creating the unfortunate and self-defeating censorious anxiety about some potential for coercive pedophilia, were such work outsourced to public educators, like school-teachers.

In the months subsequent to this, I was met with numerous, unprecedented, unambiguous, provocative private gestures by females, not a few attractive to the typical man, of very many ages - I won't name the range - very physical as well as verbal. I was torn between believing that either I had inadvertently engendered sexual arousal because of the taboo surrounding the discussion of sex, or that I was being lionized as the liberator from local female sexual repression, which had been part of norms that had only respected the needs of men. Perhaps some of both?

Anyway, if you don't believe that contemporary English women can refrain from trashiness, even when leading a serious discussion of sexuality in mixed company, I offer the following as evidence:

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[Deepwaters]

I get the sense that Corsica is more old-fashioned in that respect than Paris. I'm judging this not only by Alizée but also by my Paris correspondent who was also born in Ajaccio.

It's not just the sexual explicitness, though. Mylène Farmer is sexually explicit but not "trashy" in that all of her songs in which she does sing of sexual themes are either romantic or sexually exciting (and often rather kinky). Madonna likewise. Also the late great Freddy Mercury of Queen. With Lilly Allen, I find myself going, "Wow, that's kind of gross." And I get the feeling that's the intent. She kind of reminds me of Julie Brown.

[FanDeAliFee]

Originally Posted by Deepwaters

Watch the video I linked of "It's Not Fair." In that song, Allen is singing in quite graphic terms of a thoroughly inadequate, inconsiderate lover. "Lying in the wet spot in the middle of the bed," "spending hours giving head," references to the classic wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, I can see where Alizée would say that she could never do anything like this because she's too modest.

I think that's what she meant by "trashy."

Originally Posted by docdtv

I agree with you, Deep. Alizée favors a more modest, circumspect, implied sexuality, of which I think the <i>Mademoiselle Juliette</i> music video is our best example. For example, the women in the bathtub are surely nude, but not even their breasts are visible to the camera. Someone's hair is indeed being tenderly handled, but not a more intimate body part.

Originally Posted by Deepwaters

These are not subjects for polite conversation in mixed company, however much one may sympathize with the poor dear.

Originally Posted by docdtv

I think that is true for pre-Baby Boom generations and some of the Baby Boom itself. But among Americans, I have found that the later someone was born, and the more formal education they have, the more likely they are to treat such a taboo with contempt or even amusement. The subject of the sexual selfishness of men has long been a staple of chat shows, and not just those led by professional sexologists like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Westheimer">Dr. Ruth Westheimer</a>

The material above is from a posting I titled: <i>A time, place, and context to discuss everything requiring discussion?</i>

This morning at about 7:10am Eastern US time, I learned more about the Corsican girl when <i>Limelight by Alizée, la radio officielle d'Alizée</i> played for me Lily Allen's <i>It's Not Fair</i>, albeit without the slyly disorienting C&W announcer setup one sees in the music video version.

The betting window is now taking odds on whether Alizée would countenance Photoshopping her head into the revealing photo of the rudely gesturing Lily Allen <a href="http://www.beersteak.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/lily-allen-pussy-flash-landing-strip-no-panties-upskirt-01.jpg">here</a>. Note to Talmudic scholars: What is the aesthetic and moral difference between doing that and posing in the same manner for a photo yourself? Do different considerations about social signaling apply when one is playing a staged role or participating in spontaneous, personal social life? In which of these spheres, or both, do "publicity" media fall? And one final brain teaser: If Alizée were to use her personal digital artistry to synthesize "provocative" photos of Mylène Farmer (<i>sic.</i>) with the latter's acquiescence, using <a href="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Technology/VirtualActors.htm">state-of-the-art-technology</a>, who would be posing that way? Alizée? Mylène? Both?

For additional background material, see: <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=159035&postcount=18"><i>Alizée, sex and AAm culture</i></a>