[2010-01-05] Alizée in TECHNIKART Magazine

[Ruroshen]

So I follow a LiveJournal community called Fandom!Secrets, which is similar in concept to PostSecret--in that users select postcard-sized images to which they add secrets, and then anonymously submit them to be posted--except that it's for nerds. Most of the secrets posted are about geeky pursuits like TV shows, movies, anime, comics, books, video games, or some combination of the above. Occasionally, once in a while, we'll see a music-related one.

Imagine my surprise when I checked today's post and saw this about halfway down the page:



Cool, huh?

And no, before you ask, I wasn't the one who submitted. I'm really curious to know who did, but I won't ask you to out yourself if it was somebody from AAm. (If you wanted to send me a PM about it, though, that'd be hot.)

The comments on the post are mixed--which is to be expected, since F!S is kind of a snarky community--but at least a couple peeps have expressed curiosity about who Alizée is.

Nice work, you glorious anonymous person, you!

[User22]

Originally Posted by Ruroshen

So I follow a LiveJournal community called Fandom!Secrets, which is similar in concept to PostSecret--in that users select postcard-sized images to which they add secrets, and then anonymously submit them to be posted--except that it's for nerds. Most of the secrets posted are about geeky pursuits like TV shows, movies, anime, comics, books, video games, or some combination of the above. Occasionally, once in a while, we'll see a music-related one.

Imagine my surprise when I checked today's post and saw this about halfway down the page:



Cool, huh?

And no, before you ask, I wasn't the one who submitted. I'm really curious to know who did, but I won't ask you to out yourself if it was somebody from AAm. (If you wanted to send me a PM about it, though, that'd be hot.)

The comments on the post are mixed--which is to be expected, since F!S is kind of a snarky community--but at least a couple peeps have expressed curiosity about who Alizée is.

Nice work, you glorious anonymous person, you!

yep those anonymous Lilly-fans hopping around haha. But yah I just saw the original Madonna version for the first time and Lilly looks way better and hotter than her....nice find

[wasabi622]

YAY! I got my magazine today!!

I shall use my pigdin French abilities to understand as much as I can!

[User22]

Originally Posted by wasabi622

YAY! I got my magazine today!!

I shall use my pigdin French abilities to understand as much as I can!

hahaha....all I know is the words in her songs hahaa

[Deepwaters]

Well, I wasn't familiar with Lilly Allen, and so to explore what our own Lili meant by saying that Lilly was "trashy," I did a YouTube search. Here are some vids of Ms. Allen and it shows what Her Grace meant. Although her music is quite good just the same.







A lot of her other songs are similar: low-life concepts, dysfunctional relationships, foul language, but beautifully done.

I don't know if it's because she's English, though.

[Rev]

Originally Posted by Deepwaters

Well, I wasn't familiar with Lilly Allen, and so to explore what our own Lili meant by saying that Lilly was "trashy," I did a YouTube search. Here are some vids of Ms. Allen and it shows what Her Grace meant. Although her music is quite good just the same.







A lot of her other songs are similar: low-life concepts, dysfunctional relationships, foul language, but beautifully done.

I don't know if it's because she's English, though.

I think that comment may have slipped out inadvertantly. It seems to be unlike her usual cautious way. Was a litle French-English attitude showing?

By the way, Lilly ALlen is really cute in the first song.

[Deepwaters]

Originally Posted by Rev

I think that comment may have slipped out inadvertantly. It seems to be unlike her usual cautious way. Was a litle French-English attitude showing?

She does slip now and then. And it's true, and amusing from this side of the pond, that the French and English really don't like each other. It looks a lot like sibling rivalry to me.

By the way, Lilly ALlen is really cute in the first song.

Oh, she's gorgeous, no doubt about it, for an English babe.

But there's something about French women. French girls are hot. The whole world knows it. That's how Eisenhower motivated the troops on D-Day.

"This is it, men. Now remember, the Germans are between you and millions of French girls." The true secret of our victory.

That's also why the Germans invaded France to begin with. That's the German idea of a romantic courtship: it starts with a blitzkrieg.

And that will do for my own foray into national stereotyping. Carry on.

[lefty12357]

My take on the "trash" comment is this, which I had posted in another thread:

Oh, and a little side note on the term "Trash" that was recently used in the Technikart interview. I don't think this word is meant to be taken literally in its normal sense. Think of it as a word that is the name of a style or genre, like "Punk", "Metal" or "Pop". The word "Trash" has been around a long time in one form or another, often used to describe primitive, lo-fi, indie music. I think many British artists are currently known for being in this category, hence Alizée's reference to it in the interview. It's not meant to necessarily be derogatory or insulting.

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

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

[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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