Katy Perry Is The Insect Avatar of our Collective Unconscious

I thought I knew how it worked.

I thought I had a handle on our basic hopes and dreams: live a little, work a little, make a whack of money if possible, and die happy.

Then I heard a Katy Perry song in a record store, and I understand how I wrong I was.  But first I will tell you about the time in 2004 I went to Vegas.

It wasn’t a vacation.  I worked for a film company.  We went down there to shoot interviews for a show called Very Odd Jobs, which is exactly what it sounds like – a series of short pieces on people with weird jobs.  Someone had the idea of shooting a VOJ: Las Vegas special (someone also thought it would be fine to send a crew down during spring break, which meant a whole extra serving of crazy), so down we went. There we filmed:

The guy who replaces the light bulbs over Fremont Street
A guy who teaches indoor skydiving to frightened children
A guy who builds robots in his front yard
The guy who sprays artificial snow on a nearby ski hill (spoiler: it’s frozen water)
A guy who maintained a fake film office in 1980 for the purpose of smuggling prisoners out of Iran (weird but true)

In Vegas I discovered two things (three things, if you include my discovery that you should never pay eight bucks for prime rib and shrimp):

1) the Vegas Strip is palpably ridiculous, a thing that can only exist under immense and unprecedented pressures, like a shard of volcanic rock, or lightning glass in the desert;

2) Americans on vacation are capable of generating wild enthusiasm out of anything.  I saw some guy scream himself hoarse because he liked the way a bartender was flipping bottles.  I saw another dancing so wildly on the street that he dislocated his shoulder in mid-crunk.  And apparently some guy pulled a gun on a croupier at my hotel, which is a different order of enthusiasm.

The experience was fun, bizarre and a bit exhausting.  I left there with the notion that it was a kind of Global Party Central for people with elastic waistbands in their pants.  The Strip, I decided, was a product of pure excess, the kind of weird shit that happens when land developers with too much money figure out a foolproof way to impoverish suckers.

That was five years ago.  Yesterday I heard Katy Perry belting out “Waking Up in Vegas” in her best pseudo-rock style, and I am willing to admit my error.

Katy Perry reminds me of an insect.  A pretty insect with a lot of cleavage, but an insect nonetheless.  Like her contemporary Lady Gaga, Perry encases herself in a seamless, chitinous shell.  There’s no way in past the gigantic eyes, bouncing rack and machined voice.  She is deliberately impenetrable, and her songs dredge the tar of our subconscious.  Prurience, vague misogyny, greed and ecstasy, all issuing through her mouth, the one visible gap in her shell.  That’s where you glimpse the insect body twitching in its carapace.

And that’s why I’m prepared to believe anything that Perry sings about.  At least, I believe that her lyrics speak to the truth of our collective imagination.  And when I heard her singing about Las Vegas, I realized that the Strip was not an exception but a long-nurtured dream.  I realized that the cautionary tales of Puritans were really about our desires and not our fears.  And it hit me that the glum hangover of a Vegas morning is just as prime a destination as the excess that leads there.

I went back to Vegas in February for a MamaPop meetup/karaoke quest.  The crowds were subdued, and here and there you could see the signs of the whole enterprise beginning a long slow implosion.  But that’s only temporary.  Katy Perry knows that if the world lights up like a gas-soaked rag tomorrow, we’ll build that motherfucker out of old bottles and string.  We'll play for false teeth and cans of beans, and after a drunken week, someone will wake up a baked-bean millionaire. But it won't be any of us.

Comments

[Neil]

I think you have your finger on pop culture in a way no one else does, or ever will, Palinode. I do not like insects. Or Las Vegas.

[TwoBusy]

Is there a Nobel Prize for the Best Use of "Chitinous" in a Post About Katy Perry? If so, you'd figure this'd have to be a contender.

[kelly]

Ok, I am not entirely sure what an insect avatar is, but when I read that, I got an instant mental picture of Tara's birthday party in BtVS, where Tara is talking about "...introducing her to her insect reflection". Sorry, nothing really relevant, but there you go.

[Sweetney]

That picture of her is terrifying. Also, any post that uses the word "crunk" is a winner in my book. Kudos.

[Ellen]

Have never been to Vegas. Don't really care about Katy Perry. But this is great writing.

[[mark]]

i KNOW i should not like katy perry or her music.

everything i know tells me that i should not like katy perry.

there are people i know who would become violent and possibly physically abusive with me were i to reveal that i like katy perry.

i know all this and yet...

every so often, i catch myself mentally thinking "shut up and put your money where your mouth is...."

and i feel dirty.

[myg]

I barely know who Katy Perry is, that's the truth. But this post is so well done I'm going to print it out and paste it to my bedroom wall. Okay I'm not really going to do that. But it made me consider doing it, and that's something. Isn't it?

[schmutzie]

This weblog entry is being featured on Five Star Friday - http://www.fivestarfriday.com/2009/10/five-star-fridays-edition-76.html