Friday, January 19, 2001

Jack Fear Go Home

In the car again, this time with the allegedly-reprehensible "Smack My Bitch Up" blaring out of the tape deck. (why only allegedly reprehensible? ah, that's another essay, for another day.) As I listen, caught up as always in the wash of beats and corrosive synth textures, images start filling my mind all unbidden: a highly-produced chopsockey wire-fu action movie-slash-music video—and for some reason it's Drew Barrymore and Jet Li (of all people) in an epochal, fabulously-choreographed fight scene. And when that amazing bridge section comes along, and that voice starts soaring over everything, Jet and Drew are circling around each other, occasionally feinting, and their eyes meet, and you know this is the turning point of the whole thing—and much stranger flashes of imagery come, overtly pornographic. Ulp. Blink. And then the snare starts its pattering return, Drew turns running towards the wall, runs up it Matrix-style, flips, and just as her foot connects with Jet's jaw in the slo-mo freeze-frame poster-image money-shot, just as the gruff male voice returns to bellow the profane refrain, it occurs to me: fuck, I'm having a Nathan Barley moment.

Spoiled it for me completely, I'll tell you.

No comments: