Coldplay’s “Paradise”
October 19, 2011
by Sean Jacobs
http://youtu.be/1G4isv_Fylg
Coldplay’s new video for the song “Paradise” was released on Youtube today. It is about an elephant (well, Chris Martin in an elephant suit) escaping from a zoo in London, smuggles himself onto a plane to Cape Town. In the Karoo where he meets up with 3 other elephants (his band members) they get transported to a stage in front of a massive crowd and play out the song. Paradise indeed.
Everybody and their cousin has something to say about it.
We have to work to do, so I sent an email around AIAC. Below follows a slightly edited version of our conversation:
Tom: Paradise is Cape Town’s central business district, a Woodstock bicycle shop and giraffes in game parks.
Sean: Is this Coetzee’s Eden or am I giving them [Coldplay and the's video director] too much credit?
Herman: Yep, I think this is Coetzee plain and simple: paradise is sunny skies, open grasslands and winding roads, all devoid of people. However, as far as touristy depictions of sunny South Africa (‘See the world in your own country!’) go, it’s rather restrained (no sandy beaches or penguins at Boulder’s Beach [in Simon's Town], for instance.
Neelika: I see an ‘artificial’ elephant trapped, imprisoned. Counting the days, like a hostage. Desperate to be let out. Plots escape … a reversal of the economic escapees from Africa …
So: the modern man is like an artificial version of the Real African. He smuggles himself back! (instead of out of there, as we know from people who’ve hidden in wheel shafts, etcetera.)
He gets there. No one gives him a break (no rides). But then! More of his own people–fellow escapees from the rigors of modernity. And then, they play sweet, cheesy music.
I liked the lyrics of I used to rule the world a lot better. It made me think of Idi.
October 19, 2011
by Sean Jacobs
http://youtu.be/1G4isv_Fylg
Coldplay’s new video for the song “Paradise” was released on Youtube today. It is about an elephant (well, Chris Martin in an elephant suit) escaping from a zoo in London, smuggles himself onto a plane to Cape Town. In the Karoo where he meets up with 3 other elephants (his band members) they get transported to a stage in front of a massive crowd and play out the song. Paradise indeed.
Everybody and their cousin has something to say about it.
We have to work to do, so I sent an email around AIAC. Below follows a slightly edited version of our conversation:
Tom: Paradise is Cape Town’s central business district, a Woodstock bicycle shop and giraffes in game parks.
Sean: Is this Coetzee’s Eden or am I giving them [Coldplay and the's video director] too much credit?
Herman: Yep, I think this is Coetzee plain and simple: paradise is sunny skies, open grasslands and winding roads, all devoid of people. However, as far as touristy depictions of sunny South Africa (‘See the world in your own country!’) go, it’s rather restrained (no sandy beaches or penguins at Boulder’s Beach [in Simon's Town], for instance.
Neelika: I see an ‘artificial’ elephant trapped, imprisoned. Counting the days, like a hostage. Desperate to be let out. Plots escape … a reversal of the economic escapees from Africa …
So: the modern man is like an artificial version of the Real African. He smuggles himself back! (instead of out of there, as we know from people who’ve hidden in wheel shafts, etcetera.)
He gets there. No one gives him a break (no rides). But then! More of his own people–fellow escapees from the rigors of modernity. And then, they play sweet, cheesy music.
I liked the lyrics of I used to rule the world a lot better. It made me think of Idi.
