Do the teens duo's outraged critics protest too much? Is it really just their dirty minds? Wonders KATE COPSTICK
There is an old joke about a man who goes to a psychoanalyst who shows him a series of Rorschach ink blots. "What does this one make you think of?" asked the analyst, holding up the first blot.
"Oooh! That's a young girl with huge breasts being rogered by the milkman," said the man.
"This next one?" asked the analyst.
"A beautiful redhead being taken roughly from behind by a much older man."
"Er... this one?" wondered the analyst.
"A huge vagina just after sex," the man replied.
"I'm sorry," said the analyst. "You are just a sex-obsessed, dirty old man."
"I'm sex obsessed?" said the man indignantly. "Who's been showing me all the dirty pictures"
This may not be very funny... but it is, I think, relevant, given the reaction of people like Richard Madeley to the two totties of t.A.T.u.
Call me shallow, but as I see it, Lena Katina and Julia Volkova are two attractive (if you like that sort of thing) middle-class Moscovites who form the constituent parts of an award-winning, albeit wholly manufactured pop duo called t.A.T.u.
Predicated on the basis it would seem of a rather attractively shot video for their number one single in which they do a little light hand-holding and anodyne snogging, Madeley is hurtling to law because, he alleges, the "sick" creator of t.A.T.u is "promoting underage lesbian relations" and encouraging rampant paedophilia in the ranks (I did say ranks) of the MTV and TOTP watching classes. If I thought for one second this ludicrous stance was part of a devilish ploy to garner ratings for his ghastly Channel 4 debacle, I might just have a sneaking regard. But I don't. I think he is a sad bastard.
Of course, thanks to Queen Victoria's refusal to believe that ladies actually 'dined at the Y', there never was a prohibition on lesbianism... and so no age limit set.
Interestingly the said "sick" creator of t.A.T.u former psychologist and advertising executive Ivan Shapovalov has gone on record as having a "serious suspicion that the British Channel 4 presenter Richard Madeley tends to have paedophilia". At least he is qualified to make his allegations.
Seriously, Shapovalov is a very smart man. In 2000 he as script-writer and director masterminded the release of the first single from a duo he had put together the previous year. Five hundred girls auditioned and he chose Lena Katina, daughter of a successful professional Muscovite musician, and Julia Volkova, another well-brought-up middle-class girl. True to the form of the men who create the girls who create a storm (Spice Girls ring a bell?) he moulded his material to his concept Lena lost 10lbs and Julia cut off her long hair and dyed it black before they made their first video.
Once he had his product in a saleable state, Shapovalov marketed it via MTV Russia. Almost from the beginning they were stars. Their first single I've Lost My Mind was a success in Russia. Through a mini-album (for those of us whose drug of choice is now retinol, I believe they used to be called EPs) entitled 200k In The Wrong Lane, which sold 850,000 legal copies and spawned an estimated 4million illegal ones within months of its release, to a release in the US and an MTV Video Award less than a year after their first record, they had a clutch of number one hits, first in Russia, then across eastern Europe with songs like I've Lost My Mind and All The Things She Said.
Interestingly, it was only with the last video single, as their assault on the charts in the USA and, of course, in the UK gathered speed, that the girls puckered up in each other's direction.
It would not be the first time lesbianism has been used as a marketing ploy. From Cindy Crawford shaving K.D Laing, through almost every TV soap, to Julie Burchill, a hint of girls going down has helped sales go up.
In fact, no one has ever confirmed the t.A.T.u twosome are lesbian. They were quoted recently as saying they are bisexual. But then Tony Blair was quoted recently as saying we are living in a democracy. You just can't trust what you read. People say what they want you to hear.
Let's face it: the video is hardly unless you are VERY VERY sad an orgy of girl-on-girl desire unbridled, now, is it? It is a pop video rather a good pop video for really rather a good europoppy track (as europoppy tracks go) accessorised with a little sub-Brookside sapphism by two quite sweet looking girls who are, obviously, past jailbait's sell-by date.
Unless, perhaps, you have an imagination like Richard Madeley.
Katina is a 1984 Libran making her, currently, 18 and Volkova is a February girl from 1985 making her also 18.
They first met, we are told, when part of the Russian kiddie pop band Neposady. Juicy gossip rears its gorgeous head and tells us that Julia was asked to leave the group after what was described as "obscene behaviour" and "corrupting other girls".
Of course, as this juicy gossip can also be found on the girls' official website, one might assume that Shapovalov, with his "former marketing executive" hat on had something to do with its propagation. Anyone know the Russian for "all publicity is good publicity"?
Talking of which, the idea that t.A.T.u is some sort of cyrillic acronym for This Girl Loves That Girl? Niet. "t.A.T.u" (pronounced tah-too) is, I am reliably informed by a Russian speaker, Russian for "tattoo" (pronounced tah-too).
Hey, don't be too disappointed. For years half the world thought Richard Gere put gerbils up his bum. And that The Spice Girls could sing. At least the hype around t.A.T.u is fun but harmless. |
