Cambridge students rush to lecture on Russian lesbian duo (TimesOnline.Co.UK)

Time of publication: 14.05.2003

People by Andrew Pierce

Cambridge students rush to lecture on Russian lesbian duo

Their video — which shows them kissing in the rain, their school uniforms soaked to the point of transparency — has been banned by BBC One’s Top of the Pops. The usual voices of Middle England have declared their disgust.

But the remarkable rise of the teenage Russian pop duo t.A.T.u, who have already had a British number one and are Europe’s biggest selling band, has been embraced by students at Cambridge University.

In one of the best-attended lectures of the year so far, hundreds of undergraduates crowded into a lecture room for “Russian Mafia-Manufactured Paedo-Porn-Pop Duo? The Odd Provenance of t.A.T.u.” Now the lecture is to go on a worldwide tour.

David MacFadyen, the Associate Professor of Russian at the University of California, Los Angeles, illustrated the lecture with clips of the girls, Lena Kalina, 17, and Julia Volkova, 18, performing a kissing scene in the video for their song All The Things She Said and with images of the girls naked together in a bath. He also used tracks from their new album.

The Muscovite pop duo — marketed as lesbian lovers by their Interscope record company — who trade on images of teenage sexuality, have been widely criticised for promoting “paedophiliac pop”.

Despite the criticism the packed audience was more than appreciative. “It’s important to look at music in its social and economic context, be it contemporary or not,” said one excited undergraduate. He was, of course, male.

Thanks to keith133.

Return to "Articles"