t.A.T.u.'s Big R.U.S.E. (Chronicle.Duke.Edu)

Time of publication: 03.04.2003

April 03, 2003

As much as the rest of the world hates our politics and our manners, they very truly love our bad music. Anyone who endures a night out in a foreign dance club will attest that American influence has wrought fewer evils upon the world more insidious than cheesy pop. Every so often, however, our own formula is expressed so concisely that the result is momentarily startling. Now, from Russia with lust, comes t.A.T.u, a perfect manufacture of marketable adolescent female sexuality, tucked into a wet T-shirt and tighty whities, and turned around to grope itself.
Lena Katina, 19, and Yulia Volkova, 18, auditioned three years ago in a talent search and were matched together to form t.A.T.u. (Spelling: inexplicable.) Their backgrounds are shrouded in rather unintriguing shadows, but t.A.T.u.'s foreground features an inescapably alluring mystique: hot teenage lesbians!

That's right, the girls' videos feature them making out, fondling, and - most atrociously or most excellently, depending on your sensibilities - masturbating to the thought of one another. In live shows, they run out on stage in kneepads and wet T-shirts; when the T-shirts dry, they pour pitchers of water on each other. Apparently, Russian teenage lesbian pop stars hate wearing bras. Their music itself is, by genre standards, mostly passable - just as synthetic but a little less cloying. The lyrics are mostly nonspecific declarations of puppy love, and it's hard to say what's lost in translation. But there are surprises, like the Eurotrash trancehall song "Robot," in which you'll find buried a breathtaking ode to vibrators: "Such love is artificial honey/ Artificial honey, artificial ice/ Artificial paradise, turn it faster on/ There are electronical storms in your heart - [Chorus] Robot, robot, robot, robot, robot - ."

One fansite proclaims, "They sing in Russian, but they speak the Universal language... of the heart." And yet there is something here distinctly foreign to the coy American cultural machine. We have plenty of homosexuality in music, but the Indigo Girls don't fondle each other onstage in wet clingies. The heterosexually-targeted homosexual entertainment niche is relatively untapped in this country.

But stranger still to our eyes is the frankness with which this sex is peddled. t.A.T.u.'s svengali was a former child psychologist by the name of Shapovalov (!) who suddenly realized there were still virgin forests of unexploited terrain right in the borderland between child porn and teen pop. The girls openly admit that they just do what he tells them, and make a point to dismiss any inquiry into their "true" sexuality. Lena (the voice) and Yulia (the face and body) may very well have a close personal relationship that is something like the affection they show for each other onstage, but anything outside of the camera's eye is declared irrelevant.

It's hard to muster the appropriate outrage or even disdain in response. Keeping in mind that the engines of pop music have forever been fueled by sex, there's something almost honest about Shapovalov's proudly calling t.A.T.u. an "underage sex project."

Here in the U.S., Britney and Christina are "artists." They make quick dress changes between leather-clad virgin and haughty slut, and give cheap PR lap dances to the public without ever cracking a smile. Avril Lavigne dons "punk" to sell underage sex; t.A.T.u. uses sex to sell sex - (relatively) clean, "all in good fun," play-acting kind of sex. And after 10 minutes, you're bored with it. But not before you get the feeling that Yulia and Lena, in true Lolita fashion, were half-bored with the whole thing from the beginning.

- Greg Bloom

Thanks to tATuGirlL2510.

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