After reading FourFour’s phenomenal post on the parallels between Kate Bush and Bat For Lashes I immediately downloaded ‘Two Suns,’ and entered a YouTube search hole I’ve yet to emerge from. While I, of course, saw the phenomenal video for ‘What’s a Girl to Do‘ when it came out a couple of years ago, I dismissed Natasha Khan as another winsome, 70s-ish indie girl. That was a mistake. I was raised on Tori Amos and Kate Bush, and therefore programmed to like pianoish, deliberately weird ladysinging. And Natasha is gloriously weird, like the aforementioned Tori and Kate with a hefty pinch of Jodorowsky. I especially love this clip, where she ritually sacrifices a vacuum cleaner.
The Internet has errupted with people crying foul on this video, saying it’s mean that the kid’s dad filmed him, or that he was overmedicated, or even that its creepy that the dad keeps asking his son (who just had fucking dental surgery and is hilarious from anaesthetic) if he’s okay. Chill the fuck out, Internet. Most everyone has had their wissies out and experienced the wonderful, giddy joy of a totally legal anaesthetic high. Let us all administer more drugs to more children and video them all the time.
At first I thought it was just a Victorian phenomenon, given the Vic government’s penchant for shrill road signs exhorting drivers to ‘Slow Down!’ and ‘Sleep Now!’ and ‘Stop Taking So Much Meth!’ and ‘You Will Kill Everyone You Love With Your Reckless, Sloppy Drunk Driving!’
First, there’s the startling, Romero-style WorkSafe PSAs.
Then there’s that Quitline PSA, where they genuinely traumatise a real, small child.
But none of these have anything on the Queensland Government’s rapey, desperately sexist anti-Vodka Cruiser PSA.
I have no real critique of these things, other than to say what the fuck, Australia? Is this really the way to stop your citizens from wearing short skirts and incorrectly using bread slicers and looking into nail guns with a shiteating grin and abandoning children in train stations because you didn’t quit smoking and then you died from lung cancer and that’s how devastated your child is?
Then again, none of these stomach-turningly graphic PSAs have anything on this New Zealand ad. Late this year I was briefly in Auckland, staying in a sterile hotel and connecting with the alienated businessman part of myself, and I was already feeling pretty low when I happened across:
