Self-Destructive Impulse: Listening to M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes"

I was scouring blogs the other day, looking for MP3s on the Best of 2007 lists posted last month, when I had a chance to reacquaint myself with the song "Paper Planes" by M.I.A. (Pitchfork's fourth-best song of the year), a pleasant and buoyant number about selling illegal visas and taking hostages that features a chorus of what sound like children singing of their intent to murder the song's listeners and steal their money. The chorus, which is repeated three times during the song, unravels with devastating rhythmic precision as the children sing "all I wanna do is," then three gunshots and the ching of a cash register culminate in the refrain of "take your money." It is dark and unsettling and, for some reason, deeply satisfying to hear, over and over.

Of course the more one listens and craves the tuneful, synchronized chime of gunshots and cash registers, the more menacing the song becomes. M.I.A. has the reputation of posing a challenge to the U.S. government and its so-called War on Terror -- her (distant) affiliation with the Tamil Tigers (a proscribed Sri Lankan terrorist organization), lyrical references to "piracy," and trouble last year obtaining a U.S. work visa have contributed to her depiction in the press as a minstrel of what, in "Paper Planes," she calls "Third World democracy." But what kind of challenge -- if any -- does she pose to Western hegemony? M.I.A., at least, has referred to the chorus of "Paper Planes" as "a joke" about her "stupid visa problem" -- and the absurdity, as she says, of "them thinking that I might [want] to fly a plane into the Trade Center" -- adding of the song, that it's "up to you how you want to interpret" it. I interpreted it as a joke, although a sharp and double-edged one; its humor undercutting its apparent celebration of violence and apathy in the same motion as it condemns the real, economically-derived violence and apathy diffusing across so-called developing nations. Yet a message this nuanced is effectively bulldozed by the momentum of the song's banging, hypnotic chorus. Like any successful pop single, "Paper Planes" is overwhelmed by -- and ultimately reduced to -- its most outstanding effect, namely: a juxtaposition of mechanized rhythm and the brief, repeated flash of an appealing melody and lyric. Everything else is auxiliary.

This doesn't make "Paper Planes" any less violent. The recipients of its most violent gestures, however, are not the Eurocentric structures of global capitalism, but the listeners who have paid (or deliberately, and possibly illegally, avoided paying) for the privilege of hearing it. It is "you," after all, who are taken hostage and executed, almost ritualistically -- three times over the course of "Paper Planes" -- by the imperative of its danceable, electronic beat: a comment, perhaps, on the tension between forces of consumption and production, though primarily within the context of contemporary pop music; between its listeners and the creators of their favorite mass-produced songs.


Readers can find an mp3 of "Paper Planes" here -- and watch the video on YouTube.

Where Did All the Carols Go: Christmastime Nostalgia for World War II

Two weeks ago, I happened to catch one of those inane human-interest stories they run at the end of the evening world news to distract you from how terrible everything is. New Orleans is crumbling, soldiers are dying in Iraq, and this reporter wants to know why it's been so long since anyone has written a classic holiday song! "White Christmas," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)," "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer." All the real classics seem to have been written in the 1940s and '50s. By way of explanation, the reporter offered a brief, three-minute profile of one of the men who co-wrote "Silver Bells," chronicling his heartwarming quest to write one more hit carol before he dies. The profile's only attempt to address why so many Yuletide hits were written during a ten- to fifteen-year period that began halfway through World War II was in its conclusion: times have changed, music now is sold by the album, not the song.

How insightful! I should clarify that many of the most enduring Christmas songs -- "Jingle Bells," "Silent Night," "Away in a Manger" -- were written in the 19th century. I should also point out that the success of the American popular song hasn't exactly been replaced by the triumph of the long-playing pop album. The ascendance of the LP format in the 1960s and '70s may well have had something to do with the lack of hit Christmas songs written during this period. More likely, it was the fact that Americans were no longer interested in buying the image these songs were selling. The post-War industrial boom had long since busted and people seemed to have less money and opportunities to make their spirits bright. By the time I was growing up in the '80s and '90s, for instance, more Americans seemed to connect with the sentiment of a song like "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" than "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

That said, there is something truly persistent about those WWII and post-War carols. Not only are they still played on the radio, performed by contemporary musicians, and regularly featured on televised holiday specials, echoes of them can be heard in holiday advertising jingles, which are often written in a vaguely swing-music style to evoke the spirit of the WWII era. This is the same reason why people like Harry Connick, Jr. and Brian Setzer, whose performance styles are rooted in big band swing, make such a killing with Christmas-themed albums.

In any case, the point is that a lot of people still feel really tender for a time when it seemed like Christmas was more ideal and perfect. Yet this ideal may prove elusive. When it became a hit in 1942, "White Christmas" was already rife with nostalgic longing for a Christmas "just like the ones we used to know." It was the perfect piece of wartime propaganda, an emotional locus that would satisfy the need for Americans both home and abroad to believe in what they were fighting for. Nine years later, when "Silver Bells" became a hit in 1951, citizens were reminded that the fight was not over; that the post-War era would demand a new imperative: "city sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style." Thus "Silver Bells" is a celebration of red and green lights, Christmas time in the city, and most of all -- shopping.

Over the years, a lot of people have really believed in Christmas as a season of unambiguous joy, forgiveness, and generosity. I guess plenty of them still do. But the lack of a recent carol to articulate the terms of a new Christmas utopia suggests that -- for the foreseeable future, at least -- Christmas will remain the imperfect, corporate-funded adoration of commerce and American-Christianity that it is now. A shaky house of cards built on the crumbling foundation of an ailing ideal.

Check it out: NPR takes on this same story, with all the pointlessness of the evening news.