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.

Today, on The History Channel

This morning, on The History Channel, I saw the most fascinating and informative program. Perhaps you've seen it? It's a documentary, apparently, called "Patriot Games" in which a group of bloodthirsty terrorists invade America. In this case the terrorists are Irish (I'm sure you all remember when Irish terrorists invaded America, I think it was in the 1980s), but somehow this doesn't make the film any less pertinent than if the terrorists had been from, say, Iraq. Frankly, I learned a lot by watching it!

For instance, I learned all about the way a terrorist's mind works. "Patriot Games" focuses on one terrorist in particular, Sean, who went out of his way to attack the American home and family of a well-known CIA agent, Harrison Ford. Sean was very upset at Harrison Ford because, while on holiday in England, Harrison Ford killed Sean's little brother (who was also a terrorist, but still a young and relatively innocent one). Apparently Sean didn't realize that a good CIA agent never goes off duty, even while on holiday in England he is allowed -- actually, encouraged -- to kill whatever kind of terrorist he sees fit, even the relatively innocent kind. (I guess I learned something about the CIA too!) Anyway, Sean was really upset about this, so he convinced some of his terrorist friends to attack America with him, as revenge for his little brother. Pretty soon it became clear to me that terrorists don't even care about anything at all, other than revenge and mindless killings. Although these particular terrorists started out with some kind of mission (I think it had to do with something called the IRA, I'm not exactly sure, the film wasn't so clear on this point), but by the end it's obvious that the terrorists are only thirsty for blood, especially the blood of Harrison Ford and his family, for which the terrorists had gained a taste earlier in the film when they machine gunned Harrison Ford's wife and daughter (who survived, thankfully, even though his daughter lost her spleen). This, I think, is why the film was ultimately about family values. In fact, the more that I think about it, the more important I think "Patriot Games" is with its numerous messages about family values and national defense and the bloodthirsty mindset of the terrorists who will clearly stop at nothing to pursue their mindless killings, even when it means coming to America and trying to kill us family by family at night while we sleep in our own homes. Anyway, I also learned that it's better to keep the family shotgun loaded and easily accessible at all times, with plenty of fresh shells nearby, than to hide it in some closet, unloaded, with the box of shells stashed somewhere else altogether. I mean, what kind of sense would that make?

So, you see, I learned a lot by watching the documentary "Patriot Games" on The History Channel. The whole experience has convinced me to tune in to the History Channel more often in the future. In college, I used to watch The History Channel all the time. My favorite program was a documentary about all the different kinds of poison gas they used in World War I. Some kinds would choke you to death or burn you or blind you whereas other kinds would make you bleed on the inside. They sure used a lot of poison gas in that war! But now I have seen that The History Channel has broadened its scope even more and will now cover current historical events -- and with equal grace and authority. Bravo History Channel!