Songs for the Bewildered: Nikita
You hipster musos might like to pretend that the first record you bought, with your own precious pocket money, was Music for the Masses. Or Purple Rain. Or Rain Dogs. But it wasn't. Like me, the first record you bought (with your own precious pocket money) was the 7″ single of Nikita by Elton John. I know. I can see the shame reflected in your eyes.
I had, I now realise, something of a cold war fetish as a young fella. In this, I'm sure I was not alone. It wasn't so much the spies and the intrigue and the defections that made me giddy. It was more the (supposedly) imminent threat of global annihilation. On the one hand it was (of course) a bit on the terrifying side. Melted faces and irradiated eyeballs and your family being dead and so on. People shuffling about wailing and dragging their skin behind them like hideous mutant freaks. All that was, I suppose, in the debit column.
On the other (mutated) hand, it was hard not to acknowledge that the world was hopelessly shit as it stood. Dropping the bombs and blowing everything to bits afforded us the chance to a) rebuild the world anew as a (clean and bland) Star Trek-y futuristic utopia, while, b) living out our childhoods like the resourceful, independent, and semi-feral young heroes of an Enid Blython-esque post-apocalyptic fantasy. Sadly, of course, the wall came down and the Hard Rock Cafe invaded Moscow and the world continued to build shittier layers upon shitty foundations. Boo.
But the pop-cultural flotsam and jetsam of the time retain their power to move and amuse. Step forward Elton & Bernie (Taupin).
We'll leave the whole "Dude! Nikita is a MAN'S name!!" discussion to the sophisticated troll armies of YouTube. All I'll say, in hindsight, is that Nikita (the video) marries the glamour of a Soviet passport control checkpoint with the endearing lovableness of a relentless stalker (telephoto lenses and secret slide shows in his apartment) in a way that seems, in a world stubbornly resisting nuclear wipe-out, delightfully cuddly and fuzzy.
August 9, 2010
3 responses to Songs for the Bewildered: Nikita
I remembered the song with fondness as I read your piece, then I watched the video and felt a cold-war shiver. Do you think it was the invitation to revel in imponderable depths of 80s kitsch that Nikita found so hard to resist? I think the prospect of donning the all-in-one baggy-pants suit sent her scampering for her little red book! In fairness, Elton tried a little cultural reciprocation in playing chess (the only thing we were certain of in those days was that those in the eastern block were very, very good a chess…I’ll see your chess and raise you one Watford FC match) And, dude, Nikita is a MAN’S name!!
The whole Eastern Blockers being good at chess thing was part of their imagined robotic-ness. Eyes that look like ice on fire? That’s just the eerie red glow of a terminator. But inscrutability is, of course, cool and sexy. Nikita looks a lot less hot when she’s giggling and leaping about at Vicarage Road. Like a human.
And isn’t that the most awkward slow dance of all time? And, dude, Nikita is a MAN’S name!!
I didn’t realise it was a man’s name ’til I saw a picture of Kruschev in my history book, and I still can’t help but wonder…