And now for something completely different

[maradydd]

The Head Minion recently stumbled across, and thus I am compelled to share with the Web at large, the video to the Pet Shop Boys' "It's A Sin". It is decidedly an '80s video, one of those moody and contemplative set-pieces in which not very much happens and everyone has costumes which must have looked awesome in 1987 but which now (rather like every Cyndi Lauper video ever shot) give off the unmistakable aura of rejects from the wardrobe department of The Road Warrior or possibly The Wicker Man. Still, if your music-video-watching interests include monks in cassocks, a set resembling the backstage at a post-apocalyptic theatre, chicken-wire cages and/or Neil Tennant in chains, it's definitely worth a look. Other things for which to keep an eye out include each of the Seven Deadlies, pseudo-religious iconography (is it a cross or an upside-down boat anchor?), and precisely what constitutes a sin in this context anyway.

I mean, really, Meat Loaf at least told us, at the very end anyway, what he wouldn't do for love. Chris, Neil, you've left us hanging seventeen years now. Will you ever cut us a break?

Edit: Right, I guess it'd help if I had the correct URL, wouldn't it.

Comments

Re: The plot thickens

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

Eek.

Okay. Anything Neil has done is probably only a sin for him, because anyone else would do it not quite the same. Neil might have, say, eaten cornflakes at 6am, facing south, in a damp but warm environment, while wearing only a hat...etc. etc. So that's a sin. But I have eaten toast with cheese at 8.03am, facing southwest, in a dry and vaguely chilly environment, while fully dressed... So that's not a sin (or at least, not the same sin).

However. If Neil longs to eat breakfast under the circumstances that I eat breakfast - which, to be super-exact, would require him to long to eat breakfast in my house, as me - which basically requires him to long to be me...well, longing to be me is a sin (because it's Neil longing to do it). But me, eating breakfast, is not a sin, because I do not long to be me, I am me. I'm not Neil longing to be me, eating breakfast in my house under my specific circumstances.

So it can be argued that yes, Neil is the definer of sin for all humanity - but in order for our longings to exactly conform to his longings, he must become us, or we must become him, which is I suppose possible, but unlikely to vanishing point.

(And if he does die for our sins, that becomes a sin too!)

So we're probably reasonably safe.