love it, love it, I need to

Appearances and Chamber of Commerce fact sheets to the contrary, there’s a thinly-veiled current of darkness that flows through the tree-lined avenues and perfectly manicured lawns of Riverdale, USA. Pay close enough attention, and you will start to discern the seams where the all-American, squeaky-clean vision of Norman Rockwell has been unnaturally joined to the nightmare world of David Lynch.

Every community has its secrets. In the case of Riverdale, these include a hidden coven of witches, a young man with a horrific eating disorder and a penchant for odd headgear, and some highly unconventional teenage mating rituals.

…and then there’s the secret life of Alexander Cabot. Folks familiar with the character from The Josie and The Pussycats cartoon know him as a cowardly and ineffectual bumbler with a penchant for moddish fashions. His on-screen life was forever stuck in the shadow of his tyrannical sister, Alexandra, whose own dabblings in the dark arts were redacted from the animated record. The real story is a bit more…complicated…

Here Alex expounds his political philosophy; a hard-right mélange of ideas borrowed from Rand, Nietzsche, and Hitler. Notice how women are specifically singled out as being “weak,” and by extention, inferior, and how Alex is willing to use actual physical violence to prove his point. The large dollar sign that adorns the back of his jacket could be interpreted as a symbol of his Mammonesque greed, his commitment to unrestrained captialism, or (most likely) of his lousy taste in clothes.

The forceful manner in which Alex expresses his views is quite remarkable, and it makes me wonder what’s going on inside that head of his…

Oh, it’s one of those scenarios. It’s not that uncommon a situation, actually. I’ve heard rumors that Herman Goering was into that sort of thing, too.

One could also infer that the legs belong to the fresh corpse of an unfortunate streetwalker who has been ritually murdered by Alex, a la American Psycho, with Josie and Melody playing the roles of Patrick Bateman’s friends, oblivious to his psychotic predations. It all depends on how dark one wants to go with it.

Saint Etienne – Stormtrooper in Drag (from Continental, 1997) – I wanted to comment “More than Numan,” but the original version was a Paul Gardiner (Tubeway Army’s bass player) release. (Numan did produce, co-compose, and perform on the track, though.)

The Barbarians – Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl? (from Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl? 2000) – A 60’s garage rock novelty from scenic Cape Cod. The band was best known for having a one-handed drummer (two decades before Def Leppard’s Rick Allen returned to his drum set after losing an arm).

Siouxsie & The Banshees – Metal Postcard (Mittageisen) (from The Scream, 1978) – Inspired by a work by German dadaist John Heartfield, is this track a send-up of fascism along the lines of Spinrad’s The Iron Dream? Or a cold romanticization of totalitatian attitudes? It’s difficult to untangle the knot of fascist influences – aesthetic, ideological, transgressive – that ran through the early British punk scene. (Also see: Sid Vicious’ famous swastika t-shirt and the vile joke that was “Belsen Was a Gas.”)