Coldplay’s new video for the song “Paradise” was released on the band’s website today. The plot revolves around a man dressed in an elephant suit (it later turns out to be Chris Martin inside the suit) who escapes from a zoo in London and smuggles himself onto a plane to Cape Town. With few exceptions there are no real people in this elephant suit’s world. Mr Elephant buys a unicycle in Cape Town (Woodstock to be specific, guess Tom) and heads out to the Boland/Karoo where he meets up with 3 other elephants (his band members). They get transported to a stage in front of a massive crowd–turns out in Johannesburg–and play out the song. Paradise indeed.
Everybody and their cousin has something to say about it.
We have work to do, so I sent an email around AIAC. Below follows a slightly edited version of our conversation:
Tom: Paradise is Cape Town’s central business district, a Woodstock bicycle shop and giraffes in game parks.
Sean: Is this Coetzee’s Eden or am I giving them [Coldplay and the video's director] too much credit?
Herman: Yep, I think this is Coetzee plain and simple: paradise is sunny skies, open grasslands and winding roads, all devoid of people. However, as far as touristy depictions of sunny South Africa (‘See the world in your own country!’) go, it’s rather restrained (no sandy beaches or penguins at Boulder’s Beach [in Simon's Town], for instance.
Neelika: I see an ‘artificial’ elephant trapped, imprisoned. Counting the days, like a hostage. Desperate to be let out. Plots escape … a reversal of the economic escapees from Africa …
So: the modern man is like an artificial version of “the Real African.” He smuggles himself back! (instead of out of there, as we know from people who’ve hidden in wheel shafts, etcetera.)
He gets there. No one gives him a break (no rides). But then! More of his own people–fellow escapees from the rigors of modernity. And then, they play sweet, cheesy music.
I liked the lyrics of “I used to rule the world” a lot better. It made me think of Idi.
Paradise as a concept differs from person to person but in spite of that i’d like to think that we all dream of a paradise, however jaded we may be and whatever that paradise maybe. Perhaps i give Cold Play too much credit but my interpretation of the video is that there really is no such thing in the world and to some degree we will always be captives in one way or another be it of a society or an ideology or a physical prison so in the end paradise is what you make of it whereby you start to live no longer seeing the bars keeping you in and experiencing a personal internal freedom. and if there are others to enjoy that paradise with you, well then, all the better. Also I think that the lyrics to the song, if the video is perceived in this way, speak to that perfectly and i personally relate.
On the other hand, it could be just as less abstract and just be the naive & ignorant depiction of an idealistic paradise by the outsider who is either unaware or ignores the realities and injustices of the environment they are observing & experiencing from a more privileged position.
When Tom write this post, http://africasacountry.com/2011/10/17/coldplay-in-the-karoo/, it looked like AIAC was criticsing the use of an elephant for a video that was shot in Africa. I refrained from commenting then because as Tom says:
“Let’s hope there’s no choirs or poor children in the video.” I would rather wait for the video to come out before I discuss something that is unknown.
Now a whole post on a video that is not critical in a constructive manner just because Coldplay are defining their paradise in a way they view it?
Those two posts are such cheap shots.
And I still love the blog.
Peponi by The Piano Guys. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgovv8jWETM&feature=player_profilepage It is the African Style cello and piano cover of Paradise by Coldplay.