The Frumious Bandersnatch (4 page)

Higgins didn't know what it was he'd said that suddenly captured the black girl's attention. Maybe she was interested in auditioning for the role of one of those half-naked young people writhing. She was half-naked herself right now, albeit not writhing. Higgins plunged on regardless.

“Your second cheapest video is what I call the ‘Disco Party' video, which is a variation on the poolside theme. You rent a disco for the night, you pack it with those same young people from the swimming pool, except the guys are in tight jeans and tank tops and the girls are in halter tops and hip huggers that show their bellybuttons. You use the club's own strobe lighting except for your star, who's performing in their midst and needs special lighting to show her own bellybutton or however much else of herself you'd like her to show,” he said, and turned his steely blue-eyed gaze full force on the black girl, who licked chocolate pâté from her fork, and smiled at him. “You've got to remember,” he said directly to her, “that there's absolutely nowhere your artist can go after she's stark naked.”

Everyone laughed. The man from London had a sort of horsy laugh. The man from Paris sounded like he was choking on a Gauloise. Higgins figured he was both amusing and instructing these two stereotypes. Encouraged, he continued with his thesis, which he would try to get published in
The New Yorker
magazine one day.

“A little more expensive is what I call your ‘Back to the Hood' video. This only works with black or Latino artists,” he said, and winked at the black girl, “since your white performers don't come fum no hood, sistuh,” and winked again. The black girl winked back. Higgins figured he was home free. “This is a video you shoot outdoors, with your male or female artist roaming the old neighborhood and feeling sentimental about it. You see shots of old black guys playing cards on an upturned garbage can, you see shots of little girls jumping rope and teenage dudes shooting baskets in the school yard, you see shots of what look like dope buys going down, this is like a documentary that says, ‘Look where I came from, boys and girls, and now I'm a big rock star, ain't that something?' And your artist is roaming through all this like a hidden camera, with a soulful look on her face, singing her little heart out while she remembers what it was like to be a kid in this hood.”

The black girl was nodding dreamily now, remembering what it was like to be a kid in the shitty hood where she herself was born, but look at her tonight, man, here on a million-dollar yacht, wearing chains and a diamond and flirting with a veep from a big-time label, oh lordy!

“The song doesn't have to have anything at all to do with the hood or memories of the hood. The song can have a lyric any twelve-year-old can remember in six seconds flat, ‘I'll love you till the day I die,' something like that, ‘I'll love you till the day I die, I'll love you till the day I die, I'll love you till the day I die-ai-ai,' like that. Nothing at all to do with growing up poor, the growing-up-poor is only the sub-plot. What the video does is tell all those kids out there who bought the album that here in this America—or for that matter any of
your
countries, too, my friends—anywhere in the entire free
world,
for that matter, you can grow up to be a diva who will love someone till the day she die-ai-ai-s.”

Higgins smiled. They all smiled with him.

The black girl wasn't too sure Higgins wasn't dissing the sort of hood she grew up in, but she smiled, too, what the hell, and grabbed a glass of white wine from a waiter passing a tray.

“Your next cheapest video is what I call ‘Smoke and Mirrors,' it's all bullshit flashing lights and blinking neon. Looks like a million bucks, but doesn't cost a nickel. Well, it costs a lot more than the other three, but that's only in the construction. The shooting is cheap. Just your set and your artists on the set. This is the kind of set you use when your song is about absolutely nothing. In fact, not anybody out there can understand the words to the song. Nobody. Not a single living soul. I'm not talking rap. You can usually understand the words in a rap song. I'm talking about a song that has lyrics nobody on earth can understand, no matter how often you listen to the song. This is a song that kids keep listening to over and over again, trying to dope out what the hell the lyrics mean. This is a song that's usually a big hit overseas, because you don't have to understand it in Germany or Italy, it's the same as if you're hearing it in America, where nobody can understand it, either, because it's designed to be unintelligible. Are you beginning to get my drift?”

The guy from London was beginning to get Higgins's drift. Higgins was leading up to talking about “Bandersnatch.” The man from London nodded sagely, like a member of Parliament who'd just been advised that his Prime Minister had the goods on Osama bin Laden.

“Your next to the most expensive video is your ‘Story' video. This can be a video that actually
follows
the story of the lyrics in any given song, illustrating the song, so to speak, putting it into pictures for the twelve-year-olds out there, or it can be a video that tells a story entirely
different
from the one the lyrics are telling. Usually, the Story video is directed by some guy who has dreams of doing a feature film for Miramax. He is more interested in the
video
itself than he is in the
song
the video is supposed to be selling. In many respects, it's like your ‘Back to the Hood' video. Your artist can be singing, ‘I'll love you till the day I die-ai-ai,' and the picture on the screen will be showing a car crashing through the guard rail on the Calm's Point Bridge and hurtling to the dark swirling mysterious waters below. The ‘Story' video is full of artsy-fartsy shots and dissolves and fades you learn in Directing 101 in film school. There are women with horns and pointy red breasts…”

Higgins glanced at the black girl again.

“…or guys who suddenly sprout huge wings and fly off into a sky torn apart by thunder clouds. You're sometimes watching two or three stories at the same time, either having to do with the song, or having nothing at all to do with it. The idea is to make the video look like a hi-tech movie so that the kids will run out to buy the album, thinking maybe it, too, gee whiz, is like a high-tech movie. Razzle-dazzle. It's all razzle-dazzle, thank you, Kander and Ebb. Which brings me to the most expensive video of all, and that is the ‘Production Number' video, and that is what the ‘Bandersnatch' video is.”

Finalmente,
the guy from Milan thought.

“Leave me dispense with generalities,” Higgins said, “and invite you directly into my boudoir,” and here his gaze brushed the black girl's long and shiny legs, and her pert and perky tits, and then her overblown lips and her loam-colored eyes, asking his question to those eyes, asking it with a small inquisitive lifting of his brows, and getting his answer with a slight imperceptible nod, Yes, the girl in the chains was saying, oh yes, yes, yes.

“ ‘Bandersnatch,' ” Higgins said, “although I feel certain Lewis Carroll didn't intend it this way, is the story of an attempted rape, the story of a thwarted rape, the story of a victim triumphant. Most importantly, it is in
fact
a story—a
genuine
story and not one of those invented film-school stories that have nothing to do with the song they're selling. ‘Bandersnatch' is the story of a girl who is warned of the beast out there on those mean streets, but who goes out to find that beast, anyway, and to slay it, my friends, to kill it dead, to emerge victorious, ‘O Frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!' Yes, you're right if you're thinking this is the story of ‘Beauty and the Beast,' told in nonsense syllables that captivate and mystify, part hard driving rock, part rap, so that we go after and deliver both audiences. You may well ask—especially our friend from Britain here, who may be more familiar with the poem than some of you others…”

“I'm familiar with the poem,” the black girl said.

Higgins looked at her.

“In fact, I know it by heart,” she said.

“Then you may be wondering how…”

“I am indeed wondering,” she said.

“…how the
boy
in the poem…”

“ ‘Beware the Jabberwock, my
son,
' ” she said, stressing the word.

“Exactly,” Higgins said.

“ ‘Come to my arms, my beamish
boy,
' ” the man from London said.

“Exactly right,” Higgins said. “How does this boy become a girl, become a rape victim, become in fact Tamar Valparaiso?”

“My magazine is wondering the same thing,” the black girl said.

“Which magazine is that?” Higgins asked.

“Rolling Stone.”

Ooops, Higgins thought.

 

SHE HAD CUT
her hair short for the video.

It was growing back now, but if the album was a hit and Tamar had to go on tour with it, she'd have it trimmed back to the length it was two months ago, when they shot the video at what used to be a bakery but what was now the Sands Spit Studios across the River Dix, which in fact they'd passed not half an hour ago. The
River Princess
had already come around the tip of the island and was now heading downtown, cruising the waters between the two states, moving at a leisurely pace toward the bridge.

On the video, the short hair made her look like a blond Prince Valiant. Or more like a Peter Pan, she guessed. No question there was a girl in that tattered tunic at the end of the song, though, the beast clawing and biting at the garment till it came away in shreds under his talons and teeth, no question about that at all. They'd even had to edit out a thirty-second shot where her left nipple distinctly showed, and another longer sequence where too much cheek and almost some pussy were revealed when Jonah lifted her; you couldn't risk offending all those soccer Moms out there, as if they didn't have pussies and nipples of their own.

Started her quest in what looked like a sturdy-enough white thigh-length tunic, sandals strapped to the calf, subtly heeled to give the leg its essential curve…

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought
—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood
…

That was when Jonah burst upon the scene wearing the first of his masks. That was when the innocent boy in the song began morphing into a female rape victim as more and more of Tamar's body was revealed in the shredding garment. There was a lot of meaning to this song. This song spoke to gender problems and crises of identification. This song spoke to adolescent boys and girls in turmoil. This was a very deep song.

She was worried that some of its depth and meaning might be lost in the live performance tonight. It had taken hours and hours of shooting time to capture the dual morphing effect. Tamar's transformation from adolescent boy to vulnerable maiden to ferocious defender of her virginity had required repeated costume changes to achieve the effect of a gradually more girl-revealing garment, the rape becoming in effect a subtle strip tease. Nor had it been simple to morph Jonah from a merely
somewhat
threatening creature (albeit with eyes of flame) that came whiffling through the tulgey wood in a blue mask, burbling as it came, into the raging monster in a red mask, slain and bleeding at the end of the battle. How on earth would they convey all that tonight? Eyes of flame? Wouldn't it have been simpler and better merely to show the video? But it had previewed last night on all four music channels and tonight Barney wanted something to top that. Something like Tamar Valparaiso, live and in person!

And scared to death.

 

IT WAS ALREADY
nine-thirty, and Honey Blair hadn't yet shown up. Binkie Horowitz had busted his ass setting up the Channel Four interview, but now he was beginning to wonder if the PD for the Eleven O'Clock News had changed his mind. Or else sent Honey somewhere else where hotter news was breaking. Binkie couldn't imagine what might be hotter than Tamar Valparaiso performing the new Hit Number One Song from her Platinum Album (aluvai and from your lips to God's ear!) live and in person, right here on this little old yacht, but then again he never knew what the hell went on in the heads of program directors.

As VP in charge of Promotion at Bison Records, he'd been working the PDs at radio stations all over the country for the past two months now, courting them the way he would a young girl (some of them were, in fact, young girls), making them familiar with the tricky lyrics of “Bandersnatch,” playing the single for them over and over again, hoping they would come to like the song well enough to add it to their rotation. Binkie was shooting for plays on both Top-40 Teen and Top-40 Adult stations, hoping to catch the pubes and their soccer Moms as well. Your dead zone on radio was from seven to eleven
P.M.
, a time slot the big-money advertisers shunned. That's where the Teen-Appeal records usually landed, square in the middle of Death Valley. In radio, your big bucks were in the eighteen-to twenty-four-year-old market. Binkie secretly suspected that Tamar's appeal would be to the teenybopper crowd, but nobody argued with Barney Loomis, and besides, there was plenty of time to go after the younger crowd later on.