Important Thoughts on Katy Perry

Like everyone else in the world, I'm obsessed with the new Katy Perry song, and, nerd that I am, I need to make three observations here:

(1) This is a song about ambivalence. The speaker is pulled in two directions: Against her own best judgment, she will almost certainly contact her (possibly toxic) former lover. Why is it shrewd to write about ambivalence? Because the sensation of conflicting impulses is something we all experience all of the time. Perry's frenemy, Taylor Swift, High Priestess of Ambivalence ("You look like bad news; I gotta have you"), has already endorsed the new Perry song.

(2) This is a song in which form matches content. Perry seems to mock herself, and to mock the idea of a racing, self-rationalizing mind, with this run-on sentence: "Just because it's over doesn't mean it's really over and if I think it over maybe you'll be coming over again...and I'll have to get over you all over again...." The chaos of Ms. Perry's inner life is mirrored in crazed, ranting syntax. Brilliant.

(3) Ms. Perry is a fan of the framing device. She very much likes to call attention to the transition from an Ordinary World to an Enchanted World. "Roar"'s video begins with a painting; through the magic of storytelling, we then enter the painting. Same with "California Gurls": a candy box comes alive, and it's no longer a candy box, but an actual landscape. In "Wide Awake": Perry seems to exit her dressing room through a magic mirror, and she becomes a version of Snow White. In the great video for "Never Really Over," we begin in quiet, rural America--but we soon hop on a bus and become part of a strange colony of broken-hearted dancers (something like a playful, cartoonish version of Esalen).

"I don't want to fall through the rabbit hole," sings Perry, but of course she *does* want to take that trip. To enter the Enchanted World. How nice to have her back!

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