Katy Perry made my day

Not a phrase I ever expected to write, but it comes from Katy's new video Part of Me where she runs away from a no-good cheating boyfriend to join the USMC. Entertaining enough if you like that kind of thing, though not something I'd normally blog (except to nitpick that I'm sure her Gunnery Sergeant Major would make her cut her hair a lot shorter than in the video).

Except... it seems that Katy has really got Naomi Wolf's goat:

The whole videography of the scenes at Camp Pendleton – in which Perry crawls through an imaginary minefield, trains underwater, learns she can do the impossible, etc – is straight out of Leni Riefenstahl: the same angled, heroizing upward shots, the same fetishization of physical power, of gleaming armaments, and of the rigor and mechanism of human beings cohering into living militarized units.

I'm not sure Leni would have focused on the mud quite so much. That log carrying, being shouted at, bayonetting, buddy carrying, range shooting, getting wet and sandy lying in the surf and standing neck-deep in water in body armour looks rather uncomfortable and unglamorous to me, and the armaments all looked pretty camo'd; any gleam would draw the attention of snipers for half a mile around. I guess Naomi wouldn't recognise glamour if it bit her on the arse.

My "rant" was portrayed on Fox News as anti-Marine, "military-hating" and unpatriotic. A backlash seeded itself across military websites, and I got plenty of hate mail, ranging from epithets like "commie", to, randomly enough in this context, "lezzie".

Unusually, I'd say Fox News pretty much nailed it. I'm sure the mail abuse was unnecessary, but really Naomi what did you expect?

Naomi, I can wholeheartedly recommend that you view the trailer for Act of Valor or better yet rent the film itself when it comes out. If that doesn't make your head explode, I don't know what would.

[If you liked the Katy Perry video, you'll love mixed martial arts practitioner Tim Kennedy's spoof.]