Is it offensive? Is it cute? Uh? My lofty minded cultural theory teacher once told me “if its silly its not orientalism” well that certainly “cleared things up” for me by making them less comprehensible- uh I don’t know and I don’t really care- I think people decide to be offended if its convenient for them to do so- so they have something to bitch about instead of focusing on their pointless, culturally bereft, insignificant existences- so I mean- so if it pissed you off why dont you go and make your own fucking video- as for me- I thought the guy- Devendra (Natalie’s current boytoy) was kind of hairy- I thought the makeup was nice- I thought the chic playing the slutty version of Kali at the end was not nearly a hot as I imagine kali would be in person- I thought Natalie did a really stupid imitation of indian dance- I mean even the extras were better- but I thought the beastiality with the squid was very sexy after the whole Sita sati and added just that missing trope that would have made the original Ramayana that much better. So check it out. And can someone explain the lyrics if you know spanish- cuz I don’t exactly see the relationship between the video and the music. anyway…enjoy-
Invoking the cosmic wonder of his beard and Bollywood, Devendra Banhart’s latest music video is both a love story and a tongue-in-cheek nod to India’s maharajas of yore. In “Carmensita,” the newest single from his latest album, Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, Devandra and his uber-hot (and unlikely girlfriend) Natalie Portman get down to psychedelic-indie, all while saving the Kindom of Carmensita from the clutches of Lord Rajan the Malevolent. When taunting the Prince (played by Devendra), Lord Rajan bellows, “You think you can defeat me with your rebellious beard?” Later on, Devendra kills Lord Rajan by shooting venomous snakes out of his forehead. This is arguably 2008’s most badass moment in music videos.
If you haven’t heard of the mythic tale of Nagamandala…the tale of a snake who falls in love with a woman and seduces her in the form of a her husband…then you probably weren’t as surprised as I was to read of an actual woman, Bimbala Das, who fell in love with a snake, and who ultimately married the nagaraj in a public ceremony, which everyone in the village believed would also remove a curse on her family…perhaps the veil between myth and our daily mundanes is far thinner than it would seem…
Mischa Berlinski visited Bimbala and has written a book on the subject which may be worth a read…
A woman who fell in love with a snake has married the reptile at a traditional Hindu wedding celebrated by 2,000 guests in India. Bimbala Das wore a silk saree for the ceremony at Atala village near the Orissa state capital Bhubaneswar. Priests chanted mantras to seal the union, but the snake failed to come out of a nearby ant hill where it lives. A brass replica snake stood in for the hesitant groom. “Though snakes cannot speak nor understand, we communicate in a peculiar way,” Das, 30.
Its a lazy Saturday afternoon…and the perfect time to try out some cheap and sultry dance moves with these Lollywood sex kittens of yesteryear. Shaggadelic Baby Yeah….So lock your door, drink some caffiene or what have you, smoke some of dat wacky tobacky and let it all jiggle about like jello…what no one else can see can’t hurt them…and trust me…don’t knock it till you turn up the music and shake your badonkadonk batty… try out the tasteful tree seduction and the tummy collisions…
the owners of these clips on youtube don’t allow video embedding so click the links and go for it.
Check out how “Raj” gets duped into telling a talk show host about his girlfriend “Nykki” who has shown him the “ways of American love”…who is his favorite “Buddha call” …then his wife gets on the line…check it out…lol.
For some reason I have snakes on the brain lately…so here’s what I dug out of some cyber snake holes:
Oh look…the only two headed albino rat snake known to man…from theAge
Everyone’s been going on and on about what a BIG deal it is for this baby to be playing with a cobra…everywhere I look this clip is posted. “Ohhhh”…concerned parents of the west, sigh… “is THAT how they raise their kids in the far east…no wonder they turn into terrorists”….and then there follows the defensive desi cultural explanations about how Indians see snakes as sacred beasts like cows and some other bollocks that they probably made up to sound culturally sophisticated and steeped in tradition…when in fact its just some bored parents in a village trying to entertain their wee boy while filming him playing with this harassed serpent…probably drugged and defanged put at the mercy of some indulged little tyrant at the top of the food chain. And what about this baby? He’s going to have some serious Freudian issues later on…anyways…here it is:
The only snakes I really like watching are ones that either a) wear silver costumes and know how to belly dance or b) swallow Paris Hilton’s dog alive…which brings me to my next violent and worryingly gratifying clip from one of my all time favorite films “Snakes on a Plane”…which shows some of the most deliciously disgusting snake attacks in the film including the one where the guy is peeing in the restroom and the snake slithers out of the toilet mid-stream and…anyway my only regret is that the snakes never do eat that baby. THAT would have made it the best film ever.
See a Pakistani guy puts a snake up his nose…and it comes out of his mouth…ugh. I feel bad for the snake…who wants to slither through someone’s nasal passage? Click here
And this one is from the film Naag Shakti…animated snake with woman’s head licks some green dude’s face with her forked tongue. I haven’t seen this film but it looks just bad enough to be worth it. Anyway, Click here.
And here’s an article on a snake that was discovered in Orissa which turns out not to be a snake at all…but a new species of Limbless Lizard …read the article at weird India:
And speaking of Snakes and Lizards…
“A monster of energy…It’s a monster”
“Kiss the snake on the tongue…kiss the serpent”
“But if it senses fear, it’ll eat us instantly”
“But if we kiss it without fear, it’ll take us through the garden, through the gate to the other side”
“Ride the snake until the end of time”
“I think I’m fucked up man, I’m not thinking right”
“Look at your eyes man…you’re death.”
“I’m afraid of my father…I can’t be what they want me to be.”
“Maybe you should kill your father.”
Quotes from the film, The Doors, by Oliver Stone, which I was completely obsessed with when I was fourteen…only to grow up and feel vaguely embarrassed when watching Stone’s “Alexander” and realizing that his metaphors for snakes, mothers, fathers, and women in general are under arrested development in an Oedipal reading that Freud would only have been able to respond to by shaking his head, patting Oliver on the head and saying “sometimes a snake is just a snake, kiddo.”
I wonder if Morrison ever did manage to kiss a live snake and not an imaginary metaphorical one brought on by mixing hundreds of psychotropic chemicals, loud music and orgies with wiccans. Anyway, here’s a Kerela Snake Charmer who kisses his cobra. Click it:
Trust in me…This was one of the few Disney cartoons that I had my grubby little meathooks on when Doordharshan was the only channel and the “Mickey and Donny” show were the only alternatives… Here’s “Ka’s” hypnotic song from The Jungle Book”
And oh look…A boy and his snake…its the real kid from the jungle book except with a domesticated “Ka” python…massive creature who looks about as cuddly as a koala bear…except its big enough to eat several koala bears at once…and this Indian kid actually “rides the snake”…but I never thought snake cuddles could be so appealing. Actually I might go out and buy me one of those…cho chweet!
Shah Rukh Khan plays snake-charmer flute to seduce pepsi-snake-bottles into dancing…the only thing I can’t figure out is why he’s dressed like Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Carribean…but why?
A commercial for mentos candies…they appear to be laced with some sort of psychedelic instrument-mutating substance causing the snake charmer to play trippy sitar music on his snake charmer’s flute…the snake gets really enthu about the music and starts dancing…only thing is…snakes don’t have ears…so it really makes no difference what kind of music you play as long as you sway about back and forth because that’s what really hypnotizes them…trust me to expect realism from a candy advert. And it seems the Simpson’s “Apu” Indian accent is getting popularized over here now as well…Anyways enjoy…
Definitely DO NOT CLICK on these. These are possibly some of the worst, most pathetic snake dances ever:
A disgusting remake of Nagina- 1990- with a repulsive pair of sleazy snakes dancing, frolicking, and making out…Sridevi must have really cringed when she saw this dude in blue eyeshadow and red sequined dhoti shorts kissing this greasy-faced snake-troll as she flutters her eyelashes…ugh.
A really desperate and shall we assume drunken desi Romeo somewhere in England decides to woo his lady love by recording himself imitating Sridevi’s snake dance from Nagina….
Gymnist Irina Kazakova…performs a snake dance…in which she actually seems to have willed herself into devolution…her bones apparently beginning to dissolve into what will eventually become a long, limbless mammal with anorexia in a grey leotard…but of course trust the lads who commented on youtube to find her sexy for this very reason “I want a girl like that in BED!!!imagine u can do practice the entire KAMASUTRA!!!”
Anyways see this double-jointed abomination if you must:
While searching for snake dances I discovered a stunning dance by American actress Debra Paget in the Orientalist German film, Indische Grabmal, Das -1959, directed by Fritz Lang…Debra wears a long black Indian braid and a nude coloured leotard that gives the impression she is just barely covered by a few pieces of silvery material…as she dances seductively before a large puppet cobra, in an underground temple to the “Goddess Sita” surrounded by white actors in brown make-up. Whether its Bollywood exoticizing the west or Fritz Lang exoticizing the east…some of the most striking performances come out of this exoticization…because it always seems “mysterious” to pretend to be something that seems out of reach, hidden behind veils of unfathomable traditional beliefs. I enjoy watching these dated exoticizations because what with satellite tv and travel becoming easier and easier…I guess we’re running out of places to exoticize as being “far far away”…and the accessibility of foreign locals doesn’t necessarily mean the diminishment of resentment for the “other”…it just means that the other has become something less obscure…more in your face…the world one large reality tv set with less hidden corners.
No one can forget Shridevi’s snake dance in “Nagina” 1989, with her her big beautiful piercing blue contact lensed eyes, her silvery costume, and the epic battle between a snake woman who loves her human man…and a corrupted yogi with his trishul and his snake-charmer flute(the incredible Amrish Puri)…I find that the film (one of my all-time favorites) plays out two social parables at once;the first being…don’t assume that a snake is evil just because it is different (non-human)…but also…mother-in-law’s; if you don’t do a better background check on your son’s potential bride “tera bap kaun hai?”…you may discover your new bahu is a snake. But then, ultimately if you do discover your daughter-in-law is a snake…mind your own business. Don’t try to wreck your son’s marriage. Otherwise you will get stabbed by a trishul and die. The dance here takes place when the evil yogi tries to put the Nagina under his spell and she sings defiantly to him though she is unable to resist dancing… Check out her cobra kung fu moves at the end of the clip as she wipes out the yogis minions… lyrics for this song “mein teri dushman dushman” mean :
I am your enemy and you are my enemy-I am the snake and you are the snake charmer-since many life times we are both enemies- God will set everything straight-Today I will surely take revenge-Don’t tease me otherwise I’ll bite you-Magic and black magic are my toys-You will not be able to control me- I am a snake you are the snake charmer-By playing your pipe-you are trying to lure me-I am not going to come under your control- I will not be lured! a Saint has come as a dacoit-I am a snake you are the snake charmer-my story is on everyone’s lips-The one who I bite dies painfully-Everyone will see this drama-Lets see what happens now-You will not see tomorrow morning-I am a snake you are a snake charmer-
This is a pretty funny spoof on Shridevi’s snake dance…from the film hit, “Bride and Predjudice” 2004 also known in India as “Balle Balle Amritsar to L.A.” In case you haven’t seen it, its Gurinder Chadha’s comedic adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and in this scene one of the daughters, Maya (Meghna Kothari)
image from hindu
does a Shri-devi “cobra dance” to attempt to impress the house guests…but she gets a little carried away at the end and starts hissing at everyone and pretending to bite them with her cobra-hand-fangs.
And this just an interesting find…apparently the Snakedance is a lost dance form out of southern India. There are only 3 women in America who practice it. This is one of them…the dance style is completely different from the Bollywood Shridevi style…looks like it has some relation to belly-dancing…anyway she’s a lovely dancer…very slinky.
remains of the desi 
