"...time contracts the sphere of banality. (Banality is, strictly speaking, always a category of the contemporary.) What was banal can, with the passage of time, become fantastic... Thus, things are campy, not when they become old - but when we become less involved in them, and can enjoy, instead of be frustrated by, the failure of the attempt."
- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"
Well, it's still a pretty terrible song, and the girls don't really look any better than they did in 1982, but Sontag's right - on the whole, it's kind of fantastic.
This defines 1982 as clearly as any time capsule could.
ReplyDeleteTime capsule, indeed. I remember this song like it was yesterday (unsurprisingly) - it was (they were) the brainchild of a certain Mr Barry Blue, whose own "glam-rock" career could well have been summed up by Miss Sontag's words by the time the Toto Coelo lasses were on telly.
ReplyDeleteAnd what of the girls today? They didn't do too badly - Lindsey Danvers has carved out a successful West End career and has played Fantine in "Les Miserables" and Anna in "The King and I"; Lacey Bond continues to land character parts in series such as Call the Midwife; I could have gone to see Anita Chellamah live on stage with her "folk-rock" band in a pub near where I live just this August; and Sheen Doran is a talent agent. Ros Holness (daughter of the late Blockbusters host Bob, and sister of the singer Nancy Nova) apparently retired from the music industry.
Jx