Dua Lipa - the Pop Star and Alien Intrusion

 

The British-born, Albanian/Kosovan super model/pop star Dua Lipa rocketed onto the UK pop charts in 2017. With virally infectious, dance-pop hit singles such as “Be the One” and “Blow Your Mind (mwah(!)” she soon became one of the most successful pop artists in the UK. With the 2020 release of her second LP “Future Nostalgia” Dua Lipa ascended to the title of greatest tictok pop idol of the noö millennium.

Lipa’s husky, sexy voice and dis-arming smile sparkles, while her snarky attitude and powerful stage presence strikes a beatific balance of pop diva and ass-kicker. Like all great pop artists, she steals from the best. Her disco-funk track "Break My Heart" is a masterful rip-off of Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.” This is not a criticism. I believe it was the Great 20th century Cubist artist, Pablo Picasso who said: “Good artists borrow… great artists steal.”

 

The Guardian’s music critic, Laura Snapes describes her sound like this: “Her fusion of disco and ruthlessly efficient contemporary pop is viscerally brilliant... She anchors (her) songs with snappy basslines, then makes them transcendent, fully conveying the transformative nature of the romance she’s singing about: ‘Levitating’ blooms like a row of tropical flowers, while the chorus of ‘Hallucinate’ seems to enter an interstellar dimension.”

But it was not her sassy  demeanor, her devilish good looks, or her youthful vivaciousness (I’m old, but I’m not dead) that caught my eye… no… my attention was caught in the tractor-beam of a visually re-imagined, symbolically renewed, pop depiction of extra-terrestrial contact and alien intrusion.

Shortly after the release of “Future Nostalgia” …video remixes of “Levitating” began to appear on multiple social media platforms. First to appear was a remix by American DJ The Blessed Madonna featuring Madonna and Missy Elliott. The suggestive, American Beauty opening scene, quickly transforms into a pop-infused extra-terrestrial contact narrative. The rapid-fire, staccato imagery  sparkles with archetypal, post-WWII UFOlogy themes of shimmering entities, flickering television screens, strange symbols that invade and obsess the subject’s mind. The video’s characters are being summoned anew, for the arrival.

The first remix touched upon all the classic UFO tropes of the second half of the 20th century… from the myriad UFO sightings of the 40’s and 50’s, through Betty and Barny Hill's genre defining abduction in 1961… to the modern fandom of UFO culture, as defined by the History Channel’s “Ancient Aliens” TV show. This video brought a new generation “up to speed” on contemporary UFOlogy.

A second remix featuring American rapper Jonathan Lyndale Kirk, better known as DaBaby (formerly known as Baby Jesus), was released in October, 2020. This second remix presents a more madcap, psychedelic, Extra-Dimensional mythology of extra-terrestrial contact, with imagery that features  the captivating, inviting, Spielbergian… blue light. Early on in the remix, the apparently summoned Dua Lipa is waiting on the hood of a classic convertible, when a portal appears and opens.

 

Dua Lipa ascends to the blue-lit dimensional portal. Once inside, the portal is activated and skyrockets off-world. The portal’s interior is revealed to be a mod, art-deco elevator, right out of Kubrick’s “The Shining.” The vibe of the ensuing ascent is more of a DMT-inspired wild ride, with tictok influencers filling in for McKenna’s machine elves. This remix is orders of magnitude more zany and entertaining than the first, with Dua Lipa rocking some of her most iconic dance moves. DaBaby, in an apparent move toward pop appeal, holds his own, with a rap interlude that balances machismo and bemusement.

Let’s Go! …left foot, right foot, levitating… pop stars… Dua Lipa with DaBaby…

Interestingly, "Levitating" was written and recorded in a one-day studio session at Sarm West Studios in London… by Dua Lipa and three other writers, including Sarah Hudson, in 2018. They started the session by Hudson doing a Tarot card reading in order for the writers to “open up about what was happening in their lives.” Lipa recalled it "changed the energy in the room." So the project’s inception began with a magical, oracular invocation.

Sigil of ancient Goddess Hecate?

Now I am not saying that “Levitating” carries a deep, prophetic meaning, or predicts an eschatological happening. I don’t consider Dua Lipa to be an incarnation of the wrathful Siren, as has been suggested of the Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser… as so masterfully obsessed over by Christopher Knowles. But I do find it interesting to see the UFOlogy narrative updated and presented to a new, tictok generation.

In her recent book: American Cosmic, author Diana Walsh Pasulka argues that the post-WWII UFO culture represents the formation of a new religion… complete with prophets, relics and sacred sites. Her thesis ties in technology as an integral part of the transmission of this religion… of how technology informs a widespread and growing religiosity, focused on UFOs. Pasulka suggests that modern media shapes the belief systems of religious followers:

“I am not throwing out or discounting the reality of the UFO. I suggest that it should cause us to rethink our own constructions of what we consider to be real, because things we commonly take to be unreal in a materialist sense, like movies and video games, have real physiological and cognitive effects. Media technologies have as much an impact on human bodies as biotechnologies, and perhaps even more.”

The same argument can be made for the religious fervor of the followers of the Q Anon doomsday cult. Modern media simultaneously informs and shapes the belief of the consumer, whose discernment is disarmed by the flashy, sparkly presentation of the media platform. In this regard, modern UFOlogy and Q Anon represent two examples of new religions being propagated through modern media.

Again, it is interesting to see how social media’s newest darling is reimagining and presenting the UFO and Alien Intrusion narrative to the next generation. In fact, team Lipa presented, not one but two narratives... The Madonna/Missy Elliot (Elliot… Elliot! a nod to Speilberg’s ET?) version presents the nuts and bolts UFO mythology, while the DaBaby version presents the psychedelic, Extra-Dimensional mythology.

And for those of us who haven’t been shamed out of conspiracy thinking… it makes you wonder if there is any subtextual narrative being presented to the tictok generation. Beyond Dua Lipa’s disco fever… why is the UFO narrative being re-introduced by media’s newest pop star? Why now? Is it just good, clean fun? …or is something more nefarious afoot?