NATO offensive

Malcolm McLaren eat your heart out!

Not content with turning faux adolescent lesbianism into a billion rouble industry, t.A.T.u. manager/puppeteer Ivan Shapovalov has embraced suicide bomber chic for his latest project, a 16-year-old schoolgirl who he’s re-christened n.A.T.o.
As if dressing the teenager up in Czechnian black widow garb wasn’t provocative enough, Shapovalov outraged the Russian media last month when in the wake of the Beslan massacre he arranged a n.A.T.o. “terror concert” in a Moscow club.
“This is sick,” thundered a Ministry of Culture official who was further irked by the gig being staged on September 11. “The producer should be jailed for doing this after so many people died across Russia in the past weeks.”
Expressing surprise that the man from the ministry finds the concept offensive, Shapovalov retorted, “It shouldn’t evoke associations – associations are born in the minds of the viewers, listeners and readers. A journalist made associations with something miltarised and terrorist.”
Ignoring the fact that her new video intertwines images of the Middle East with flashing words like “Al-Qaeda”, “oil” and “Iraq”, he insists: “n.A.T.o. is merely a female singer with a headscarf and a veil. If our society is afraid of a woman in a black headscarf, that means only one thing – the society is sick and needs to seek treatment.”
Although government pressure led to the Moscow show being pulled, Shapovalov is pressing ahead with the European release of n.A.T.o.’s debut album.
“Some organise protests, some give blood, some pray,” he concludes. “I just simply offer people a new kind of music.”