Is it still offensive to anyone outside of Iran?

There has been a rather odious piece of news swirling around the web in recent days surrounding the video for Katy Perry’s “Firework”, a rather charming, euphoric pounder intended to inspire K-Pez fans to spontaneously ‘uman combust, we think. Bonus points if you got the reference to a sitcom starring Kathy Burke there. It’s basically an up-tempo, ‘happy’ interpretation of Christina’s “Beautiful” – why are we describing the song? If you read Shiny & New regularly, it’s likely your tastes will have contributed to you already having heard said song. Several times.

Basically, it’s been reported that in previously mentioned video, the scenes featuring two gays pashing (we told you it was basically “Beautiful”) has been censored for the clip’s release to British television. There are a few reasons why this piece of news could be a massive pile of gently sweating donkey faeces. Firstly, just for British airing? We’re one of the most liberal countries in Europe. As a whole, this country quite likes gays. Sure, we’re not exactly Iceland where they’re Actually Considered Normal People but we’re certainly not Somalia. Secondly, previously mentioned “Beautiful” was released in 2002 and featured not only dirty ‘omos, but a transvestite donning her garb. Eight years ago, more ‘controversial’. Thirdly, this is a very tense period in society regarding homosexuals, with ever-growing eruptions of anger towards any slightly negative portrayals of gays in the media – not to mention the recent related young suicides.

Fourthly, Katy Perry is definitely a gay icon in the making. Her fans now will be helping her pay the surgery bills in thirty years as she keeps her act going in Vegas. Fifthly (the number + ‘ly’ affix is getting a bit awkward now, isn’t it?) this particular piece of news was only reported on Digital Spy. A few brief scans of news sites and blog aggregators threw back zero original reports of this phenomenon, and Digital Spy – purveyor of questionable news at times itself – didn’t provide a source in its own article. So while the jury is still out as to whether it’s actually true (we’ll see for ourselves when the video airs on British music channels this week), if it does happen to be so, we don’t need to explain again how ridiculous, backward and beyond insensitive this action would be. We’ll keep our eyes open.