P!nk’s defining characteristic among pop singers is that her name is more likely than any other to occur in a mathematical formula. Apart from that, her story seems fairly standard: she broke onto the scene as a pretty youngster with songs about partying and angst, she managed to prolong her popularity long enough to become a sort of legacy artist, and got asked to do the title song for a movie that’s supposed to become very popular but ended up being rather disappointing. That movie was Tim Burton’s Alice through the looking glass and that song was P!nk’s Just like fire.
The film is, as the title suggests, one of the countless adaptations 1 of Carroll’s Alice stories. If you have to make a title song for that, it makes sense to have chess injury in the music video and that is, by a happy little surprise, the one thing that makes sense about the song.
Once P!nk goes through the looking-class, she finds herself in the middle of a chess game with living pieces. But strange things are afoot. Carroll’s original puzzle has been horribly mangled — and so have the rules of chess:2
Yes, the two pieces on d1 and e1 seem to have the same queenly attire.3 The pieces on b8 and g8 have a bishop’s mitre, but move in straight lines. The things on c8 and e8 don’t look like kings, so they have to be a bishop and a knight, respectively, but which one is which is very uncertain.
And the horror is only getting started. P!nk walks on the board somewhere around h4, as a new piece of some unknown third colour. The black rook/bishop from g8 comes to chase her off, but she refuses to go. Before you know it, the pieces are walking every which way, disregarding the straight and narrow path prescribed them by law. Please, P!nk, just light them on fire.
Realism: 0/5 Perhaps someone would defend this disaster by pointing out that Lewis Carroll’s stories are also not realistic, but I reject that defence. They are surreal, but like all good surrealism, there is an internal consistency to them which this sadly lacks.
Probable winner: Nobody. There’s no chance of anybody getting a checkmate.
1. [There is,also one other one.] ↩
2. [For all your mangling purposes…] ↩
3. [I guess they just lost their husband, I don’t know where he went.] ↩