When unicorns come alive

COMMENTARY

I'm a sucker for unicorns.

There was one time in my distant youth when I was at a Goth girl's house party and she stabbed her unicorn soft toy in the head with a kitchen knife.

My heart. It hurt.

I ended up removing the knife from the unicorn's head and taking the toy home.

I saved it.

Okay, I stole it.

This act of gallantry had a lot of symbolic importance for me at the time.

I was going through my own Goth phase and it felt somehow redemptive, a step toward the light.

To this day, I find it impossible to bear ill will towards anything or anyone even remotely connected to unicorns.

That said, my unqualified affection for the beast has been sorely tested by the latest Paris Hilton music video, Come Alive.

There's a unicorn in it.

How dare she put a unicorn in her video. How dare she make me feel an iota of fondness towards her.

Hilton has always struck me as the sort of girl who has absolutely no inner life and hence no capacity to fantasise.

I mean, why would she even need to fantasise?

Heiress to the Hilton Hotels & Resorts empire, she has always got anything she has wanted.

She was a teen model. Then she became a reality star. Then there were a couple movies and a couple of albums.

She makes millions from her fragrances, her product lines and her shops.

Her life is a fantasy.

She's a princess in all but name.

She even has a custom pink Bentley. She doesn't need a unicorn.

Yet there it is and I must say I'm charmed.

This girl who has spent her life dancing in clubs, lounging around pools and dabbling in various frivolous projects has something going on inside her.

She could arguably be considered one of the world's most worldly women, yet there's a part of her that longs for something beautiful and pure and innocent.

Watching Come Alive (by the way, the song is awful) reminded me of the piano scene in Blade Runner.

Rick Deckard, the merciless hunter of Replicants, taps at piano keys while imagining a unicorn running through a forest.

It is at this moment when we realise that Deckard has a soul.

Does Paris Hilton also have a soul?

We couldn't say for sure without putting her through a Voight-Kampff test, but I suspect just maybe she might.

Perhaps.