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“We have returned to claim the pyramids,” Starchild says. Not to
take them, notice. The Earth Tour is not an invasion but a celebration.
Something desired but lost is found. The pyramid in the song and stage
show stands in for the ancient and timeless achievements of black
culture; it also references, as does the gospel-inspired “chariot” refrain,
the popular 1968 book. Chariots o f the Gods? which suggests, pseudoscientifically, that the marvelous engineering feats represented by the
pyramids are evidence that aliens must have once landed among us long
ago. The argument is tinged (at least) by racism. Clinton comes to say,
we are those wondrous aliens you admire, we are that history you
discount, we have come to return to you the “lost secrets” of the
pyramids, lost secrets that are our legacy and birthright. “Are you hip to
Easter Island? The Bermuda Triangle?” Starchild asks as the music fades
— are you ready to know the secret of everything, for it has come for
you.
The cheesy silver flying saucer ][