my interpretation of official video of electric heart by sia

Making an attractive and beautiful music video is a rare art not everyone can make and show something interesting in 4-5 minutes of a song. These days it is a craze to make music videos containing offensive material, of sexually explicit nature and containing unnecessary nudity in the hope of getting undeserved attention towards their song or video.  I won’t be mentioning any examples, But plenty must have come to your mind and “wrecked” it ;-)

As a person who wishes to be a writer/director, i always pay special attention on artistic details behind the videos or film i watch. I am always impressed with new concepts and out of the box thinking, in a music video i always try to connect the relation between the lyrics and music video (which rarely and i mean very very very rarely exists). Like in Coldplay’s paradise this amazing song instantly inspired me for many awesome story lines that could be used as music video, but how on earth the creators landed on the lamest and weirdest music video concept (men dressed as elephants and doing stuff).  The connection between music lyrics and music videos is also not absolutely necessary ( like a beautiful song ‘Vance joy’s Riptide’ was ruined by its too literal music video) all it is needed is to be visually attractive like Adele’s rolling in the deep.  So in conclusion today most music videos go unnoticed by us  mostly that catch our attention and stay in our conscience and mostly sexually  explicit and offensive in nature.

But i recently came across the song ‘elastic heart by sia’, i first saw ‘chandelier by sia’ and then realized the same girl(maddie Ziegler) who danced in ‘chandelier’ was also in ‘elastic heart’, Maddie danced amazingly and intensely in ‘Chandelier’ so i was expecting the same in ‘elastic heart’ as well but it was the concept and performance of Shia Labeouf and Maddie zeigler which exploded my mind.

video link here;-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWZGAExj-es 

This video has been heavily criticized for showing a 12 year girl with an adult man in skin colour clothes fighting and dancing aggressively with each other inside, alleged allegations were of paedophilia and child abuse, and reportedly Sia even apologized to those offended by her video for ‘elastic heart’ and insisted that it did not represent child abuse.  But despite such allegations many people appreciated it and i  am among the ones who got impressed by it in one look.

Many interpretations can be given about this video all are correct (except those relating to sexual abuse and paedophilia). Here is mine:-

The video states with a nice tune and you see the faces of Maddie(girl) and Shai(man), notice the expressions here

intro of the video

the man looks scared while the expressions Girl are aggressive so after watching the whole video i realized that the ‘girl’ here represents ‘childhood’ while the ‘man’ represents ‘adulthood’ while the  cage are strings and burdens of world.

The man is scared as an adult is scared of every small thing and event like future, career etc, while the childhood is care free and often children are unnecessarily aggressive in their plays and games and not afraid of anything.

the  face off

man calming himself

 Here the ‘girl’ attacks ‘man’ in a playful manner, the man seems distressed and afraid of it. They start a kind of power play like animals like chimpanzees for showing their dominance(shows the conflicts of childhood and adulthood and attempts adulthood to dominate childhood, man tries to hide his scared self by his aggression, just as adulthood does because adulthood knows he’s not as free as childhood so it also wants to curtail it’s freedom) but soon man (adulthood) realize it is hollow from inside it’s not as pure as childhood so now it's in retreat. 

Adulthood’s aggressive actions are of no use now, girl shows her playful childish nature as she covers ‘s man’s eyes from behind like a game (and also shown by the dance moves)

escape through strength

Man tries to escape this using his strength (adulthood mostly overpower childhood by strength) shown by Shia climbing up the cage.

Then the girl lies down and sleep, this shows innocent side of childhood after a heavy play childhood gets ready for a nap, ‘girl’ (childhood) looks so innocent during sleep even hard ‘man’ (adulthood) cannot resist to look keenly and pamper it.

frustration with life

Then adulthood changes it approach it tries to be loving but childhood is sceptical now and doesn’t take it that well....which results in heavy aggression by man, but childhood can escape beyond the limits of man(adulthood). The adulthood is bound by many limits and stresses(represented by cage). which frustrate him

reunion

childish adulthood

enlightenment of adulthood-realization of truth

unable to escape or unwilling

When you least expect the girl returns to the man accepting his flaws, childhood eventually is able to rub off its innocence on adulthood (shown by faces made by Shia when maddie hit her in head). Now the adulthood has realized that childhood is better and is ready to follow it. in adulthood we tend to forget our childhood characteristics like innocence and also dreams and wishes, realizing which the adulthood decides to leave everything and follow childhood. But the worldly burdens and strings have surrounded him, which he cannot escape. The music video shown wide enough gap between cage bars that man can escape but ‘man’ acts like he couldn’t either may be he doesn’t realize that he could do so or he doesn’t want to leave the cage i.e the world.  

the lyrics are not connected with this video, but i find some influence from lines

"Well I've got thick skin and an elastic heart
But your blade it might be too sharp
I'm like a rubber band until you pull too hard"

the children are seemed to have changing and soft heart like elastic but don't abuse them (pull to heart)  or you may break it.