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;-
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 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)
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 |
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"
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.