Monday, May 08, 2006

PINK'S NEW VIDEO


I can'e believe that I'm about to come to the defense of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, and yet I feel I am left with no alternative...
Bear with me...
So, lately I've been trying to abuse myself into being in better shape by attatching various limbs to machinery in our apartment complex's 'fitness' room... now, the only way I can make excersize (or 'working out' as the kids call it) slightly-less-physically-painful and slightly-less-psychologically-mind-numbing is by having the TV on VH1 Top 20 Video countdown.
Suffice it to say, it's the same 20 videos every single day, but sometimes they play them in different order. Roughly 87.428% of all of the top songs in America right now are sung by former 'American Idol' contestants... but I digress...
Watching this show (hosted by Matt Pinfield who used to host 'Headbanger's Ball' on Mtv - back when Mtv occasionally played music videos) means seeing videos over and over and over again. Ordinarily I don't care because, as I said, I'm hooked up to some machine that is making me thinner while causing every internal organ in my body to scream at me in agony.
Thus, I have seen Pink's latest video so many times now that I have begun to deconstruct it... it really only took one viewing for me to 'get' the video's 'point', but the more I think about it, the more irritated I am by it.
Even if you've never seen THIS video before, trust me - you've seen this video before.
Basically, it lampoons all of the 'hot girls' in pop-culture (i.e. Paris, Britney, J-Lo, etc.) and makes a bold statement about how women shouldn't hate their bodies or get plastic surgery or get tans or anything because the so-called 'beautiful people' are shallow and lame, blah blah blah blah blah ad-infinitum.
It depicts Pink trying really really hard to make herself into one of the 'beautiful people' through implants, fake-tanning and endless working out (naturally, she gets laughed at in the gym by little fitness-bimbos).
Anyway, the point of the video seems to be that all of these pop-divas, models and what-not suck, and it's cooler to just be yourself.
The annoying thing is that Pink IS one of the 'beautiful people'! She's CONSTANTLY parading around in tiny outfits that show off her body! Okay, so you're in band instead of the cheerleading squad - but that doesn't change the fact that you're HOT and your hotness is a major part of your bread-and-butter!
I know I'm the fool for looking into a music video's narration to find artistic integrity, but I've seen this exact same plot in videos over and over again (Shakira, Fionna Apple... I'm looking in YOUR direction here...).
Let's face it... the brand names they use are different, but Pink, Britney, Madonna, Fionna, Paris, Shakira, J-Lo (cripes, these names!), Christina, Mariah and all the rest are basically cut from the same cloth and no matter how 'rebellious' you act or what color you dye your hair, you're still one of the dreaded 'beautiful people' you claim to hate so much - so let's just drop the false charade, shall we? Thank you.
Now pardon me while I listen to some Janice Joplin and Cynci Lauper albums...

4 comments:

Leigh Hope Fountain said...

I like Pink, but yeah, her latest video is kind-of a joke in and of itself for that very reason.

Cripes???

Anonymous said...

Please Keep my crawling, hip-shaking, Latin lovepump, "Shak-IRA", out of this.

cristina paulos said...

John... How come you come across sounding more like an insecure teenage girl?

John_Fountain said...

Probably because I so desperately long to be one...