It occurred to me on reviewing it today just how very effectively it conveys masculinity and femininity. It is practically a human “nature film” showing what my wife recently referred to as human “courting patterns”.
Look at the couple interacting on the beach. Notice how the girl displays healthy vigour and some, but not excessive, athleticism. She lets him catch her and swing her around. She also – oopsie! – lets the strap on her swimsuit fall down briefly. Later, he lifts her up and swings her around, displaying male strength, and she lets her head fall back, displaying her neck in a primal gesture of trust and submission. Finally he pushes her back forcefully, allowing her to demonstrate her young woman’s flexibility.
Mating cues and fitness cues everywhere.To David's analysis, I'd like to add some of my own nuance. While I completely concur with my friend David that the video is littered with fitness cues and mating behaviors, other facets present themselves as well. One such facet is what I call the "female display-male demonstration-female acceptance" dynamic. Oversimplifying greatly, this 1-2-3 dynamic starts with a female display of beauty.* The male responds with a demonstration of fitness (physical, social dominance, resource fitness, etc). Then the female accepts or declines the choice based on the male's demonstration. This dynamic is exemplified in the video with the scene contrasting a girl's hot fling with the fit, alpha guy on the beach, with her (in a scene of intimate vulnerability at 2:33) mentally mulling her mating options--i.e., hot alpha vs loyal delta--while laying on a bed.
Another facet is presented not in the video itself, but by the lyrics of the song, which make it clear that the nice, delta guy just got benched by the woman he was courting after the arrival of a hot alpha:
I'm driving by your houseThese lyrics are sung to the backdrop of "boys of summer" fitness demonstrations (2:43), delta frustration and hurt (2:49), and delta realization his prematurely-yet-seriously-offered commitment did not match her own (3:12).
Though I know you're not home
But I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
You got your hair combed back and your
Sunglasses on baby
I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer, have gone
Now I don't understand
What happened to our love
But babe I'm gonna get you back
I'm gonna show you what I'm made of
Out on the road today
I saw a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac
A little voice inside my head said:
"Don't look back, you can never look back"
I thought I knew what love was
What did I know?
Those days are gone forever
The way out of this borderline gamma pining, over a 'love' more eros than agape, is suggested by the lyric "don't look back" in the text quoted above. David mentioned fitness cues above...it is also a fitness cue, a negative one, to hang on, to agonize after a woman who has chosen another over yourself. Happily for our spurned delta, the video concludes with him making his choice to move on (4:21) and leave the flighty, commitment-phobic female to her choice.
* Human females are unique in the animal world in that it is they who show reproductive fitness through displays of beautiful plumage, acoutrements, and strategic partial nudity. In the animal kingdom, this biologically augmented gender role falls to brightly colored or otherwise physically decorated males, whose plumage/flowing mane/large horns distinguish them from their unadorned, more drab sisters.
11 comments:
you should choose your friends a lot more carefully
If you're referring to DC, I count myself blessed to know him as a fellow blog-brother.
EW, thanks for this.
Your analysis may well be correct.
My more simplistic reading has always relied on the video rather than the words. I have always read the video like this. It is, notionally, one couple at three life stages. Very young (the boy learning a masculine skill, playing drums; the young girl primping in her bedroom). Courting (on the beach). Third, settled into the reality of a dull marriage (the man doing tedious paperwork; the bored wife flicking through a fashion magazine). The hope in the song is that love and passion can be recovered.
i was certainly referring to your "blogbrother" David Collard, my apologies for any ambiguity
DC,
You have an interesting take....that the video could be interpreted as being over the lifecycle of a man, from a boy to a late 30-s something fellow (played by what looks like Glenn Frey).
With that as background, I see the end of the vid and the end of the song as one of disappointment, not of hope. The video leaving the relationship behind, the lyrics of leaving the youthful idealism behind and dealing with the reality of being a victim of hypergamy.
There is some ambiguity in the lyrics and the video. And there are doubtless nuances I am missing, not being an American.
My reading was very personal in one sense, because the couple on the beach reminded me of my wife and I honeymooning at Surfers Paradise, Queensland, in 1986, about the time the music video was made. Personal nostalgia. And a song of nostalgia.
The "mating dance" aspect of it interested me too. The girl running on the sand, her limbs moving in a feminine way as she bounds along like a young female creature on some timeless plain. It is primal.
I'd be very surprised if males of other species, are not at all able to differentiate between less and more healthy females.
More likely, human females showing off, are due to pair bonding and implicit limits on polygyny. Most male animals will bang any available fertile female. While for humans, even the most hormone fueled alpha will, if he picks some, have to turn down others.
Stuki, I think one argument is that in most parts of the world, a woman with children has always needed a man to help provide for her children. And successful reproduction for a man requires that he contributes and forms that pair bond. If what you are saying is that it would make human males unusually picky, that would make sense. Men might have a tendency to polygyny, but in practical terms it might not be feasible in most environments. So, he would select the youngest, most fertile he could find, to "start a family".
There are, as far as I can tell, at least two women, in the two video. Some sources name Audie England as being in the video. Wikipedia for example. Since she was only 13 at the time, I assume she is the young girl in the bedroom, trying on toenail polish. I think she is also the girl at 2:33, who appears to be chewing gum, consistent with her being a young teen.
The female in the beach scenes is clearly a grown woman, maybe 20 or 25. The woman reading the magazine by the indoor pool may be the same woman, although not to my eyes. The real-life identities of the grown women seem to be unavailable.
As I said at my blog, it seems to be common for women in music videos to remain anonymous for some reason.
My first sentence should read:
There are, as far as I can tell, at least two women in the video.
The symbolism is also apparent to me in the 30ish man driving through and decadent civilization and realising that the ancient primal mating patterns no longer apply. Hypergamy lives on, yet the products of that old system can never be his. Perhaps at the beginning when cultures coalesed into a civilization, and that garantee was backed by lsw, the effort he made would result in having a stake in both primal mating and also the culture. No more. He now come to realise the whole thing is a lie, both at his desk and and he stands amid the decayed ruins of what might have been.
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