POP MUSIC : New Videos From Shakespeares Sister, GNR and Pearl Jam Are a Life-and-Death Matter

Looks like we’re in for an early fall, if the weighty issues of life and death suddenly dominating the music-video Zeitgeist this month are any kind of autumnal indication. Matters of mortality are represented in a life-affirming new clip from female duo Shakespeares Sister and death-affirming ones from hard rockers Guns N’ Roses and Pearl Jam.

But fear not: Frivolity still prevails in the lower reaches of this month’s edition of Sound & Vision, which stoops out of these heady climes to also review less momentous new videos from En Vogue, Morrissey, Technotronic and others. (Videos are rated on a 0-100 scale.)

This Mortal Coil

Shakespeares Sister, “Stay.” As in stay and do not go gentle into that good night. The song itself, with its tag-team duet between yin-and-yang Sisters, implies nothing more sinister than the struggle between consciousness and dreamland, but the video is at once both campier and heavier.

Locked in mortal combat over a dying man on a gurney, tender-voiced soprano Marcella Detroit (nee Marcy Levy) tries to nurse the supine figure back to life, interrupted midway through the song by sinister, white-faced Siobhan Fahey (ex-Bananarama), stepping down from on high as a grinning, glittery, erotic angel of death ready to claim what’s here.

The full potency of the video’s imagery may not even be intentional. It’s difficult nowadays to see a young man on life support and not think AIDS, though there’s no indication here that the affliction is meant to be anything other than generic or even metaphoric. Regardless of the terminal context, the strangely constructed “Stay” manages to be both creepy and touching, a left-field hit whose chart life you want to root for as much as that fellow’s own. 82

Pearl Jam, “Jeremy.” Or “Portrait of a Young Mass Murderer.” Many hard-rock videos celebrate the tortured world of the Misunderstood Child, but few exploit the cliche as effectively as Pearl Jam has. The flashbulb imagery in this enhancement suggests a boy tormented by the cruelties of classmates and subject to parental neglect. In true “Twin Peaks” fashion, the pubescent protagonist finds pathology as well as solace in the woods, and returns to slaughter his fellow schoolchildren, glimpsed in frozen, terrified rigor mortis at video’s sordid end.

There’s a kind of hokum in this hellishness, but it’s spookier, more disturbing than you might expect. The tale is told partially in scrawled title cards, ranging from “And the unclean spirit entered” and “Bored” to, in the clip’s one flash of levity, “90210.” Adding to all this unnerving menace is the possessed gaze of a narrator (singer Eddie Vedder) who could give David Lynch’s Bob a run for his maniacal money. 65

Guns N’ Roses, “November Rain.” As professional detractor Courtney Love is prone to impugn, Axl Rose “dates models.” He even weds one in this fascinatingly silly concept video, but not for long. “November” is an overblown, extended dream sequence about matrimony cut tragically short by the untimely death of Rose’s fictional babe-ola bride, whose life is called on account of rain. It’s a real wet dream in every way.

The clip begins with Rose dunking sleeping pills, which soon cause him to imagine that the cheesy synthesizer parts on this ballad are being played by a real, live orchestra. Then, following some token stigmata imagery, it’s off to the dreamland chapel, where unshaven Axl’s lovely bride struts down the aisle in a flowing white dress, cut like a miniskirt in front, natch.

For the sake of back narrative, there’s a making-out-at-the-Rainbow flashback. Then it’s back to the church, where comic relief comes in the form of best man Slash, who can’t find the wedding ring. Hoo ha! Finally, the minister’s “You may kiss the bride” initiates major newlywed tongue action.

So far, so idyllic, but one knows better than to expect a full-on paean to wedded bliss in these quarters. So the cake cutting is cut short by a sudden (yes) rain, which sends everyone literally diving for cover, with one tuxedoed headbanger plowing headfirst into the mammoth cake. Despite all indications, this sequence is apparently not supposed to be funny, for the musical coda turns dark and suddenly Axl is presiding over his new wife’s funeral, angrily imploring the heavens for an explanation. As is the viewing audience, since the missus’s cause of death remains unknown; perhaps she died of exposure in that drafty dress or slipped on stray icing.

An end title announces that the preceding bafflement has been based on the short story “Without You” by band associate Del James. Given the difficulty of finding this source material in bookstores, and given the lack of any other rational interpretation, the clip looks suspiciously like a petty, metaphorical slap by Rose at some unknown ex he might rather envision in a coffin. If not, whatever else this expensive nonsense might be meant to impart, it’s pretty drippy. 47

Diva Fever

Annie Lennox, “Why.” Somewhat bravely, Lennox deglamorizes herself here by portraying the process of glamorization--starting off with a startlingly unadorned face, gradually adding makeup that accents those famous eyes and ending up with a feather-boa headdress, posing all too dispassionately for the camera.

It’s a risky concept. Not until toward the end of the song does she even deign to do any lip-syncing, and by then the bitterness already written all over her stark face really kicks in with the uncomprehendingly angry lyrics. As she preens for the camera, set in powerful contrast to the song’s heavy dollop of disappointment, it turns into the video equivalent of a faked orgasm. 80

En Vogue, “Giving Him Something He Can Feel.” The four fabulous “Funky Divas,” dressed (or underdressed) in pure red, sing their old-style R&B; ballad in a swanky nightclub full of suave single men--which here is seen less as entertainment than as a kind of sexual torture. While the gals harmonize and tease, tease, tease, these poor, repressed fellows are all repeatedly and exaggeratedly seen to loosen their ties, squirm in their seats, sweat profusely, etc. (Obviously, to a man, they’d like to be given something they can feel too.)

This forced scenario seems like the setup to a punch line, but ultimately there is none, unless it’s this: En Vogue is really, really, really, really hot stuff. Considering how heretofore hep virtually all of us were to this obvious fact, why such borderline-pathetic overselling of the kind of sex appeal that sells itself? 50

The Boys of Summer

Morrissey, “Tomorrow.” If, as a cinephile, you’ve missed out on your quotient of uninterrupted four-minute tracking shots by somehow avoiding “Raising Cain,” you can feel sufficiently caught up by catching this new Morrissey vid. In a single take, the camera casually precedes the pompadoured icon and his bandmates strolling through the twists and turns of what look to be Parisian alleyways. It’s a slight stunt, but one that serves Morrissey far better than any of his other equally narcissistic but ill-made music videos, by showing off his lazy, Continental charm with the fewest possible distractions. 68

Kris Kross, “Warm It Up.” First these endlessly sneering juvenile delinquents commandeered the MTV airwaves to prod our children to break all natural laws of fashion. As if society weren’t already teetering on the brink of anarchy, now--in a couple of fleeting but nonetheless significant shots--comes the ultimate lawless kiddie indignity: underage driving . And you thought Ice-T was a bad influence. 50

Technotronic Featuring Ya Kid K, “Move This.” First came the Revlon commercial. Thirty seconds of supermodel vamping, accompanied by a great bass riff, a percussive thump of irresistible flatness and an androgynous voice insistently giving orders to the famous women on screen: “Baby, let me show you how to do this, you got to move this. . . .” And, research shows, there was something irrationally and perversely satisfying to both sexes about watching the grinning ‘n’ twirling likes of Cindy Crawford being ordered around by an off-screen directorial-rapper presence in a “Chorus Line”-meets-”9 1/2 Weeks” kind of way.

Sad to say, there’s no such weird guilty pleasure in the full-length music video that’s making the jingle into a Top 10 hit. Stripped of its interstitial role in television life and expanded from advertising seconds into danceathon minutes, said bass riff loses some of its charm. Supermodels are replaced in the video by regular models. And the formerly unseen androgynous voice turns out to belong to Ya Kid K, an apparently uncharismatic young woman who, from all the evidence here, couldn’t demonstrate to Crawford “how to move this” if her livelihood depended on it. Commercial: 55. Music video: 38