VIDEO VOGUE : ‘Tootsie’ Roles
The drag theme resurrected by “Mrs. Doubtfire” is creating a flood of cross-dressing scripts in Hollywood. Guys in the music world, meanwhile, have long been open to gender-blurring their apparel. Nirvana recently appeared in videos in dresses, and Aerosmith and Duran Duran have also featured men in drag.
The guy who does it best, RuPaul, takes the look to the limit in his new duet video with Elton John, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.” The surprise in this “costume epic and tribute to history’s most famous couples,” says Randy Barbato, who co-directs with Fenton Bailey, is that John gets his turn playing the woman, too. London designer Polly Clayden dresses the duo to pose as Antony and Cleopatra, the painting “American Gothic” and Marie Antoinette with her consort, among others.
When the singers appear as themselves, John is in a red suit and RuPaul is in a black lace dress, both by Gianni Versace. The video’s fashion coup is that it shows off some of John’s prized sunglasses. He auctioned off most of his collection years ago but kept a few treasures, seen here, for himself.
Go West, Young Woman: This is the year of gal Westerns (“Bad Girls,” “The Quick and the Dead”) in Hollywood, and that trend may have inspired at least one video due out mid-February. In the campy “Lay Down Your Arms,” Belinda Carlisle shows just how glamorous one can look in an embroidered shirt and cowboy hat. Makeup master Carol Shaw did the singer’s face, giving Carlisle a beauty edge over the rest of her female posse. To find similar Old West duds, stylist Jeannine Braden recommends a trip to the Rose Bowl flea market or such vintage shops as Ragtime Cowboy in North Hollywood or Polkadots and Moonbeams in Los Angeles.
Global Dreams: Deep Forest’s extraordinary “Sweet Lullaby” is an authentic Pygmy lullaby sung by a girl to her sleepless sibling. Director Tarsem, best known for his MTV award-winning “Losing My Religion” for R.E.M., starts this video in Turkey, then follows the little sister on a tricycle ride around the world. The screen is filled with lush scenery, indigenous clothing and extras wearing Fatima Andrade’s Ottoman Empire-inspired costumes.
“On MTV, everything has been done. We thought these were images no one has touched,” Tarsem says. The director and Andrade appear in the costumes, disguised by oversize mustaches. “I don’t know if the mustaches will catch on,” Tarsem says with a laugh, “but we thought they were beautiful.”
After an absence of several years (“I don’t like too much music”), Tarsem decided to do “Lullaby” because “I fell in love with this song” and the video proceeds go to the Pygmy Fund, which helps preserve the Pygmies’ culture.
Don’t Try This at Home: Porno for Pyros’ new “A Little Sadness” shows a form of not-for-the-squeamish body decoration that makes tattoos and punk piercing look positively tame. Based on the performance art piece “4 Scenes in a Harsh Life” by Southern Californian Ron Athey, it features “scarification” borrowed from ancient tribal traditions. Director John Lindauer cautions that permanent raised scarring works only on skin with dark melanin. Light- to medium-skinned adventurers ought to stick with tattoos.
Hair Today: For men, variations on dreadlocks, including cropped (Counting Crows, Leaders of the New School), sticking up as if they’ve been caught in a cyclone (Wu-Tang Clan) and short twists worn with a wide headband (A Tribe Called Quest).
For women, long hair with a portion caught up in a knot, reminiscent of “I Dream of Jeannie” or Madonna a few years back. The newest versions are braided, as done by Snoop Doggy Dogg’s girlfriend in “What’s My Name,” or loose and wavy, as done by Janet Jackson in MTV’s New Year’s Eve “Because of Love” broadcast.
In a Blur: When digitized blocks cover something in a video, it’s usually exposed body parts or a fashion faux pas, such as a T-shirt emblazoned with four-letter words or marijuana plants.
MTV asks record companies to place the blurry squares over anything that promotes gratuitous sex or violence, glamorizes drug use, shows a commercial product or violates Federal Communications Commission obscenity rules.
Digitizing is rampant in John Mellencamp’s “When Jesus Left Birmingham,” which shows society’s deterioration through drug needles, a white man in blackface and a black woman in white face. MTV declines to comment on specific videos, but perhaps its Beavis and Butt-head flaps have prompted the channel to go the conservative route.
