Lana Del Rey’s recent video release for “Blue Jeans” is deeply disturbing on so many levels. The cover art preceding the video’s debut channeled a messed-up Little Mermaid meme where an inert Lana lies in a questionable stage of consciousness as a disembodied, tattooed hand stretches for her jugular.
I guess I was hoping the video would prove my suspicions wrong and showcase this individual tilting her head back tenderly, priming to caress her face. Unfortunately, this was not the case and the release of the video provides minimal clarification on the cover art.
Shot in black and white with a poolside setting, a retro one-piece-swimsuit-clad Lana watches the heavily inked object of her desire strip down to his skivvies from a voyeuristic corner.
It’s hard to say exactly what the aim of the video is, besides the fact that it is clearly evocative and creepy. There is a lot of kissing and cavorting in the pool, underwater body shots and a duo of alligators thrown in for good measure. A strange scene starts with a clip of the love interest reaching for her throat, but a beat later cuts to him sticking his fingers into her mouth in an eroticized fashion.
The video itself is highly sexualized, which makes the closing shots troubling — her suspected beau is shown pushing her head underwater. She registers a startled expression for a millisecond and the next clip is of her limp body in his arms. Finally, with his hands around her throat, he pulls them both under, Lana’s lifeless face drifting away from the surface. What started off within the context of a consensual sexual encounter seemingly turns ugly.
Sadly, this attempt at edgy eroticism is not a new aim. Many a designer label has utilized the same brand of vile advertising in which violence towards women is implied, and often sexualized, usually in an effort to toe the line of controversy without making a blanket statement. This video appears to join that category as a misguided attempt at being edgy and instead becomes distasteful.
The viewer is to understand Lana’s longing for the lankly Lothario, and the lyrics of “loving until the end of time” further affirm this. So the message becomes “I want you so badly that I am willing to allow you to do with me what you want, including potentially drown me or at best leave me semi-conscious and comatose.” For most of the video, she is passive to this man’s embrace. Her album is titled Born to Die. Enough said.
Given the staggering statistics of violence against women, continued portrayals of these eroticized images feed the notion that such behavior is acceptable, even sexy.
Because the intention of the encounter and context of the video is cleverly vague, it is hard to say with certainty what its true meaning is. But, in pop culture portrayals of women, when controversy is sought out to make a splash, it is hard to give this video the benefit of the doubt.
Showing a passive woman submissive to a man’s desires lends itself to objectification. This video is an excellent example of conveying a woman much like an inanimate play toy, save for her ability to participate in sexual acts. This makes her easily dismissed, devalued, often disrespected, and, in this case, dispensable. It is hard to imagine this video being innocent and not alluding to any anything vicious. It‘s relative ambiguity and covert connotation seems to be the aim. It calls forth an assortment of offensive and odious interpretations, one of which encourages and sexualizes violence. At the very least it is a careless depiction that normalizes female passivity in sexual encounters.
Seems to me if any woman shows a darker side of herself these days, she must be portraying an aspect of relationship violence, just for the controversy. I didn’t see anything overtly in that video that would have made me think Lana died, now with the video Born to Die it was made more graphic. Still, you have to remember there’s this word, symbolism. She is symbolically relating love to death, and feeling that being in a relationship is like the death of her old life. That’s how I interpret both videos, and I found both videos to be darkly beautiful.
I understand your concerns, you don’t want people to think abuse is sexy. I’ve seen many more videos that not only show women as being passive, but being overtly sexualized almost in the way of men showing them off as an exotic animal. Yes, many of these videos happen to be rap videos, however Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera also have gone the route of oversexualizing themselves. I might agree with you, if Lana was wearing a g-string bikini. The fact is, she’s covered herself in her videos far more than most female artists do these days, to let her music speak for her. I understand your concern, but there are many more viable artists you could claim are sexualizing violence. What about Rhianna’s video S&M, or her getting back together with her abuser Chris Brown to do a song?
All I see here is a gorgeous video for a gorgeous song, about a girl professing that love feels like drowning. If you think she has an emotionless dead looking face at the end, you must not have seen Marilyn Manson’s video for Long Hard Road Out of Hell. It’s amazing how still Marilyn can remain in that video. This video is art, the concept is built around a relationship where she feels consumed by her love for her boyfriend, many women feel that way and it’s good they have someone they feel can relate to that. As far as the neck holding, it’s just subtle. He’s not violently pushing Lana underwater as much as she’s swimming around the crocodiles. I did look at the “drowning” scene again, and it is subjective. Is he pushing her down, is he trying to hold her up while she’s going underwater to commit suicide, there’s a sense of rebirth, is it like a baptism sort of thing? Yes she does look concerned, more concerned for drowning, or for having to stay alive. Oh, and I suppose if she was trying to commit suicide, it was because he abused her? That’s a big assumption to be making there, would a man who murdered his wife be holding her crying? Maybe he would feel guilty, or feel he went to far. Or maybe he is upset he couldn’t save Lana from herself.
There’s many, many aspects that one can gather from this video based on their personal experience. You looked at this video with the thought in mind there was a display of abusive violence, that is what you saw. Also, it does matter that this is Lana’s video, these are her thoughts. Should she not be allowed to convey her feelings because they might be seen by someone as a example of an abusive relationship? The key thing in this and Born to Die is you’re never really sure why she ended up dead. All you see are the men crying over her, so you’re assuming the men in her videos had abused her. I mean, is this really what it comes to, any suggestion of something happening to a girl and the man is at fault? I mean, are you going to say next all Goth and Emo bands want their fans to cut their wrists? Where do the assumptions end? Lana has a dark bent to her songs, that’s just the kind of artist she is. She likes the idea it seems of 1950’s era tragedies, I mean she mentioned James Dean in the song for goodness sake!
You really want to tell me her videos convey the same womanizing, and abuse that many rap videos do where the women are paraded around in next to nothing so men can ogle them? Videos where women are talked about in the lyrics as little more than bling? Look, I don’t want to sound racist here, but yes this does happen more in rap videos. However in fairness, most white music videos are of dudes just playing with their band in a garage which is boring. When you watch art you tend to tie your own views and beliefs to it. The thing that’s interesting about Lana’s videos is the leave the sad endings to your own imagination. She’s not making videos that out and out say, “Men abuse me and I like it, tee hee!” like I Love it When You Lie. She’s making art that is smart and intelligent, that might involve some sexuality, and might involve some violence. I honestly feel her videos are much more symbolic, than they are about abusive relationships. They are about how she feels that in some relationships that may have gone wrong, she’s sacrificed too much of herself. A good way of symbolizing that is through death and dark imagery.
Frankly though, I don’t see the point in picking on a talented female artist who dares to be original, when there are far more graphic examples of misogyny in music videos. We’re talking about a girl who dies and her boyfriend is crying over her. Would the stereotyped abusive jerk care about his girlfriend that he just abused enough to cry over her death? I think he’d just move on to the next woman. That’s misogyny, videos where women are regarded to as possessions no more meaningful than an object. Men who talk about women as if they’re collectors items they can brag to their buddies about.
Some women like Lana, want to be a part of their own tragic fantasy. Honestly, I don’t know of any teenage girl who hasn’t become so obsessed with a guy, that she’s had these kind of dramatic feelings for him. Women won’t be helped by hearing a guy talk about how many chicks he picked up at the club last night. They will be helped by Lana saying she knows how it feels to be obsessively in love, and that as long as you don’t let things get out of hand, it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. I mean, it’s rather clear from the imagery in all her videos that they have a dream like fantasy element to them. It’s not like she’s posing these situations as a good idea. She also is hardly the first artist to refer to relationships or sex as being involved with death either. Are you going to tell me Garbage’s song #1 Crush was about an abusive relationship too? Maybe it’s been too long since you’ve been a teenager, but I am 30, and I still remember that yes many teenage girls have fantasies of falling in love with a man they’d be willing to die for. What about Romeo and Juliet for crying out loud? Should we stop teaching that in school, because someone might go home and drink poison because they feel like many teenage girls they’ll never be with their unrequited love?
I’m sorry for going on so long about this, but honestly I don’t understand. There are so many real aspects of abuse shown in hundreds of music videos, so much womanizing being discussed in the lyrics. You’re going to tell me a song about a woman wanting to love a man till the end of time is a horrible thing? That a video showing a man having real emotion over losing his love, is an act of abuse? Or the assumption he must have caused it, because that’s so controversial. If anything what I’m seeing here is a great deal of misandry, and assuming any man who places his hand across his girlfriend’s throat must have the intent to choke her to death. It’s especially offensive, as this video is from the mind of a woman, and shouldn’t we be supporting female artists rather than tearing them down because, oh goodness, they have a view of the world that isn’t sunshine, lollipops, and Hello Kitty? If it weren’t for artists like Lana, I’d probably have felt even more depressed than I already was as a teenager.
She’s making music young women can relate to, feeling that emotionally raw and emotional. Her videos have the subtext of violence, because love is violent, the emotions involved in feeling love are violent. Is it that I was a Goth in high school, and am able to see this? Love can be suffocating, love can make you feel like you want to die. That’s all Lana is implying here, love isn’t all roses. You think that’s a better concept to send to teenage women, then the Twilight rom-com twee version of romance? Don’t you think it’s better they might see her videos, and while not taking them literally, be more considerate about how getting into a relationship won’t only affect their emotions but the emotions of their partner? I doubt anyone is going to walk away from Lana’s videos and say, “Boy that was hot, I think I’m going to go find me a girlfriend and kill her!” No, what they will recognize is one of the few times a man is shown on TV showing real emotion. They will see a man actually caring for a woman, and loving her, and feeling absolutely devastated he lost her. Isn’t that better than the culture of manning up, and having no drama, and talking as if women are no more important than trading cards? You see why I’m so upset now? You’re suggesting that music videos that play off real emotions, rather than fake tough guy look at how many women I had sex with culture, are bad because they might imply a sense of peril? I’m sorry, but I’d rather have Lana tell it straight to teenage girls, rather than lying to them with the idea it will all be perfectly happy, or that the only way they will get a man is to be a complete object. Loving a man more than yourself isn’t being submissive, it’s making the decision to dedicate your life to someone else. That is what love is, are you saying that we can’t have artistic representations of love in music videos, that are real? That show men actually caring about women? That’s what I”m hearing here, and you for damn sure can’t tell what is happening in that drowning scene. I watched it 5 times, He could be pulling her head up, he could have been pushing her down, they could have been playing. The idea was about rebirth, not glamourizing abuse. The heck, you need to really work on understanding art, if you’re going to just blindly assume a man touching a woman on her neck is a sign of intended violence, when you have hundreds of music videos describing women as disposable.
I really feel like Chris Crocker now, “*fake crying* Why won’t you just LEAVE LANA ALONE!!”
First, thank you for your awesomely impassioned response and for the excellent points you raised. I absolutely think that pop culture, the music industry specifically, holds many more aggressive examples of overt objectification of women. Music videos in particular, as you noted, are saturated with oversexualizing and present, rather unabashedly, the idea that “money, cash, hoes” (to quote the infamous Jay-Z) are life’s real goals and markers of success. (For the record, I also have that topic of Rhianna and Chris Brown on my “to blog about†list because I do think the situation and its implications are abhorrent.)
As an adolescent, closeted emo chick I can remember poring over and finding solace in the woeful verses of songs that were awash in ambiguity, hinting at themes of destruction, struggle, and self-loathing. This was mostly pre-Internet, so information on the artist’s intentions was not at my fingertips the way they are today. (I think that admission totally dates me.) I dig, and still do, the dark slants to songs. They are a welcomed respite from a culture that seems to churn out schmaltzy pop music. But, in a society that makes young singers megastars when they boast about waking up and brushing their teeth with Jack Daniels, it’s hard to give those in an associated genre the benefit of the doubt. That is to say that they are using their music as a legitimate form of self-expression and not just courting controversy as a marketing angle. I agree with you that many of the acts in the video could be symbolic for a larger meaning. I certainly don’t claim to have the market covered on interpretation, or else, it wouldn’t be an art form. Additionally, I did not intend to surmise the artist’s true intention. The immersion in water could easily be a metaphor, the alligators, the passivity; all could be representations of a specific theme. And as you mention, I think that is a component to creating art, as is opening dialogues up about its meaning, the feelings it evokes in others and speculations on significance. Your comment inspired me to consider giving Lana’s music more credit and clout than I had previously and to really look into whether or not her lyrics were created with measured intention.
I fully respect artistic aims at expression through lyrics and the ability for them to clarify or leave open to interpretation, the meanings behind them. The trouble is that young girls are infiltrated with media messages, many of which are insidious and subconscious. I am certain that the large majority are not adequately equipped with the critical thinking skills to be able to view this more as an art and less as something to aspire to. We sharpen our critical and analytical skills in classes where we question and examine thematic elements in art – paintings, literature, etc. But, young women are not growing up armed with the tools to be able to think critically about mainstream media. Therefore, I think it’s easy to tie this passive submission to sexiness. Of course the video is open to interpretation, but the inherent conflict is clear, whether or not is portraying something wholly symbolic or literal and pernicious is indeterminate.
My fear here is that the default reaction to this won’t be to question it, or to think about the possibility of its deeper, nuanced meanings. I know this won’t be dissected the same way historical Shakespearian is in high schools. That is where it becomes problematic because the implications are indistinct. I don’t believe that the majority of individuals will take the artistic stance and view it through a critical, metaphorical lens. This is why we need more media literacy education so that our youth are not automatically internalizing messages, absorbing limiting cultural definitions of what women should be, but rather stepping back, and like you, taking in a bigger picture, curiously questioning its meaning.
As an aside, I actually don’t agree that loving someone more than yourself is valuable, or more so, a component to a healthy relationship. This is why, while I recognize the literary signficance of it, I find romantic tragedy tropes like Romeo and Juliet troubling. I believe we are bombarded with messages that heterosexual love is king and that women should always be in the business of trying to secure a man. Obviously this is not as strong a stereotype as it has been culturally in the past and I acknowledge that it does have historical roots, but I believe there are too many messages that sacrificing oneself for another in the name of love is an honorable and noble endeavor. That I just can’t buy into. Our female, and on a broader scale, gender identities are complicated and the relationship between the sexes equally so. To the unexamined eye, this could be another way a female is giving away her power in the name of love. As women we are straddled between progress and tradition in so many spheres.
All of this is based on my own personal beliefs and experience and I certainly respect and honor other’s opinions and views. This is what makes writing these pieces so rewarding for me. Yes, I come from a position that critically examines pop culture, the harmful and subtle messages it sends to young girls and women and the reinforcement of damaging narratives, but I also gain so much out of hearing dissenting views and opinions. I would encourage you to continue using your voice and would love for you to contact me directly through my blog so we could discuss other areas of interest and artistic interpretation, as I also find that fascinating and exchanging views very exciting. Even though our interpretations may be different, we all become allies when we examine dominant trends in society and critically question media content.
Thanks for such an honest review of this video. I think it’s really sad how dark and creepy artists feel they have to be. Sorry to get all “churchy,” but the devil wants us to be miserable, loathsome people like what’s being portrayed here, and this definitely isn’t happy in any way. This fascination with love being some dark, sick, dysfunctional thing that ends in killing each other (but oh, so romantically) is just really messed up. There’s something attractive about it, but at the end of the day it makes me sick. We can pretend all day that it’s “art” and that it’s beautiful, but there’s nothing beautiful about misery.
There’s been little online conversation about Lana Del Rey’s “Blue Jeans,†video-outside bunk criticisms of violence against women and its classic black and white Hollywood film noir style (including comparisons to Calvin Kline perfume commercials).
But what is lacking is appreciation for its artistry and symbolism through use of heavy water imagery. Rey’s tale is the death of a consuming romantic relationship (expressing her real life experience) and death-like heartache through water symbolizing the emotional body. Water also is used to symbolize the unconscious (or subconscious), intuition, feeling, and the cycle of life and death, reincarnation or change.
The video begins with the reflection of her face in water surrounded by ripples, conveying memory. She is reflecting on her time with her love interest and inward on her current state. In dream analysis, water disturbances convey disorder in our personal lives. The ripples could convey a sense of emotional disturbance. We are introduced to the examination of her own subconscious filled with haunting pains.
The music is slow and melancholy, along with the imagery, drawing attention and leading to the subject of her distress, him. Her bad boy (Bradly Soileau, no not her real life boyfriend, although he seems like it in two of her videos) is introduced with a close-up of a tattooed neck and cigarette in hand. Then, a medium shot continues with his smoking and sets the stage of action, the backyard swimming pool. Several shots continually reveal his hands-hand combing hair, holding cigarette, caressing her neck, and washing his face with water. Hands have been interpreted as conduits of power, from the latin word manus-manifestation. While hands have power to manifest, or create, they also have power to destroy. The cleansing of his face symbolizes his initiation of cleansing through destruction, carried out later in the video. He is the subject of the song and therefore shown through a majority of the beginning sequence. There’s also the creepy image of his fingers down her throat, which doesn’t seem to make sense until later on in the story.
Her vintage 1950’s bathing suit is white, symbolizing the purity, innocence and vulnerability of love. His hand his tattooed against the pure, unstained flesh of her neck as he caresses her. His evil is touching her goodness.
As he jumps into the swimming pool, he is entering her emotional body, her desires and her soul.
Rey is shown in a voyeuristic stance, watching her man in the trance of love, intrigued and saddened. Her great acting throughout the video clearly conveys the depth of her sorrow. She is looking through the lense of memory, sadly watching the ashes of destroyed love and loss. The sight of her subconscious and deeply disturbed emotions are shown through the watery, distorted pictures of her boyfriend. The slow pace of the song, and slow pacing of shots maintains the song’s melancholia and in later sequences a feeling of danger.
The black and white images are gorgeous and the close shots of Rey and her beau convey sensuality and the emotional intimacy of love. His emotions are exhibited through water drops on his face, furthering the feeling of intimacy as water symbolizes the interconnected life force between all creatures. We feel their vulnerable connection.
Then, the middle of the story sets in. Ironically, swimming pools are a place of rejuvenation and peace, but not in the song. “I will love you till the end of time,†the lyrics state, and the passage of time is highlighted by a break in the music, a drop of water from Soleiu’s face and a curtain of black blanking out Rey’s face. It marks the transition from the previous sensuous images between the couple, to something darker. But this is a bad romance, predominated with somber images of the couple throughout the video, except for the beginning shots of sunlight and Rey’s eyes revealing a sense of vitality and light through burgeoning love.
The darkening of Rey’s face along with her steps into the swimming pool foreshadow impending doom. “I know that love is mean and love hurts, but I still remember that time we met in December.†From the beginning, she knew she was entering into a bad romance, but she stepped into the relationship (swimming pool) anyways, similar to the shot of her watching him painfully, but not look away while enthralled.
As she steps into the pool, she expresses hesitation on her face. The water is her intuition telling her something isn’t right. The conflict is introduced through these images, corresponding lyrically in the song, “said you had to leave to start your life over.†In another interesting shot she is shown stepping into the pool, but water is shown deeper, captured consecutively from above and below the surface. Something dark lurked beneath the surface of his love and their romance. The depth of the water is her subconscious affected by warnings of a bad relationship and its aftermath. The shots of her entering the pool are juxtaposed with clever images suggestive of Soileau as an alligator about to attack his prey, her. His head is slightly above the water, posed as an alligator head, followed by an image of an alligator swimming in the pool. As she steps into the pool, we see images of alligator heads, cut between the image of his head in the water. The images of alligators are first subtle drawing the viewer in and causing the viewer to do a double take.
Then, she is shown going under the water slowly, in several shots. As opposed to the opening sequence, which focused on him, this sequence focuses on her. The slow pacing of her submersion, and a shot of her face halfway under the water, creates a pensive feeling. She consciously chose a dangerous situation, or she is dwelling on her feelings. She is overwhelmed, submerged in her dark emotions, while he is still swimming above the water and sunlight. That is because from her perspective the breakup hasn’t effected him in the way it has effected her, or because when she looks back on him sometimes she sees the emotions of joy, sunlight, he used to bring her. She is shown beautifully singing with her head in the water. Even though she is suffering, there is still beauty in love and sadness, as she professes, “I will love you till the end of time; I would wait a million years; Promise me you’ll remember that you’re mine.†She has chosen her fate and to swim with alligators, as the song lyrics say, “We were dancing all night.†The shot of her swimming with the alligators appears again later in the song when these lyrics repeat. He is one of the alligators, which symbolize destruction, death, deceit, and hidden danger.
The climax of the video begins a few moments before the climax of the song, as the lovers swim together from a distance, embrace, and kiss. The climax of the song begins as the tempo increases and number of clips increase, as opposed to the longer clip times in the majority of the video.
The euphoria and danger of the relationship is captured with images of the lovers embracing along with images of her riding the alligator, lover (him). She wraps her hand around the alligator tail and proceeds to ride him, which fits the lyrics, “I told you that no matter what you did I’d be by your side, cause Ima ride or die.â€
The cinematography is flawless, capturing details like the light of rays in the pool of crocodiles, the light in the eyes of her reflecting face, or the reflection of sunlight and water ripples against her face. The theme of chaos introduced at the climax continues visually. Images of her anguished face are cut with watery, distorted images of her love’s devious, evil expression. He has clearly become the villain in her eyes. Then, he is shown pushing her under the water, and in the next shot she is shown resurfacing to grasp for air after nearly drowning (although it looks like she’s still under water). The sequence suggests death, the death of their relationship and t the death of her joy after heartbreak. He has caused the death of her emotionally.
The song transitions again with her professing undying love for him supported by romantic images of the lovers holding each other in the swimming pool. The sequence is positioned between sequences of her drowning in the water before and after the loving sequence, again cleverly illustrating the duality of love-comfort and pain. But, because these lover’s romance is a bad one, or perhaps because she has chosen a bad boy, even their moments of embrace contain darkness. His hand is wrapped around her neck, like a boa wrapping around the neck of its vulnerable prey. Like the shot of him putting his fingers down her throat, she openly embraces his sadism and domination. In this case, instead of a boa constructor, his bent, tattooed arm around her neck is suggestive of an alligator. The tattoos are scales; the hand around the throat is the grasp, and the bent arm is the open jaw.
The video ends as the lovers drown in the water, pulled by Soileau’s hand around her neck. The shot symbolizes the death of the relationship, and more closely her feelings of death Soileau. The disturbing image focuses on Rey’s death face, the terror and lifelessness in her expression, particularly her open eyes, which remain open as she sinks. The dissonant sound of the song, slowly screeching to a halt matches the imagery, but there appears to be no conclusion or resolution to the story. If you haven’t heard the song before, then the ending scene seems incomplete. This powerful choice of ending emphasizes the dramatic themes of destruction and the abyss of love.
http://youtu.be/JRWox-i6aAk
The shots where he is washing his face in water can also represent efforts towards self-cleansing and purification which her love and goodness bring him.
I think this report is wrongly written and you are not examining the true meaning just what it looks like on the surface, this is what she expects from people who dont understand her, just to judge and not look at the hidden meanings.
PERSONALY i think she falls in love at first site with her prince charming but underneath the surface he is wild and clever, he drags her down with his problems, This is NOT about domestic violence as you who can not analyse believe but about a messed up yet wild and ‘perfect’ relationship for a young girl who wants to rebel, but hey? what do i know!
I just believe you need to do more analysis on the video itself before judging so easily, She makes her videos so that they mean different things to everyone but you are not looking deep enough, ‘Do not judge a book by it’s cover’ Thats exactly what you have done..
whole video is kinda seductive and sexy 😉 its art, usually a bit overdrawn…music´s never been politically correct anyway, its about feelings and feelings aren´t politically correct either.
or do u all have political correct sex too?
besides that kind of obsessive, submissive love can happen to women AND men so whats the fuss about.
feminists should start caring about real problems again, not some feminine clothes or girlie toys and all those pseudo superficial probs.
equal doesn´t mean same, so why pretend to be all the same? do i have to identify with half of this world cuz they´re female? – no !
and all the women sticking together just cuz of their gender are often easily torn, starting bitching just when its over a guy
so don´t be so hypocritical, we´re all human beings, full of flaws…
You have clearly missed the whole point of the video and the song in total.
Any girl that has been in a relationship that is both addictive yet damaging would understand the many metaphors used in this beautiful piece of cinematic art.
She is drawn to this mysterious man, who’s many tattoos give him that bad-boy-hard-to-trust-yet-so-appealing facade.
Every element in the video symbolizes this “going under” feeling in a relationship- the person has a hold on you.
He is both memorizing yet poisonous.
Lana connects to feelings that a lot of women experience.
She isn’t making this kind of relationship sexy- but sad. pathetic. she shows as the absurdity in being that helpless woman drowned by her man,