Tales from MVT is a regularly-occurring series of blog posts where I choose one of the videos from our Music Video Theatre sessions and write about it. Music Video Theatre has become one of the most fun and enriching experiences of my current life, and for a multitude of reasons, has sparked abundant creativity. It serves as the inspiration for this series of silly little blog posts.
Song: “Fighter”
Artist: Sneaker Pimps
Director: Chris Corner
Appeared in: MVT Vol. 8
Chosen by: Joy
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When Joy sent me her list to join the MVT crew, I dutifully watched all of them in a row, like I do for everyone. I texted her, “You have remarkably weird taste in music videos.” She wrote back, “Lol I wanted them to be creative and fun! Artist brain”
Joy is friends with Kristin and has been for years. She has tattooed three of us extensively and dated the other, so she got an earful about MVT from a multitude of directions. Joy is almost certainly the most brilliant artist I’ve ever known in real life having done superlative work in tattooing, fine art and jewelry design, just to name three. But it also gives her some weird fucking taste in music videos, man. That’s not a criticism, by the way.
The very first video on her list was “Fighter” by Sneaker Pimps. It features a woman in a head-to-toe latex fetish bodysuit with boxing gloves as she blindly punches at shit falling from the ceiling. It was quite the tone to set. And they didn’t really get less weird from there.
We can usually count on Jeff for the weirdest shit in any given list, a statement I make gratefully. He’s the straw that stirs this drink because Jason, Kristin and I have known each other for at least half a lifetime making it therefore harder to surprise each other. We’ve known Jeff for comparably much shorter, which, at least as far as doing this thing goes, makes his choices thoroughly unpredictable and for a more well-rounded list.
So when “Fighter” showed up approximately half way through the list in Vol. 8, we were all good and lit by that point. And as the action unfolded with this bizarre, blind fetish chick punching at shit falling from the ceiling, we all started busting Jeff up about it. Somehow we all immediately forgot Jeff had the video immediately previous to this one, and I very rarely put two of someone’s videos back-to-back.
The video itself is pretty cool, but its overwhelming… I dunno… avant-gardeness is sort of begging to be commented on and lends itself to some good-natured ball-busting. We lobbed all sorts of verbal shit at Jeff while he fruitlessly maintained his innocence in a way where at that point he wasn’t even sure he didn’t pick it. It was a lot like when Phoebe thinks Ross has proposed to Rachel after Emma is born, and Ross is like, “Did I? I mean, it does sound like something I would do…” Even though we didn’t mean to, we were successfully gaslighting the shit out of him, Joy included.
Because my memory is usually infallible, and it was failing me here, I couldn’t take it anymore and went back into my emails to solve this mystery. Sure enough, it was Joy’s. Of course it was Joy’s! Just two videos earlier, she graced us with a Massive Attack video called “Tear Drop” that took place entirely inside a womb with a lip-syncing fetus. If “Fighter” and “Tear Drop” were the bread, what, you might ask what was the meat in this insane sandwich? Why, it was a Jeff selection called “Coffee” by Aesop Rock, a low budget, playfully gory tribute to horror movies.
It likely won’t surprise you to learn that these two dated successfully for months until Joy took a work opportunity halfway across the country. I count it as a personal blessing that they’re both in my life, and have shown me art I literally never would have found on my own. One of the most fun aspects of MVT is the joy of discovery. It’s easy (and fun!) to exist in your own little rut and watch Hootie & the Blowfish videos late at night (like I did just two nights ago (sub-parenthetical: Hootie & the Blowfish videos are like comfort food, but artistically they suck, and thus have never made it onto a single MVT)), but creative boundary pushing is way more rewarding.
For MVT, give me a dose of the weird, and don’t be stingy with it. Joy and Jeff will give you a heavy pour. And for that I say thank you.
