Trapped In A Glass Lake Of Emotion: Music Video Clips In Water - Part One

Last year, the video clip for the xx’s ‘Chained’ was released, featuring the members of the band encased deep in water, thrashing about, as if they were the first young people to ever discover this image could be used to represent the torture in their souls. (P.S. I do like the xx – really, I do.) In actual fact, the xx were simply carrying on a long-time tradition in music video clips.

There are three main, somewhat interrelated dimensions to a ‘water torture’ clip: height, depth and length. Let me explain further:

Height – The really tortured musician doesn’t just enter the water. They jump, they throw themselves with reckless abandon, leaving it to the fate of the universe as to whether they plunge in safely or are dashed on some jagged rocks hidden just beneath the surface.

Depth – Dipping your toe in the bath doesn’t count here. The musician should be at least partly, but ideally, fully submerged, to indicate that they are hopelessly trapped within their feelings. In a top-level ‘water torture’ clip, the musician will basically look like they are two seconds away from drowning.

Length – The water should not be just a passing prop, but an integral part of the clip. To signify the full extent of their torture, the musician should spend a fair chunk of the clip submerged.    

Let’s have a look at some of the wettest music video clips over the years, and how they rate.

Chained – The xx:  The xx certainly have the depth and length dimensions down pat. The band claim they spent two days underwater to film the clip, and they spend a fair chunk of the clip’s running time in that state, with very few background props as distraction. There’s also a pretty decent headlong dive into the drink partway through. To top off the bleakness the xx wear moody black for the entirety of the clip. A studied case in ‘water torture’ clips.

Blue Jeans – Lana Del Rey: Lana has the expressions to suggest that she can compete in the heartrending pain area, but this clip falls down in some vital areas. Filming the clip in a swimming pool means that it lacks somewhat on both the height and depth dimensions – it’s hard to believe that Lana is in that much agony when she’s entering the water by barely dipping her foot in, and all she has to do to exit it is stand up in the shallow end. Lana and her beau do well on the length dimension though; by the end of the clip they’ve built up a fairly solid sense that their relationship is heading towards some tragic doom.

Estranged – Guns ‘N’ Roses: Axl’s attempting to drown himself in the ocean takes up only a small portion of this clip, although given the clip’s massive ten-minute length that still adds up to a decent amount of deep sea thrashing. But the height! Axl doesn’t jump off the poolside – he hurls himself down into the ocean from a freaking oil tanker! He hurls himself down so far and so deep that they need helicopters to pull him back out! (Let’s see those xx kiddies top that.) Alas, Guns ‘N’ Roses are too unintentionally comedic to keep up the bleakness: it’s hard to maintain the veneer of emotional turmoil when Axl is saved from drowning by riding on the back of a dolphin, and Slash and his top hat come rising up out of the ocean to deliver the guitar solo. (Fuller appreciation of the comedic value of ‘Estranged’ is provided here.)

Next: PJ Harvey, Maroon 5, and Radiohead

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 54

MUSIC: On becoming too old for Triple J’s Hottest 100. I first heard the song that made #1 the morning of the countdown.

COMIC BOOKS: Writer/artist Kyle Baker has posted up all of his created-owned graphic novels for free.

ECONOMICS: Let a coin toss decide your future, and help Freakonomics out with their data collecting in the process.

The Wooden Finger Five: February 2013

1.      Monoliths – Lotus Plaza

Lotus Plaza is the side project from the sideman - Lockett Pundt - of Deerhunter. Pundt sang one of the best Deerhunter songs in ‘Desire Lines’, and this song is kind of like a mini-version of that one. After about a minute and a half of lyrics, the song wanders off and Pundt just keeps repeating ‘One of these days, I’ll come around’, albeit with varying degrees of intensity, til it ends. It’s great though, and one of my favourite tracks of the past 12 months.

2.      Tongue Tied – Grouplove

I got back into this song over the past month, but the problem is that I’m far too old for it. If a teenager jumps around joyfully to it (like on the iPhone ad) it’s fine, but if I did so I’d look like a baby boomer trying to mosh to Nirvana. I’m jealous of the Twitter generation for getting this song.

3.      One Way Trigger – The Strokes

The Strokes’ free comeback single isn’t to everyone’s taste, however at least it sounds like a single, unlike a lot of the tunes on their last couple of albums. Julian Casablancas singing falsetto makes this more than just a Strokes-by-numbers track.

4.      Jubilee Street – Nick Cave

Nick Cave returns with this excellent song – Warren Ellis’ violin really stands out on this one. Along with ‘We No Who U R’, it promises good things for Cave’s upcoming album.

 

5.      Peace and Quiet – Waxahatchee

I have this theory: that musicians first fall in love with the music that’s playing on their parent’s car radio when they are three years old, and then spend their entire careers trying to recapture that feeling. That would certainly explain this song, which sounds like it was transported from 1993. More specifically, it’s like the Breeders crossed with ‘Crave’ by Nuno Bettencourt.

Film Review: Django Unchained

1.     The ‘N-Word’: Yes, few would argue against the pejorative having been expunged from our modern lexicon, but I don’t think we can pretend that it never existed. I was annoyed when I found out the other day that it had been censored from modern editions of Mark Twain’s books. Similarly, it makes sense for characters to use it in a movie about slavery; having said that, I’m inclined to agree that the word does seem to be tossed around a bit too much in ‘Django Unchained’. Sure, Tarantino’s movies thrive on excess, but maybe he should’ve pulled back a touch on this one.

2.     The Violence: Well, it’s a Tarantino movie – by this point you know what to expect. And there is something satisfying in seeing a bunch of proto-KKK goons get massacred, in the same way that there was when the Nazis got their comeuppance in ‘Inglourious Basterds’. I guess the minor problem I have is that, as great as the movie is, Tarantino’s done the revenge thing a few times now. Really, nothing’s ever going to top the vengeance scale of ‘Kill Bill’, and so ‘Django Unchained’, despite its almost three-hour length, feels a little scaled down by comparison. The last hour in particular is not that far removed from the Crazy 88.

3.     The Cast: It’s difficult to remember now given his so-so musical career (‘Golddigger’ excepted), but hey, Jamie Foxx won an Academy Award once. He’s pretty good in this, particularly in the scenes where he’s posing as a black slaver, and he has to restrain himself while Leo’s character continuously preys upon the slaves on his plantation. Leo’s pretty good as well, bringing to life one of the cruellest, most odious characters that you’ll see in a while. Christoph Waltz steals the show though, essentially outtalking, outsmarting, and outshooting most of the South as a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter. It doesn’t quite outshine his portrayal of Hans Landa in ‘Basterds’, but it’s damn close.     

4.     The Australian Accents: Quentin’s accent is bad, oh so bad, though it might well be intentionally bad. However, in a film about slavery, with so many liberties taken with American history, it’s hard for me to take issue that the Aussie accents aren’t right.

5.     The Verdict: ‘Kill Bill’, ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs’ remain the big three of Tarantino’s flicks, but this probably fits pretty well into the next tier with ‘Inglourious Basterds’ and ‘Jackie Brown’ (with ‘Death Proof’, which isn’t bad by the way, bringing up the rear). It’s not the one that will win Q the Oscar though.

BEER!! [4] – KISS DESTROYER

Name: KISS Destroyer

Brewery: KISSROCKDRINK Brewery. Yes, really.

Place Of Origin: Stockholm, Sweden

Type: Well the can says it’s the hottest beer in the world. At a pinch though, I’d guess it’s a lager.

Alcohol Content: 4.9%. Which is 4.9% more than Gene Simmons.

Why I Bought It: Because it’s a beer with KISS printed down the side! And so I could blog about it.

Taste: Oh god, it’s pretty dodgy. It actually reminds me of what beer was like when you were a teenager and hadn’t got used to the taste. Which probably says something about who this beer’s target market is.

What I did while drinking it: I wanted to [fill in blank] all night …

What I did after drinking it: …  and [fill in blank] every day.

Marvel NOW!: Reviews of Comics I Said I’d Never Buy (Second Half)

This post concludes my reviews of the Marvel NOW! ‘relaunches’ (how I hate that word), which I initially suggested I wouldn’t bother with. Although, now that the first flush of ‘nowness’ has rubbed off, I feel like I’m returning more to my jaded 30-something-year-old self. Well, except in relation to this title …  

Avengers: This is the best Avengers I’ve read in quite some time, probably since Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s alternate take on the team in ‘The Ultimates’. Jonathan Hickman is a ‘big ideas’ kind of guy, which makes him well-suited to what is meant to be the biggest, brashest Marvel title out there. Hickman has even taken the Avengers’ membership to absurdly large levels, packing almost 20 members into his line-up (I don’t disapprove of this concept, even if I think some of the choices are a bit weak). Really though, it’s Jerome Opena’s art that has me most keen about this book. He makes basically everybody he draws look kinda bad-ass; even douchebags like Sunspot and Sunfire. This is what the premier super-team in 2013 should be like. Verdict: Four fingers and a thumb.

New Avengers: Not quite sure about this one yet. Putting together the major movers and shakers in the Marvel Universe on one team is certainly an interesting idea, and Hickman’s proven he can write about a bunch of egotists on the excellent ‘Manhattan Projects’. Plus, I always like Steve Epting’s art (if I ever wrote ‘Avengers’, he’s be my first choice for penciller). But it may also end up reading like the minutes of a company board meeting. We’ll see. Verdict: Three fingers and a toe.

The Superior Spider-Man: Alright, anyone who cares probably knows this by now: in the ‘final’ issue of ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ (#700), Peter Parker’s mind was switched into the dying body of one of his greatest enemies, Doctor Octopus, leaving Doc Ock to carry on the Spider-Man legacy. Needless to say, Doc Ock doesn’t always have Parker’s sense of decency,  even as he tries to be the ‘good guy’. It’s certainly a better and more interesting idea than when they replaced Peter Parker with his clone. However, while this isn’t bad, I’m not finding it essential reading. Verdict: Three fingers.

That wraps up my reviews, even though there a few more NOW! titles to be released. Of the remaining titles, Brian Wood’s all female X-Men looks the most intriguing, reminding me of the very first X-Men comic that I bought from my local milk bar back in the ‘80s* (in which Wolverine was the only male, and Rogue looked like she had popped out of a John Hughes flick**). Has Marvel NOW! been a success? Kind of – the unique cover designs seem to work well, and like DC’s ‘New 52’ a lot of the titles are more interesting than they were before the (ugh) relaunches. But in the end, I think it’s going to take a bigger creative and cultural shift than this for the general populace to see comics as anything more than a feeder for Hollywood blockbusters. 

*For some arbitrary reason that only parents understand, my Mum forbade me to buy it, so I snuck out one weekend to plonk down my $1.30 and smuggled it back into the house so tightly you would’ve thought I’d just shoplifted it. Man, I was more bad-ass than Sunspot.

**Before I became a teenager, basically all of my ideas about what women aged 14-25 were like came from the X-Men and Degrassi Junior High.    

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 53

FILM/MUSIC: No-one matches music to movies better than Quentin Tarantino.

MUSIC: I did a blog post five years back about the magic of songs called ‘Stay’. NME has finally caught up.

BASKETBALL: ‘Grantland’ on the woes of the ‘star-studded’ Los Angeles Lakers.  And ‘The Wages Of Wins’ on the same question. Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol aren’t what they used to be.

HUMOUR: One guy catalogues the ten dumbest things he’s said to women. Frankly, you don’t even need to read the explanations to realise that they’re things he wishes he could take back.

RESEARCH: The Modern Language Association on how to cite a tweet. (And ‘The Atlantic’s’ commentary on this.)

Australia's Economic Performance In The 2000s

This continues the series of economics-related posts that I decided to take down during the middle of last year, but which I'm now adding back. 

Some time ago I posted about a Taylor rule for Australia, which related the setting of interest rates to expected output and inflation. But another interesting question is what were the actual economic outcomes for Australia? More specifically, if you were to combine actual output and inflation figures into a single figure (an 'Economic Health Indicator' if you will), how has Australia's economic performance been tracking over time?

For now, just to see how such an indicator might work I've just looked at economic outcomes from 2001 to 2010. To construct the indiactor I used the following equation:

"EHI" for year x = a * "Normalised" output gap + b * "Normalised" absolute deviation of inflation from target inflation

So what's all this then?

Essentially, for any given year, the higher the output gap and the lower the absolute deviation of inflation from target inflation the higher is the "EHI".

By "normalise" I just mean that I've adjusted the outcomes for each year by subtracting the average for that outcome from 2001 to 2010, and dividing by the variation (i.e. standard deviation).

The output gap means how much actual output is above the economy's "potential output". (Some might argue that a higher output gap is not necessarily better, but I've assumed it is here.) For the output gap I have taken the figures from the International Monetary Fund website. (Some might
argue that these are a load of garbage, but I've assumed they are not.)

I have assumed target inflation is 2.5 per cent per annum, though that is not technically the Reserve Bank's target. By taking the absolute deviation I have assumed that it's a "bad" outcome if inflation is much higher than this figure or much lower than this figure (think Japan).

For "a" and "b" I tried a few different figures. First, I made them both 0.5, which gives both components equal weight. Then, I tried a=0.8, which gives more weight to the output gap component. Then, I tried a=0.2, which gives more weight to the inflation component.

Got it? Alright, let's see some results.

Results

 

Whichever weighting system I used the year 2007 stands out as the Australian economy's highlight of the decade. It had the highest output gap of any of the years, and inflation was quite close to 2.5 per cent.

 

The worst year of the decade depends on the weighting scheme used. With an even weight it is 2006, which had the lowest output gap and high inflation. But if a high emphasis is put on inflation then 2001, which had the highest inflation figure, comes out worse. (Though there were "extenuating circumstances" in this case - it being the first year the GST had been in effect for the whole year.)