Artist: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Song Title: Soul To Squeeze
Year: 1993
Director: Kevin Kerslake
Genre: Funk Rock
This video, shot entirely in black and white, is a concept video that doesn't feature any standard full band performance scene. The idea of the video is a stereotypical circus that features the band members as part of the circus community. Throughout the video circus performance acts are being carried out in front of the camera, such as a man moving around on just his hands, someone being dropped upside down in a barrel of water, tied up with chains, and also an inter-textual reference to the film "Coneheads", with a cone head appearing as the circus's Human Cannonball. The video has the vocalist, drummer and bassist performing in solo scenes (the guitarist had quit before the video shoot), the vocalist performs in a number of different scenarios; with a Medusa style 'hair of snakes' on his head, outside holding the lights seen at the start of the video, lying down in the back of one of the caravans, being towed along and outside in the day around the performers. Whereas the bassist and drummer only have a couple performance scene each, with the bassist mainly sitting in the doorway of one of the caravans, and the drummer playing a single snare drum outside. To fit in with the travelling circus theme, the drummer and bassist are both using instruments that are not electrical, and are easy to transport, (Flea uses an acoustic bass, rather than his standard electric).
There is no standard music video narrative involved in this video, as most shots are linked with the concept of different circus acts, however the lyrics do somewhat relate to the video, such as "I've got a bad disease, from my brain is where I bleed..." being sung while the vocalist is wearing his "hair of snakes" and "where I go I, just don't know" over the top of footage of the cone head wandering around the circus looking depressed and kicking up dirt. From 2:56 to 3:18 there are several occasions where the shot changes are in time with the aggressive drums, which adds more impact to the video.
Link to music video, as it can't be embedded
This is a video based on the concept of dreams and the darkness of people's minds. Outside of the opening text, “This is not reality. This is a dream,” there are many instances of dream-like imagery. Jared Leto (vocalist) experiences multiple instances of falling in ways that defy reason. First is when he leaps from his apartment window and falls many stories to the ground only to absorb the shock and stand up right when in reality his body would’ve been crushed by its own momentum. The second fall occurs when Leto unlocks himself from a coffin, and is suddenly thrust forward and falls to the ground again, mirroring the suddenness as well as the same fear felt in the common “falling dream.” Reality and physics are also skewed in the fighting that takes place in the video. When Tomo Milicevic (guitarist) punches an assailant in the stomach, the attacker is knocked farther backward than he could physically go, and when Jared Leto later knees his own inner demon in the chest, the same defiance of physics occurs. The video itself closes with the line, “dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before,” and much like a dream, the video ends on an ambiguous note with a lack of any real resolution. This lack of closure follows not only the structure of a dream, but also common ideas about the afterlife because, as the chapters presented in the video are called Birth, Life, and Death, it is unclear about what happens after the video ends, just as there is much confusion as to what lies after death.
Throughout the video there is cross cutting to scenes of explicit sexual acts, which relates to the dark imagery of the video. Often when there are mature themes contained in a video the artist releases an uncensored and censored version, so that it can still be played on TV, but people can also choose to view the video the way the artist and director intended it, and this is not exception. Intertextuality to other work by the band is present in this video, as from 0:05 to 3:00 the opening song of their album, Escape, is heard, and during the fight at 8:12 to 8:45 the song Night Of The Hunter is used. Throughout the video there is a strong aspect of not only male gaze, but also female gaze, because although there are many shots of women in revealing clothing, the male singer has his top off for the whole video. There is also a religious aspect to the video, as at 5:50, People of different religions are seen throwing books into a fire. Here is a quote from the vocalist Jared Leto about the video: "I really was just following my creative muse and this is where it led me, to make a film that explores some of the things that usually live in the darker corners of our universe and our psyche"
This video, shot entirely in black and white, is a concept video that doesn't feature any standard full band performance scene. The idea of the video is a stereotypical circus that features the band members as part of the circus community. Throughout the video circus performance acts are being carried out in front of the camera, such as a man moving around on just his hands, someone being dropped upside down in a barrel of water, tied up with chains, and also an inter-textual reference to the film "Coneheads", with a cone head appearing as the circus's Human Cannonball. The video has the vocalist, drummer and bassist performing in solo scenes (the guitarist had quit before the video shoot), the vocalist performs in a number of different scenarios; with a Medusa style 'hair of snakes' on his head, outside holding the lights seen at the start of the video, lying down in the back of one of the caravans, being towed along and outside in the day around the performers. Whereas the bassist and drummer only have a couple performance scene each, with the bassist mainly sitting in the doorway of one of the caravans, and the drummer playing a single snare drum outside. To fit in with the travelling circus theme, the drummer and bassist are both using instruments that are not electrical, and are easy to transport, (Flea uses an acoustic bass, rather than his standard electric).
