by Rylie Simmons
If you watch a music video to almost any song,
you can expect the same concept from each one. The artist is normally featured
in the video singing, dancing, and acting out the lyrics of the song. However,
when Sia released the music video to her song Elastic Heart, it was quite different from what we were expecting, and
caused a shocking uproar. link to video The Elastic Heart music video features
12-year-old Maddie Ziegler from the reality T.V. show Dance Moms and 28-year-old actor Shia LaBeouf wearing flesh-toned leotards
and dancing in a large cage. They are seen wrestling and battling with each
other for the majority of the song. This video has been interpreted in many
different ways, but the message that Sia intended for it to produce is the idea of being
trapped within your own mind: Shia is wrestling with himself (Maddie) and is
constantly struggling. At the end of the video, when there seems to be peace between the
two, Maddie is able to fit through the bars of the cage and escape while Shia
cannot. In the last several seconds of the video, Maddie is hopelessly trying
to pull him out. This struggle symbolizes how he is trapped within his own mind
and, no matter how hard he tries, he cannot get out. The dancers are
representing two warring self-states of Sia herself. She picked these dancers because she says she
feels they were the only ones who could portray the parts.
It seems as though nowadays people are looking
to make a big deal out of everything. When watching this video for the first
time, I fell in love with the uniqueness and wanted to know the deeper meaning
behind it. I was shocked to see the amount of controversy this video started.
Comments such as “… this is absolutely child porn,” and “ it’s just gross for a
child to be all over a man like that,” were a common theme. Audiences found the
age difference between the two dancers and the amount of physical contact to be
inappropriate. This whole video, in their opinion is just pedophilia and
disturbing.
Sia later released an apology for her video.
She said in a tweet, “ My intention was to create some emotional content, not
to upset anyone.” She should not have to
apologize for other people’s lack of perception. Sia was trying to convey a
message through the art of dance, and quite frankly, it was very refreshing and
beautiful.
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