Erykah Badu – Window Seat (Music Video Review)
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Erykah Badu’s video for song “Window Seat” has been talked about a lot lately for being shocking, controversial and over-the-top. The video includes nudity, a recreation of the JFK assassination — at the same spot he actually was assassinated — and a message rallying against people who think more like sheep. Badu is not a typical musician who may use a video to shock people in order to get more attention drawn to his or her music. She has indeed drawn a lot of attention for this video, but she has done so for the sake of art and for the sake of a message, not to sell more albums. Even if that was not her intention, she will probably sell more albums though.
The video is all done in one take, without permission from the city of Dallas to shoot in Dealey Plaza. Badu gets out of a car and starts singing the lyrics while walking down the sidewalk. She slowly takes off her clothes — sweatshirt, pants, shirt, bra, underwear — until she is standing in the center of Dealey Plaza completely naked. A shot then rings out, and Badu falls as if she was just assassinated. Purple blood pours out of her naked body and forms the word, “groupthink,” a psychological term used to describe people who make decisions based on what’s popular without thinking for themselves.
Badu’s voiceover says, “They play it safe, are quick to assassinate what they do not understand. They move in packs ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another. They feel most comfortable in groups, less guilt to swallow. They are us. This is what we have become. Afraid to respect the individual. A single person within a circumstance can move one to change. The love ourself. To evolve.”
Badu truly is an artist. People have come out against her saying she has made a mockery of the JFK assassination, in which Badu has responded that her intention was completely the opposite. She told the Wanda Sykes show, “JFK is one of my heroes, one of the nation’s heroes … [He] was a revolutionary; he was not afraid to butt heads with America, and I was not afraid to show America my butt-naked truth.”
The video was inspired by the musical duo Matt & Kim, who did a similar strip-in-public video for their song “Lessons Learned.” The dance/indie rock/electronic duo filmed their video in New York City’s Times Square, with the two standing completely naked in the famous intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue before getting arrested.
The message for Matt & Kim differs a bit from Badu’s, especially since the end of her video ends with a recreation of the most famous assassination of a U.S. President. Kim, in the other video, gets hit by a bus, but this is more for shock value than for metaphorical reasons.
Badu told the Dallas Morning News, “The song “Window Seat” is about liberating yourself from layers and layers of skin or demons that are a hindrance to your growth or freedom, or evolution. I wanted to do something that said just that, so I started to think about shedding, nudity, taking things off in a very artful way.”
Complaints filed into the city of Dallas saying that Badu had walked naked through the area and traumatized their children. Badu admitted that she did not realize how this would affect children who may witness the stunt until she had already started to strip. Badu told the Dallas News, “I didn’t think about them until I saw them, and in my mind I tried to telepathically communicate my good intent to them. That’s all I could do, and I hoped they wouldn’t be traumatized.”
The filmmakers admitted that they made sure to have enough cash on them in case they needed to bail Badu out of jail. She was not arrested, but she was eventually charged with a class C misdemeanor of disorderly conduct and fined $500.
Posted on 04/16/10
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