This version is a little NSFW (mild nudity, Dionysian revels – or satanic? rites no idea what Anger was upto really – tend to have that) so if you want to see it at work check out the YouTube version. It’s still probably disturbing 😛 but with less nippleage/cocks/boobies etc to suit YouTube’s puritan guidelines?*
When I first heard ‘Invisible Light’ by Scissor Sisters last year I immediately said like many people ‘that’s Welcome to the Pleasuredome!” – so this obvious mashup had to be done and hence it being released under my Captain Obvious monicker – but really it’s an Instamatic track in every other way.
My mashup video for it is a tribute to Kenneth Anger (who like Jodorowsky influenced the Scissor Sisters video) and my love for Len Lye crept in somehow hence the halftone glitches inspired by his work…this uses a lot of Anger’s films from his first ‘Fireworks’ to Lucifer Rising and of course ‘Inauguration of the Pleasuredome’ which fits the theme perfectly – the Frankie track was criticised at the time for encouraging excess, but as Coleridge (In Kubla Khan a Pleasuredome Decree) and they would say it’s actually about the opposite (hence nearly all the members of the band being consumed by their own desires in the video).
I’m sure Anger and Scissor Sisters would also agree on that theme as it also pops up in their work too – the Dionysian excess leading either to spiritual reawakening or Miltonian Fall…the ecstasy and the agony, the light of pleasure and the darkness of desire.
Jeez this is getting a little too like a thesis for a blog post so I’d better stop…just remains to say this is quite a personal video for me, it contains artistic themes I’ve been thinking about for a while – the whole Dionysus vs Apollo concepts (Nietzsche no less) and duality…and of course it’s mega gay, so that’s right up my street too (the shorter mix ‘Silenus in Shorts’ is a reference to my partner too).
You can find more mashups inc the MP3s for this here.
* Always interesting when I create ‘clean’ versions for YouTube they always come out more disturbing – like if you take out the nudity you’re just left with the violence and gore (or the plot makes no sense as with the Smack Your Bitch Up video) and the imbalance makes it much more unpalatable. I never got those silly rules, this isn’t a porn video and none of the nudity it gratuitous…strange, but not gratuitous. Interestingly the original Scissor Sisters video is officially on YouTube with nearly all of those things…I thought not to push it as I’m not ‘official’…
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