Taking Art at Face Value... and Failing Miserably

As usual, Sia's video has spoken to me on a deep level and I felt motivated to talk about it.

I don't know if you, my few but lovely readers, are familiar with the artist Sia, the Australian pop artist who is making waves in the US now. I have loved her for a long time. Probably since I heard 'Breathe Me' around 2004. That song, like so many of hers, spoke to me at a time when I was going through a lot of emotional strife.

Lately, Sia has come out with a couple of really amazing and deeply moving videos. The first of which is the video for her song 'Chandelier', which came out in the summer time of 2014. I watched it, loved it, but didn't write about it because everyone was already talking about it, and they were all saying the same things I was thinking. Things like: "I was so moved by Maddie Ziegler!", "The underlying meaning is so powerful!", and "Maddie Ziegler is such an amazing dancer!" 

Watch 'Chandelier' to see what I mean:

Today, after putting it off for a long long time, I finally got around to watching the more recent video for 'Elastic Heart'. Before I start going on and on about it, maybe you should watch it so we're on the same page:

So, now that you've watched the video, lets address the elephant in the room. Pedophilia.

After the video debuted earlier this year, people freaked out. They watched the video, saw Shia LaBeouf (who is looking oh so LeBUFF) in a teeny weeny pair of shorts and Maddie Ziegler in her now trademark flesh toned leotard, and screamed pedophilia. There were even people who went as far to express fear for Maddie, saying she was forced into doing this and she didn't understand what she was doing. Let me tell you, I'm pretty sure she understands much better than you do.

Rolling Stone and Pitchfork have articles about the situation that arose shortly after the video was released. There are a million more out there that all say the same thing. People got upset, started shaming Sia for the video, and Sia had to apologize. Sia said this on Twitter:

I anticipated some 'pedophelia!!!' Cries for this video. All I can say is Maddie and Shia are two of the only actors I felt could play these two warring 'sia' self states.

I apologize to those who feel triggered by #ElasticHeart. My intention was to create some emotional content, not to upset anybody. 

— sia (@Sia) January 8, 2015

 The saddest part about this, in my opinion, is not that people misjudged the video but that Sia had to apologize for what was clearly a work of art. No one should have to apologize for their art.

As someone who has worked in and around the theater industry both professionally and while I was in school, I have seen some pretty cutting edge stuff. Ever heard of performance art?

To prove my point, the following video is not for the faint of heart. I repeat, if you're offended by most things, do not watch the following video. I guarantee there is something in here that will offend you.

Here is a good example of some weird performance art:

This is still art. And while I'm sure they had their critics who claimed that it was not actually art, it does fit the definition. 

Art
Something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings.

Though you might not think the ideas/feelings expressed in the last video are important, I guarantee you the person who wrote the piece thought it was very important. When we take art purely at face value, we are missing the entire purpose of the piece and, in fact, making all the hard work put in by the writer, director, actors, and other crew a huge waste of time. Not to mention a waste of money, effort, and overall emotional energy. If they cannot get their message across to their audience, then both they and the audience have failed in their overall purpose. Though I believe that, by being too close minded to see the deeper meaning, the audience has drastically failed, much more than the writer and other parties involved with producing the work.

Now, back to Sia.

In the 'Elastic Heart' video, if we take the music away entirely, we can see an older man and a younger girl trapped in a cage together. They are wearing very little clothing that is flesh toned. Both the man and the girl are moving in a very violent way. They seem attracted to each other but when they get close to each other, they become violent. If we take all of this at face value, it seems like Shia and Maddie are beating each other up, almost. It seems to depict an abusive relationship.

Halfway through the video, Maddie lays down on the ground and Shia lays next to her. He is able to get close to her without her attacking him, but then she wakes up and bites him. It is obvious that Maddie doesn't want to be anywhere near Shia and he seems to be forcing her to. When she gets out of the cage, he becomes enraged, screams and rattles the bars until he is exhausted. Maddie returns and they seem to make amends. Maddie does some amazing kind of super human yoga bending move over Shia's back, manipulates his face, and leads him to the bars, trying to pull him through, but he won't fit. Try as he might, Shia is stuck in the cage. And the video ends.

If you look at this purely at face value, it is an abusive relationship between an older man and a very young girl. But why in the world would you want to live your life taking things like this at face value? You have failed yourself and therefore made Sia's job absolutely pointless.

What's Sia's job, you ask? To portray a controversial or "important" idea or feeling in a new way. Now, she obviously explains in her tweets above what the video is actually about. She says that it's actually about two warring sides of herself. Maddie being the younger, childlike, innocent version of herself and Shia being the older, angry, disenchanted side. Maddie said in an interview that she was a "werewolf" and her character wanted to kill Shia. But there are many other meanings you can derive from this video. What if Maddie was an embodyment of Sia's inner child and Sia is in an abusive relationship with Shia and Maddie is Sia's coping mechanism? What if Shia is Maddie's dad, the semi-nudity is symbolic of them stripping themselves emotionally bare trying to cope with each other but they don't see eye to eye and then at the end they finally find each other?

Half the fun of watching these videos, seeing plays, or looking at art, is trying to derive your own meaning from it. What does this mean to you? It could mean something different to all of us. The important thing is that it means something. If you take it at face value, it means nothing.