I chose the song “Elastic Heart” by Sia released October 1, 2013 as I find the song electrifying and unique. I have been a fan of Sia for a few years now and I remember being especially excited about this song. The lyrics are somewhat melancholic, yet powerful, as they tell the inner turmoil of Sia convincing herself that life is worth living after a tough breakup. The lyrics say:
Well, I’ve got thick skin and an elastic heart,
But your blade – it might be too sharp
thus showing the two opposing voices within her, at once saying she is strong enough to overcome, but also grieving over the enormous pain she is feeling.
The music video for this song came out January 7, 2015 and immediately became a controversial and publicized event. The video features Maddie Zeigler and actor Shia LeBeouf dancing wildly inside a large metal cage. Both dancers are wearing nude, tight outfits, smeared with dirt, and are convulsing their bodies around passionately in interpretation of the song. The fight through dance, they crawl around, they collapse, and they make shocking facial expressions. Most of the controversy of the video came about because of the surprising combination of the 12 year old Maddie Ziegler with the grown man, 29 year old LeBeouf. Many critics perceived the music video as pedophilic, in a way, due to the choice of dancers and the intensity of their movements, which often move around one another. Sia apologized greatly for this misconception, saying that her intention was to create emotional content to tell her own inner turmoil and she believed these two dancers were the only performers that could do the song justice.
Through analyzing the song, it does make sense through a visual rhetoric perspective how the video is set up. The cage and the wild movements of the two clearly emotional dancers does provide a surprising amount of emotional content. As far as symbolism, it is as though the two dancers are Sia’s opposing feelings trapped inside her brain, creating turmoil as they are at odds. At times, the two opposing forces are in opposition, and then at times, it is as though they are working together to help free each other from whatever is causing them turmoil. Ultimately, the video ends with the young girl dancer being free form the cage herself, but unable to free LeBeouf, whom she now seems to care for deeply. In this way, the video suggest that Sia herself was left in a position of being stuck in a state of despair, which the music video ends with well with its lack of sound during the final scene and the focus on the two dancers. The music video is very simple in that the only visual aspects are the two dancers, thereby drawing all of the attention to them. In this way, I think it is successful in portraying the music itself, however the choice of dancers was controversial enough to draw attention away from where the artist intended it to be.
Writing on Music, Summer 2015 