I’ve gotta be honest: the astronomical success of Katy Perry’s music career is a phenomenon that truly baffles me. While I’ll admit the pop superstar is an expert at marketing herself – she knows how to trade on her obvious sex appeal without alienating the lucrative ‘tween demographic that clearly adores her – as a vocalist she’s adequate at best and as a dancer…well, let’s just say she’s not giving Janet Jackson a run for her money anytime soon.
So what is it about her that keeps the public coming back for more? I really haven’t the slightest, and I’m no closer to finding my answer with the just-released music video for “Wide Awake,” the whopping seventh single from her 2010 album “Teenage Dream.” The fantasy-based clip actually begins with the superstar wrapping the shoot for her “Calfornia Gurls” video, before heading back to her dressing room and suddenly entering the fantasy world of her own imagination.
The imagery here pulls from multiple cinematic sources, with “Alice in Wonderland,” Jim Henson’s “Labyrinth” and, hell, even “Snow White and the Huntsman” seeming to serve as inspirations. As is par for the course in a Perry video, there’s also a relentlessly-shallow theme of female empowerment running throughout, with the singer (helped along by a younger version of herself and her magical light-emanating boobs) battling her way past hordes of paparazzi and even a group of demonic-looking psychiatric orderlies to escape from a forbidding stone maze and into a beautiful garden that contains her very own Prince Charming.
And then what does she do? She, uh…well, she punches him right in the face. Because, you know, he’s actually like a metaphor, and she’s an independent woman, or something. And also, Russell Brand is a freaking bastard. Totally.
My grade for the video: D. After watching it below, rate it for yourself at top left!
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