You wouldn’t want to get caught playing a video game at work, right? Particularly considering the graphic violence and potentially distasteful material your boss could see in passing?
Thus, do not watch Swedish House Mafia’s “Antidote” video at work.
It looks just like a live-action first-person shooter — yes, a video game — of a heist in a Japanese strip club. There are guns, guns shooting people in the face, hand-to-hand combat and naked girls.
Helmed by BB Gun Films, the directors go through the premise with stark matter-of-factness. No dialogue, utter chaos, a terrifying scenario for an unrealizable adolescent fantasy. By showing what it’d be like to play an “actual” shoot-em-up in real life both exposes the bloodlust, while also inspiring it.
And “lust” is right. Punching a hooker in the face in a video game (or, say, blowing away a stripper with a gale-force weapon) has long been a point of contention between a parent and a child who wants to play said game. And strippers/”other” women put into a singular premise of sexual objectivity has long dominated the music video sphere.
BB Gun’s other credits include Fabolous’ “Toast” (with the indifferent showing of “tits” when the lyric “tits” comes about) with the rapper’s interchangeable women flanking him as he shoots an assassin. Christian Rich’s “Famous Girl” features the murder of female, symbolically and literally devoured by men in animal masks.
And, again, the marriage of sex and violence in “Antidote,” which also happens to be one of Swedish House Mafia’s most aggressive and beefy songs yet. In addition to cold violence, there’s specific violence toward women, in a house of women-as-sex-objects. BB Gun is well-aware of the tired trick of sticking women into bikinis or starring them topless and calling it a video — just see their clip for The Cool Kids’ “Bundle Up” — they keep going back to that well. They seem to be developing topless women into their trademark; while Enrique Iglesias’ “Tonight” may certainly seem to warrant it, Asher Roth’s “Muddy Swim Trunks” less so. And The Knux’s “Run” less so. At least the sexy dame in “Bundle Up” had a shell bra.
I found myself affected by “Antidote” at the end, and also kind of annoyed. It has the house music troupe and the filmmaking team exploiting boys-only cliches as much as they’re making commentary on it. I guess I’m not blown away?
The “(Clean)” version is below the NSFW version, for all those delicate flowers out there.