{"id":864,"date":"2015-10-30T10:21:42","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T18:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/?p=864"},"modified":"2023-03-06T12:30:33","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T20:30:33","slug":"duran-duran-out-of-my-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/duran-duran-out-of-my-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Duranalysis: Out of My Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here\u2019s an incomprehensible ghost story, featuring Simon, Nick, and Warren. \u201cOut of My Mind\u201d is a single off of Duran Duran\u2019s 1997 Medazzaland<\/em> album. The album, despite being quite good, was a commercial failure; outside of the core Duran fandom, \u201cOut of My Mind\u201d is mostly known for being featured on the soundtrack for the 1997 Val Kilmer film The Saint<\/em>. The video, which was directed by Dean Karr, is similarly obscure. If you\u2019ve seen it, you probably remember it as the one in which Nick Rhodes makes out with a demonic tattooed bald lady while his head melts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you haven\u2019t<\/em> seen it, you\u2019re probably thinking one of two things right now, just based on that description:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Holy crap! That sounds awesome<\/em>. I must see this!<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Holy crap! That sounds awful<\/em>. I must see this!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Regardless of which camp you fall into, brace for disappointment. The video features some amazing imagery (I repeat: Nick Rhodes makes out with a demonic tattooed bald lady while his head melts<\/em><\/strong>), but it\u2019s a bit of a mess, for reasons pertaining entirely to style, not content. In some ways, I get it: Some of the video is set in the past, so the film is processed to give it an old-timey flickering zoetrope effect. Also, this is a ghost story\u2014or multiple ghost stories, really\u2014and thus giving the images an amorphous, hard-to-decipher quality makes perfect sense. But there\u2019s a clear line between \u201csurreal, dreamlike quality\u201d and \u201cjunked up beyond comprehension\u201d, and \u201cOut of My Mind\u201d drifts over to the wrong side of that line. It\u2019s overloaded with stylistic tricks: Shots drift in and out of focus, or are overexposed, or desaturated, or tinted, or speeded up, or slowed down, or reversed, or filled with visual noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It\u2019s all a deliberate artistic choice, and there was clearly an audience for it in 1997; one year earlier, Karr used these same techniques on Marilyn Manson\u2019s \u201cSweet Dreams\u201d video to widespread acclaim. However, it\u2019s a style that hasn\u2019t held up well. Not everything in a music video needs to be (or even should be) coherent and cohesive, but it\u2019d sure be nice if the style would move out of the way of the substance long enough to give viewers a decent picture of what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Nick, Simon, and Warren hang out on an ornate balcony in a gorgeous castle in \u010cesk\u00fd Krumlov in the Czech Republic, looking pale and moody and glamorous. And blurry. Always blurry. Fair warning: From here on out, everyone and everything is going to be blurry, all the time, because no clean copies of this video exist online. I took screenshots from four different uploaded versions, searching for the highest-quality one, but even still, the final result looks muddy.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    In the castle\u2019s library, ghostly eighteenth-century versions of the Durans loll about in breeches and frock coats and buckled shoes and fancy hats. The very best part of this video might be the outfits: We see multiple versions of each Duran\u2014past and present, ghost and human\u2014and every last bleeding one is dressed to kill.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    Nick\u2019s wardrobe, no surprise, is especially fabulous. He spends this video looking cold and malevolent while draped in frilly shirts and shimmering satin suits. He\u2019s still working\u00a0his coppery-orangey \u201cElectric Barbarella\u201d hair<\/a>, and he\u2019s looking extra pretty and\u00a0glamorous,\u00a0like he\u2019s singlehandedly trying to fill the beauty void left in the band by John\u2019s departure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Duran<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    This whole full-tilt\u00a0Wuthering Heights<\/em>\u00a0getup works well for Simon, too. Love the frilly cravat and cuffs. It happens every damn time: Get Simon and Nick away from the rest of their original bandmates, and all of a sudden they start dressing like they\u2019re attending a Goth masquerade ball at a Belle \u00c9poque whorehouse. (See also:\u00a0Arcadia<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    A pair of courtesans in fancy powdered wigs, corsets, and knee boots (and, notably, no pants or skirts) flounce around a ballroom, frolicking sexily with each\u00a0other,\u00a0until they\u2019re joined by Nick and Warren.\u00a0Warren\u2019s wearing a bicorne, while Nick pairs a stovepipe hat with a weird beaded veil across his eyes and nose. If this shot is tickling some memory cells, it\u2019s probably because\u00a0Nick and Warren recycled stills from this shoot to publicize\u00a0Bored With Prozac and the Internet?<\/em><\/a>, their 2013 album from their long-simmering electronic side project, TV Mania,\u00a0<\/em>the origins of which predate this video.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    This woman is wearing an elaborate headdress with \u201cchr\u00e1ni\u010de\u201d written on it, which is\u00a0the Czech word for \u201cshin guards\u201d. Make of that what you will.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    Oh, hey, Simon. How\u2019s it going?<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    Yeah, that\u2019s Simon, buried under a mountain of prosthetic makeup, playing a decrepit, scraggly-haired old man in tattered rags, staggering under the weight of his heavy bundle of sticks. He\u2019ll make recurring appearances throughout the video. At times, he\u2019s shot in sedate black-and-white; at other times, he\u2019s shot in overexposed, frenetic color. At a guess, I\u2019d say the black-and-white version is Old Man Simon in flashback as a corporeal being, whereas the color version is Old Man Simon\u2019s tormented ghost, which is haunting the castle.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    We get plenty of black-and-white shots of Simon looking agonized while wearing striped pajamas. Striped pajamas have very specific, very sad, very horrible historical connotations; I\u2019m going to assume Simon\u2019s outfit isn\u2019t<\/em> an allusion to any of that, because surely Duran Duran wouldn\u2019t be tasteless enough to shoehorn a Holocaust reference into a glitzy, stylish music video about ghosts. Here\u2019s a kinder interpretation: Parts of this video\u2014the black-and-white footage in particular\u2014seem to be inspired by German Expressionism, and Simon\u2019s look here could be viewed as an homage to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    Love the wig, Nick.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Out<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    Yep. Nick\u2019s in full eighteenth-century female drag, painted and bewigged and corseted and skirted and looking like a trillion bucks (are those spoons<\/em> sticking out of his wig? Fantastic). He romps about on a rooftop, raising his skirts and flashing his legs and scaring the pigeons.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    Want a clearer shot of Nick\u2019s sartorial splendor? Tough luck\u2014you won\u2019t find one anywhere in the video. Luckily, there\u2019s a gorgeous still of Nick in his full glorious ensemble\u00a0on the director\u2019s professional website<\/a>. Scroll through the gallery; it\u2019s worth finding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Warren lies on a tile floor, surrounded by dozens of cats. At least they\u2019re mostly cats, though I also see a hawk, and at least one duck. It\u2019s tough to tell if the cats are alive, which would help me work through my emotional reaction to this shot. Warren surrounded by dozens of cats? That\u2019s adorable! Warren surrounded by dozens of dead<\/em> cats? That\u2019s\u2026 awful and creepy. The cats aren\u2019t moving, even though some are standing upright, and\u2026 well, cats tend to move around a lot, so I think I\u2019m going to amend that first sentence thusly: \u201cWarren lies on a tile floor, surrounded by dozens of dead and taxidermied cats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    It\u2019s awful and creepy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This is becoming an unexpectedly grueling video to analyze, just because there\u2019s so much<\/em> going on. If I\u2019d been smarter about this, I think I would\u2019ve scrapped any attempt at analysis and just thrown together a bunch of zany gifs of Nick being all glamorously weird and unfathomable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Duran<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    A black-clad woman with formidable eyelashes sidles up to Warren and whispers to him. Black viscous goop starts leaking from his ear. Seriously, this video has some brilliantly<\/em> unsettling images.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    Speaking of unsettling images: Nick, resplendent in lime green satin, opens up a trunk, from which emerges a scantily-clad bald woman with runes and tendrils tattooed all over her face and scalp. Oh, god, Nick, I think I\u2019m learning more about your personal life than I ever needed to know.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    The bald woman, who is clearly a demonic being of some sort, writhes in front of a mantelpiece festooned with long devil horns. Nick\u2019s entire face and head start to melt away, like a dripping candle. Upon catching sight of himself in a mirror, Nick drops to the floor in (understandable) horror. Being a plucky sort, he recovers from the shock pretty quickly: Next time we see him, he\u2019s kissing her passionately.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    Correct me if I\u2019m wrong, but this is the one and only time we ever see Nick make out with anyone in a Duran Duran video, right? It\u2019s, uh, a whole lot less sexy than I\u2019d ever imagined it\u2019d be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    With his fun and games over, Nick returns the woman to the trunk. The shot is carefully cropped, so we never see whether he still has a head.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    That\u2019s the video. While I don\u2019t love the execution, I give it full points for effort\u2014there\u2019s some outstanding<\/em> nightmare fodder in that. I\u2019ll be sending you my therapy bill, Duran Duran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Here\u2019s an incomprehensible ghost story, featuring Simon, Nick, and Warren. \u201cOut of My Mind\u201d is a single off of Duran Duran\u2019s 1997 Medazzaland album. The album, despite being quite good, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":883,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-duran-duran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1547,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions\/1547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}