The fact that Mastodon are an ostensibly bright bunch and very much not from the heavy metal old school – where, back in the hallowed day, sexism was widely tolerated – is not a sufficient get-out clause by any stretch. It was sexist when it happened in past videos and it’s still sexist now. I don’t care how much irony you throw at this. It’s funny! Look at those vibrating butt-cheeks! Brilliant. It hadn’t been done before, and we were kind of looking for something that hadn’t been done before because it’s hard to come by these days.But no, Dom, I hear you cry, it’s not sexist. I knew there was going to be some negativity. I figured that would happen, you know what I mean. But it’s gotten people talking obviously, you know. I love when it turns into that kaleidoscope effect thing it brings the video to a whole new level. I thought the girls were awesome and talented, and I thought it was amazing to watch. For some people it’s titillating, but for me it just looked amazing. I know there’s half-naked women that are shaking their butts. I don’t know, I just don’t see the sexism in it. It’s a music video and it’s really not supposed to be something that gets people this upset because this was really a fun thing that doesn’t really mean too much. The last thing that I wanted to do was come on and be defensive, because I don’t feel like I should have to defend it. Pitchfork: There was a column in The Guardian that called the video sexist.īD: I know! I’m really upset. It gives me chills when I watch that, she just looks so awesome. There’s a scene where the garage door starts to open, and Khristine Moore, who plays the "queen," is there. It was amazing to meet them and amazing to watch them do their thing. If it wasn’t for them and their talent and going out and doing flips and splits and just bringing it, it wouldn’t be great. With the video itself, we wanted to make sure that the women that were there were in charge and that they were having fun. The music videos were a way for us to put more of our personality into it as far as our sense of humor, or making it twisted somehow, or different, or bizarre, or provocative. They were like, "It should be *Moby Dick-*themed! What’s the deal?" We kind of took the music video as a way to round out, because of the fact that we’re so serious on stage, so serious in our music, so serious in our art with our artwork of the record. For the "Blood and Thunder" video, we got 150 clowns, and people were upset about that. We’re so serious about songwriting, we’re so serious in our lyrics-which are really serious, and are about a really serious thing that happened to me personally.īut if you’re going to make this very high concept, dramatic video, who’s gonna watch that? It’s a music video.
But our videos have always been kind of weird. We would never put out a dance video we’re this very serious metal band. Did the band actively consider those dynamics during the filming?īD: Going into it, our main goal was to make fun of that ‘90s kind of video and have it be taken over by this dance video, which Mastodon would never do. Pitchfork: Videos that feature twerking always inspire a debate about that fine line between something appropriate and sexism or racism. You know? Trying to repurpose something and put something where most people would say it doesn’t belong, but it can. The most important thing for us was that they were in charge and that they were having fun, kind of trading back and forth dancing. I’m not really sure how he found all the girls, but basically it came together in about a week and a half, about three weeks ago. Jonathan kind of took the ball and ran with it. We just wanted to put something into our music video that people would probably think, "That shouldn’t be there", or "Those two things don’t go together, they shouldn’t be together." I wanted to just put them together because we can.īD: I’m not sure. I don’t feel like what we were trying to do was jump on any twerking bandwagon, I guess.
I remember obviously hearing about the Miley Cyrus thing, but it didn’t really have too much of an effect on why.
I didn’t know about the Nicki Minaj video until after. BD: I don’t think I was super clued in that it was so much of a trend.
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