Now, I don’t like to brag (as all my millions of fans know) but I’m kind of a big deal on Twitter, and you may make all of the one-eyed-man-in-the-kingdom-of-the-blind references you like, but it won’t change the fact that I’m the queen of the 140-character realm. One of the reasons for my vast popularity and nearly unstoppable power on the platform of choice for the short of attention span is this video: Mylene Farmer‘s L’Amour N’Est Rien or Love is Nothing.
If you clicked to play the video, then how it contributed to my sudden popularity will come as no surprise, for it is nothing less than a striptease in which the chanteuse gets her kit, as they say, if not her rocks, entirely off. For those of you who did NOT click to play the video, we’ll wait while you rush back to do that.
It’s not the first time we’ve featured the Divine Miss MF around these parts (nor even, it seems, the first time we’ve posted this video, although the other version is down). What elevates this from mere cheesecake to feminine empowerment? It’s a fine line, and Farmer walks right up to it, puts her toe across and then snaps it back in a Fosse-like flourish. To me, what elevates it is, as always with Farmer, the lyrics; she is happy to play on her looks, which she knows are exquisite, and use her body as honey to draw the audience in so it’s at least minute 3:20 before they realize they’ve been listening to a song about how women don’t need to be trapped by the old fairy tales of chivalric, perfect love, or the new ones of political correctness. They’re both cages: one gilded, one woven of hemp, and she doesn’t need anyone’s permission to say she’ll have nothing to do with either of them. She is free to say what she wants, free from the need to apologize for it.
Contrast and compare avec: Vanessa Paradis:
And the lyrics: L’amour N’est Rien
Obsessed with the worst
And not very verbose
The least of my sighs
Turn metaphysical
I have in my heaven
Tons of stars
Hanging on my wings
And down falls the angel Gabriel
Obsessed with the worst
A little too physical
The desire to quiver
Is pharaonic
Fed up with asceticism
My life is wrapped in darkness
For me without the tongue
Wihtout sex I get weak
Love is nothing
When it’s politically correct
You like one another
You don’t even know
when you hurt them
Love is nothing
When everything is sexually correct
You get bored
You yell for it to stop
Life is nothing
When it’s lukewarm
It consumes itself
and shakes your blood
In cigarette ashes
Life is good
It’s made of honey
When it’s acid with dynamite
Those who love me, follow me
Obsessed with the worst
And not very verbose
The least of my sighs
Turn metaphysical
I have in my head
Tons of pirouettes
The leap of the angel
Doesn’t seem strange to me
Obsessed with the worst
And not very verbose
To share my laughs
Rather plutonic
I have in my sphere
A greenhouse effect
My blood’s boiling
I’m seething about everything
I am but a helpless powerless male trapped in the web Mylene has woven.
You’ve got plenty of company.
Hubba de Hubba! Quel video impressionnant! I wish I spoke French, but I’m glad I have eyes, yo! (yeux?). I like your analogy, whether intentional or not, to Twitter being like a cage. It’s what frustrates me so, and yet I’m so happy everyone else is constrained by it.
Yes, the bores can only bore you for 140 characters, then they have to shut up. It’s why I prefer it to IRC.
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I like her spiky red hair
I like her hair longer, but it’s always red-red-red. Her other videos are also worth checking out; I should have a category just for her.
Edith Piaf with better lingerie?
You didn’t listen to the song or read the lyrics, did you? You only read this blog for the pictures, I know.
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