In the 1890s, the word illustrated music was found as a result of work done by some producers who worked for sheet music. They came together to promote a music titled “the little lost child” in some form of motion pictures. They achieved this by projecting designed still images while some hired performers who choreographed to the music. This was the crude birth of music video which we all see today. Fast forward to 2018, in this 21st century jet age and music video has gone wild with different attributes and design to it.
Ariana Grande, Nathan Scherrer and Dave Meyers had some great plans but I am sure the graphic and motion designers went crazily wild with this visuals. Mad mad video! I believe Ariana wanted to show the world with her beautiful song what the power of a woman is. When I was watching this I took my writing pad and I tried to jot down what every visual composition in the video meant. I will try my best to explain in a concise but detail meaning of what all the visuals means.
Scenes and Meanings
The first seen shows Ariana twisting and turning in the middle of a glazy-like fume meaning women are powerful with a lot revolving around their life. The second scene is area in the pool of what looks like a coloured sea but looking closely you can see that they are telling a story of childbirth which only woman goes through. You can take a closer look and you will see her in between patterned abstract art which look like a ladies private part. The makeup, life and digital artist did some real work on these patterns.
I have cracked my head about the third scene but I cannot actually tell you what it means but the forth scene has Ariana sitting in a book with building block model at her back. This scene has men with reduced height throwing things at her. Now this visual depicts that ladies are often times treated as second citizens, made to feel like they are not equitable with men because of the books read, environment people live, religion and science thought. It shows that these men who believe they are better are all products of women. Also looking at the thrown words at giant Ariana one could see the name and the qualification made to the modern day woman. From this visuals she claims that only a woman can go through this and still be cool with it.
The fifth scene has her spinning into the sixth and seventh scene which shows her in the midst of women and in between three animated bear respectively. These scenes comes with the lyrics of “when you try to cover me, I keep on flourishing”. From the lyrics, she talks about herself, but what Mayer illustrated was that even in the turns and twist of life, a great woman weather a black, blonde, gold, curly and red haired woman, will always stand out. At the peak of her powers she becomes a shining light hence seeing Ariana in the midst of a candle flame and on top of the globe in scene eight and nine respectively.
Meyer goes ancient Greek with scene nine dignifying a woman the way she should be and treated and then comes scene eleven. Eleven talks about mother nature and how the earth respects women, it tells us that among the animals, the woman is also a covering to her family hence the rabbit-like creature in the wilderness calling out to her kids or whatever. In the twelfth scene you see her walk through a forest of Mother Nature comparing the beauty of nature to the woman figure. Making comparison of the reproductive attributes of Mother Nature and a woman, hence the animated pregnancy part of the scene. I don’t know what the next scene has to inform us with but with the fourteenth scene she declare the relevance of women to the universe hence the Davinci’s triangles and drawing with her in the middle.
The major highlight is when she come in the dressing as the female version of Thor with his hammer, breaking the glass in the fifteenth scene. She herself explain that the act of breaking the glass is celebrating hardworking women breaking barriers and boundaries in their various fields to remain relevant. The zoom out showing the spread out legs of a lady illustrates that women are powerful with what and all they have.
Finally in the sixteenth scene we find her walking on top of a rope which Meyer illustrate the uphill task every lady who wants to be relevant has to go but is what it if she actually try. I do not know why the female choir was brought on the scene in the seventeenth scene but the final scene eighteenth scene shows the epic and great nature of a woman is.
Note: All that is written is an opinion of the writer and not of the Production team or the Artist
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