Music video for The Residents

(16mm format)

Dir / Cinematography / Editing

Cast: Sirinat Garrelts
Assistant photography: Andrea Psenicova
Art direction: Morten Slet

Story:

Having listened to The Residents in my teens, and shamelessly thieving their music for The Somnambulists, I was extremely shocked but happy that they wanted me to do the `music video´ for Japanese Watercolor. My oldest friend, Morten Slet, like Roy a Residents fan, had sent some of my works to The Cryptic Corporation in San Francisco run by the incredible Hardy Fox. Mr Fox and the band liked what they saw and underlined the fact that they didn’t want a music video as such, but rather one minute of the same sort of (‘surrealist’) stuff that I was already making……

The idea came within hours of listening to the track. Japanese-water-colour…Japanese watercolour I had discovered is an art form, but, in my opinion not at all as wonderful as its promising name. So in my mind, not finding any significant inspiration there, the idea was clear: Japanese girl, water and colours. At first I thought that this project could be the answer to many years of speculation: What is it that makes the Western man’s blood boil when seeing a beautiful Asian woman? But more importantly, what is the real truth about man and his penis? Or rather, different men in relation to the size of their cocks? You know, stir up that most pressing of taboos surrounding male sexuality, namely that of `cock myth´.

So……….beautiful Asian girl submerges her enviable body into water. Enjoys her nakedness. Suddenly different men, black, white, yellow, appear to be entering into the water, we only see their cocks (erect), predictable at first with a magnificent black plunger, medium-seized white one, and a tiny yellow pencil. Cut to woman’s face, breasts, vagina, back to cocks approaching, faster, faster….The parameters change and what was big is now tiny, girl’s eyes dilate, her smile widens……

But as with The Defectors third music video, I knew that you really can’t always get what you want. First of all, try to find ANY Japanese girl who will take her clothes off for anything…Just ain’t in the culture. The most obvious problem – the cock casting – of course never became an issue, and soon it became obvious that I needed to tone down my ambitions.

Along came Sirinat, who had never `acted´ before and although Morten and myself were dying to ask, this natural, and rather lovely looking Thai girl ended up delivering and awful lot of sexual energy without having to undress at all. The overt pornographic sexuality that I had wanted was replaced with a lightness - the touch of her sensual feet on the ground, her silky skin & appetizing belly button – as sexy as was possibly for such a relatively commercial project.

This small film is important to me for a number of reasons. Apart from being `just down my alley´ in terms of what was wanted in relation to what I could offer, it also demonstrated that Bubs, my multi-talented gem of a girlfriend, indeed, also could shoot images easily on a par with those of mine.

Regarding the pornographic ambitions, I still think that this is an area (hardly a valid genre) largely exploited by brutes and cinematic heathens which, none the less, has infinite potential. Not in the crude and downright degrading form it has now, but in a, sexually and photographically, much more sensually sensitive manner: the close up of a woman’s erect nipple, the thrusting vain of an impressive cock penetrating, the lasting impression of the knowing smile of the woman as she inevitably comes. The beauty of muscle, skin and of the human crevices, the exploration of true sexual craving between people….

Part of the Commercial DVD released Nov 2004

Buy it here : Mute - Ralph Amercia - Euro Ralph