Okay, so instead of completely slaying the crowd in Tel Aviv, as would have been right and proper, Maruv has instead been churning out new music. Although she released Mon Amour, a collaboration with Swiss DJ Mosimann, last week, I’ve been saving it for today to get over my post-Eurovision depression. Let’s see if it works!
…. And nope. Nope. Nope nope nope nope.
The song? It’s great. On my playlists. The hook will be running through my head all day at work.
But the video?
Look, Maruv’s built her fame on hypersexualized images. That’s part of the fun of Maruv, watching her crawl on the floor with her posse of incredibly flexible dancers/sex cult, even if it is, as some good friends have pointed out, very male gazey.
It’s male gazey, but also strangely powerful, because in these videos of Maruv and her long-limbed ladies, there are no men, because they are superfluous. These women are a self-contained social and sexual unit, doing everything from BDSM party games to serial killing, and no man gets to join that little circle.
But that’s not the vibe in the video for Mon Amour. Instead, we get a video that looks like it was designed by the DJ to get to hang out with Maruv and her hot friends and maybe make out with one of them on camera.
Ugh. I take that back. He’s 100% making out with her on camera. Look at those tongues. EWWWWWW.
The problem with Mon Amour is that it flips the fantasy into reality. Instead of passively inviting us to watch Maruv’s sex crime capers, Mosimann has made the blunder of wandering in and trampling all over what’s precious and fun about Maruv. He’s flipped it from a very open and ambiguous fantasy to a story about a man who gets to fulfill his specific sexual fantasy. It’s just crude and basic and lacking any nuance whatsoever.
The only thing that makes me feel better about this is Maruv’s final embrance with Mosimann, where she buries his head in her shoulder, making him invisible to the camera, and rubs his back like a little boy, meeting the direct eye of the camera. She knows what’s up, and she’ll still retain the power over any one she meets, even if he does get to have a bit of a snog with one of her friends.
So please, just Spotify this and save yourself the trouble of watching a pretty icky video.
dudepoints.fun 