Hormonally Yours -- the video review
Hormonally Yours -- the video review
Well, this website's strength seems to be constant unsolicited commentary. Everything
else has been covered by the other sites!! That's OK, writing is what I'm good at. No
one's ever really tried to deconstruct the Hormonally Yours videos so I thought I would.
Of course I'm not claiming to know what Siobhan and Marcy and Sophie Muller where
trying to get across when they created it, this is just my take and everyone's welcome
to their own interpretation.
New!! Now features galleries of video stills, provided by Mike Devery, he who rocks primely. :) Stay has been added!!
Goodbye Cruel World -- Has anyone ever noticed that SS, in true perverse fashion, started both their album and video with Goodbye (Cruel World) and ended them with Hello (Turn Your Radio On)? Hee hee! This is the girls' famous remake of the classic films Sunset Boulevard and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Sunset Boulevard was made in the 50s and starred Gloria Swanson as a deranged faded movie star. She spends the whole film trying to make a comeback and at the end goes off her rocker and thinks she's done it, telling the camera, "OK, Mr.
DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up!" Cecil B. DeMille was a legendary filmmaker during Hollywood's golden age, director of films like The Ten Commandments. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, another groovy film about faded movie stars, featured Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as
sisters and former child stars Jane and Blanche Hudson. Blanche (Crawford) was
paralyzed in a wheelchair and Jane (Davis) was insane, stuck in her persona of Baby
Jane, keeping Blanche prisoner in their mansion. At one point Blanche tells Jane
that she wouldn't be able to do these awful things if Blanche wasn't stuck in the
wheelchair, to which Jane replies, "But y'are, Blanche, you are stuck in that chair!!"
Stay -- How can
one three minute video be so endlessly
fascinating? They took the simplest
storyline in the world -- girl loves boy, boy
falls into coma, girl battles Death for boy's
soul, boy wakes up, boy and girl live happily
ever after, Death vanishes into the starlit
void -- and turned it into brilliance. I
still can't believe, in the midst of all that
high tech stuff, Siobhan comes out wearing an
angel costume straight out of a fourth-grade
Christmas play. Genius!!
I Don't
Care -- After grinding Stay into
the ground, IDC became my new favorite video.
They just packed so much stuff in there, you
have the girls being funny and weird and evil
all at once. So what exactly IS happening in
this vid? It starts with Marcy having a
nightmare about Gully replacing her in the
group. The whole thing seems to be a
nightmare that shifts from one woman's
perspective to another. Siobhan is chased
down a hall, then is threatened by Marcy with
a knife. Lots of stress on stage-- the
classic performer's dream of
flubbing up on
stage, perhaps? Then Marcy's dream takes a
bizarre turn as she sees Siobhan's head in a
box. It turns into another stage, which
Siobhan pulls Marcy onto, then everything
becomes lighter, a party atmosphere. The
whole band shows up and they all look like
they're wearing bathrobes and nightgowns.
Are they all asleep and having the same
dream? I love the bit halfway through where
Siobhan mimics Marcy's scream behind her
back, rolling her eyes as if to say, "Oh,
please!" What is written on the edges of
Siobhan's box? One word is "freak", that can
be seen clearly. And did anyone notice,
right before the video fades out, that when
Gully hits the floor he knocks Siobhan's head
right into the stage? Ouch!!
Catwoman
-- This used to be my least favorite video,
which is depressing because it's one of my
favorite SS songs. But as time went on I
came to really love it because let's face it,
it's the closest we'll ever get to seeing
them live. Your basic fast-cut concert clip
video.
Hello Turn Your Radio
On -- Not many people talk about
Hello. Probably because it's the video that
Siobhan and Marcy are least glam in. I
thought it was a throwaway at first, but then
my thoughts turned to the year 1992. That
was the year Hormonally Yours was released,
of course. (Also Batman Returns, starring
Catwoman, came out that year :). Also that
summer came a wonderful little film called
Death Becomes Her. The movie starred Meryl
Streep and Goldie Hawn as fiercely
competitive friends who take an elixir of
immortality and become still-battling, living
corpses. This is one of my favorite movies,
partly because it recalls those great Sister
themes -- jealously, fashion, glamor, sex,
Hollywood, the occult, catfighting. We all
know that Siobhan and Marcy loved to steal
from movies, and even though it's impossible
that they could have seen it in time to
parody it, Hello has always seemed to me like
a mini-version of Death Becomes Her. We see
Siobhan and Marcy, sitting in an attic
somewhere. Marcy looks like an older,
eleganter version of herself, while Siobhan
looks about 150 years old; black-eyed,
thinlipped, hair in rags. It's almost as if
one aged and the other didn't. Why are they
in the attic? Are they ghosts haunting it?
The look they give each other over the tea
tray drips hatred, they each turn away in
disgust, like, "I'm so sick of you." What's
the meaning of the pigs that they hold? Snow
falls at the end, signifying winter, an end
to everything, perhaps a death. Siobhan
seems desperate to escape the attic, but
Marcy sits quietly, accepting her fate -- or
at least accepting Siobhan's. I keep
thinking of the last scene in Death Becomes
Her, where Meryl and Goldie, now well over
100, have been living together for years
taking care of each others rotting bodies,
stuck together because of their secret.
They're immortal, but imprisoned. The Hello
video recalls these same themes, and that's
why it is so cool, even though it's not the
"typical" SS video.
The End. I love that rinky dink music box
tune. I held up my boombox to the TV to
record it once! Thanx Mike and John...you
know what for, guys!
Video grabs provided by Mike and Shakespears Sister Info Page.
