MTV for the Blind

The Replacements - Bastards of Young

In a single unbroken shot, the song "Bastards of Young" by The Replacements plays on a stereo system while a casually dressed young man sits on a couch smoking a cigarette. The song plays. Then, as the song finishes, the man stands up, knocks his ashtray off the top of the stereo speaker and kicks the speaker square in the cone.

The Smashing Pumpkins - Zero

A decadent masquerade accompanied by black and white vampires.

Aerismith - Cryin'

Alicia Silverstone dumps her dirtbag boyfriend, has her navel pierced and jumps from an overpass before a throng of police officers. Suspended above the freeway by a cord anchored to her new navel ring, she flips her ex the bird.

Hang on, is it supposed to be like:pierce the subject's navel. Anchor a cord to a high platform and hook it to the navel ring. Throw the subject from platform while sfx of highway traffic play in the background etc

Nevermind, i don't like this game.

she's hanging by her navel?!

I had forgotten about that. It isn't visually depicted, and in fact you can see a little of the harness protruding from her flannel while she's flicking the bird at Dorff, but I remember thinking at the time that she had hooked the bungee cord to her navel ring. Narratively, it would make sense.

Hm, "sense" is probably working harder than it should in that context.

What a gross video. I'm a minute in and we've already had spitting on the floor, couples tattoos, and a mime.

Richard Ashcroft is shirtless in a hotel room, having apparently just showered. The hotel room is decorated with Native American imagery, featuring framed photos of tribal chiefs and a large mural in the bedroom. Ashcroft turns on a stereo. He makes an phone call. He hangs up, and walks out into the hotel corridor (still shirtless) as if expecting to find someone there. He looks around, finding nothing, then returns to his hotel room.

He goes into the bathroom, where he washes his hands and distractedly dabs at his appearance. He leaves the bathroom, and stops short, staring at a room-service tray left in the centre of the room, holding a covered dish.

Ashcroft sits down and starts to eat in a largely dissatisfied way. He picks apart a single sandwich before becoming distracted by an ominously flickering light in the nearby bathroom.

He walks towards the bathroom, past the flickering fluorescent tube, and stops. In a close up, Ashcroft stares slightly downward into a corner of the room.

The final shot shows Ashcroft standing in the bathroom, urinating obliviously, as every light in the hotel room turns itself off except for the bathroom light... which is no longer flickering on and off. Ashcroft is left alone in a single square of light surrounded by darkness.

From the initial post, I think the idea of this thread was to simulate the tactile impact depectied in the video without the visual element.

So like, instead of "Ruchard Ashcroft walks stridently down a crowded street" etc it would be "have a group of people encroach on the subject's personal space and repeatedly bump into them" (only Richard Ashcroft related video i know)

I guess the videos where the star is physically assaulted in some way are going to be the most boringly literal, e.g. No Surprises - have the subject stick their head in an empty fishtank, fill it with water very slowly, when they start to struggle noticeably, drain the water.

With the more aesthetic videos you have to get pretty creative. But I think the basic question is like, how would someone experience the video without the visual/narrative aspect.

if it's alright with you I'd rather just describe Aerismith videos.

Aerismith - Livin' on the Edge

A group of teenage girls in catholic school uniforms rollerblade down the street with hockey sticks and the one who is Steven Tyler's daughter smashes a car's window with hers, because she lives on the edge. Then, somewhere else, Steven Tyler is standing naked with his own penis and testicles cupped in his hand, because he lives on the edge. Suddenly, a green goblin type creature leaps out from behind the empty half of Steven Tyler's unzipped flesh suit! Sorry, forgot to mention Steven Tyler's naked body has a zipper running down the middle of it for some reason and he's partially unzipped. Next, Aerismith is rockin' away in an abandoned industrial warehouse and some of the junk behind the band is steaming, because that's what industrial warehouse stuff does. Anyway, I don't want to watch the whole thing but there's some crazy train thing where the guitar player is playing a rockin' guitar solo and he steps out of the way of the train just in time and it's so crazy and then Ed Furlong is doing something and then it ends fourteen minutes later.