"And Certainly No Love Below!"

So I'm watching the Andre 3000/OutKast and Speakerboxxx Love Below video Carolyn and thinking about what the hell they are doing there and why the song was such a hit. I love the part where the pathetic school administrator yells at them to all control themselves and he wants "No Speakerboxxxing and certainly, no LOVE BELOW!" he bellows.

If you haven't seen it ... I'm not sure where the hell you've been ... and here's a link.

So first of all Andre 3000 is just a great dancer and he has a great ass, so this is a good place to start. And if you watch him, he's so gay, but I think he's not, but that's one of the totally fun things about the video. They are playing with sexual stereotypes -- the high school girl babe bitch -- and the different cool cliques -- the "Love Below" group in their bluejeans and red cardigans versus the tough guy Speakerboxxx bad boys. But if you keep looking and listen to the lyrics, it's blowing up all assumptions. And the way he's dancing is so flirting with straight and gay in a really terrific way.

And it reminded me of what I read about Johnnie Depp in Pirates of the Carribean and how he was actually trying to channel Keith Richards I believe for that movie. And again, he's playing with being very sexy by being very bisexual or at least, crossing the line again and again. Depp is a master of this. It's like he's a hot pot on the stove of sex, boiling over in his ultra-heterosexuality into homosexuality, as the spirit moves him. (Think about the very sexy girly eye make-up he wore in that movie.)

And that gets me thinking about a lot of art and a lot of amazing artists -- especially musicians -- who are always crossing the line. The whole heavy metal thing is about this -- very macho men with long pretty hair (very girly) and the biggest hits in heavy metal are these super sentimental emotional ballads sung by a guy with 12 tatoos and make-up on. And of course, there's Mick Jagger and David Bowie and Madonna and the list goes on and on and on.

We want to cross that line -- it's got a lot of sexy energy in it -- playing with all manner of sexuality.