# Look - Sébastien Tellier
# Background
ASS.
Yes, we all know why we're here. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's take a more examined look at the subtleties that make this music video so great.
Since I got a Google TV, rather than just playing Spotify on the TV, I've taken a liking to playing music via YouTube Music to have a complete audio-visual experience. Most of the music I'll listen to is electronic dance music, so it's not unsurprising that I stumbled on this video. I obviously clicked on it based on the thumbnail.
However, looking at the artist on Spotify, I was surprised to find this was not my first introduction to the artist. I liked the song La ritournelle (Gilligan Moss Mix) (opens new window) as early as 2018 (and thanks to duplicate songs, again in 2019).
The song Look in the music video was relased as part of the aptly named Sexuality album in 2008. I like the imagery of the cowboy riding on the woman's body as it reminds me of a more poetic version of the same scene in Your Rocky Spine (opens new window) by the Great Lake Swimmers.
# Thoughts
Unlike most of my other case studies I've done on music, the focus of this article will be on the animation and the music video as a whole, rather than on the song itself. As such, I won't be focusing on the lyrics at all but offer more of a guided tour narrating my thoughts during the music video.
To begin, we see a simple outline approximating the shape of a pair of short shorts, stretched tightly across a fine booty.
Black on white. It's simple and alluring. Nothing except the swaying motion of a young womans hips as she goes on her merry way, destination unknown. More lines appear and form the rest of body-- hands, hair and thighs swaying along with the butt to completing the picture.
It's worth pointing out how smooth this simple anmiation which persists throughout the entire video really is. Although the lines appear to be hand drawn, it's very likely that the animation was captured with rotoscoping (opens new window).
Eventually, her shorts begin to slowly dissolve away until they're nothing more than a revealing layer of black webbing. With a casual motion of the wrist, she pulls off the remants of the shorts and flicks it away, leaving her walking bare-ass naked before us.
A dazzle of light reflects between her thigh-gap, highlighting this glorious space.
Then, almost comically, we see a small puff escape between this gap, like a small toot. It's almost funny how this cloud dissipates as rare jewels drifting in the breeze.
She comes across field of thick, cartoon-like grass. Her hands brush against this grass and her pace slows down a bit. Perhaps she's taking pause to enjoy this sensation.
Like a dream, the grass rises up and away as she resumes her strut to the pace of the music. Black ink begins to wrap around her thighs, down her back and around her arms. This ink slowly expands and begins to resemble latex garments. The black latex slowly consumes the view of her butt, leaving a shrinking hole in the back until it she is completely covered by the material. It's explicitly sexy in a way her short shorts and even her naked form before were not.
Now, the motion of her hips is not only defined by the outline of her shape, but by the light reflected off the latex material. This light cleverly begins to swirl before assuming the shape of her skeleton. The hip bones, the coccyx and the femur all swaying in unison to the motion we were previously so captivated by. Now, we see the underlying structure that provides the function of the motion. It's not sexy in the same way it was when it was plump flesh bouncing to this motion, but the motion is certainly still captivating, curiously.
The black latex material further expands to consume the rest of the environment. Now it's just the internal form of the girl, almost as if we are no longer observing her, but rather walking in her shoes, so to sepak, and experiencing her point of view as she continues down her pedestrian journey.
White clouds waft into view, passing through her hip bones like a scents through a nostril. Maybe this is how she experiences the world, as an assortment of aromas drifting through the air. It almost alludes to the comical "fart" cloud earlier.
Her form returns and the white clouds thicken, like a steamy mist. A white outline rises as she walks to conceal her form like water in a bath. Plunging below this water line, we see her shape again, the lines distored as squiggles.
Settling into this underwater view, we see bubbles float past her as she walks, almost like a fizzy beverage. Black lines swim past her like fish in a river or... well, like sperm, frankly.
Bubbles continue to fizz around her, like a freshly opened carbonated drink. Then, like acid, more bubbles appear until holes begin appearing on her body and she starts to dissolve away. She continues to shrink away until there is nothing left of her, like the last bubble of a champagne glass drifting away before going flat.