Pet Shop Boys
From Vanity Fair Interview with Neil Tennant, 2012:
VF: The Pet Shop Boys have a tremendous gay following. Brandon Flowers of the Killers has said that this might have ultimately damaged the run of hit singles you had in America.
NT: Something happened to us in America. The theory is it was the video for “Domino Dancing.” I never really believed it. America is quite homophobic, but it’s also totally gay. It’s really weird. America is traditionally a country of extremes living side by side.
The constellation of queer artists on MTV were not one big happy rainbow-flag-waving family. There was no “solidarity” between them because most were closeted. Instead, there were feuds. The two singers from Frankie Goes to Hollywood, MTV’s most “out” gay stars, for example, resented Boy George’s clownish closeted persona, and made disparaging, insinuating remarks about him to the press. Boy George, never one to let an insult slide, and never lacking a witty retort, wrote a letter to a music magazine in response stating that Frankie were bad role models for gay youth and that their “Relax” video (the original version never shown on MTV) portrayed gay life in a stereotyped, negative manner. It’s an interesting moment in queer history: a closeted gay pop star publicly condemning an openly gay band’s representation of gay culture. There are many layers of visibility and secrecy at play.
The Pet Shop Boys’ nemesis was Wham. Though both groups played synthy-dance pop, the PSBs sober, pseudo-intellectual seriousness was a marked contrast to Wham’s bubbly, energetic, sugar-coated effervescence. The PSB’s (both gay; Neil Tennant came out in 1994, Chris Lowe has never declared anything but is widely believed to be gay among fans), for example, stand completely still during their concerts in ironic mock seriousness in stark (and deliberate) contrast to George Michael’s running and jumping and wild gesticulating. The PSBs hated Wham and everything they represented. Until 1994, though, Tennant couldn’t criticize George Michael just for being a closet case, since he was one himself.
During the PSB’s brief moment of acute MTV stardom from 1986 to 1988, blandness ruled the network. MTV had become stale. The new wave had long crashed on the shore, and megastars like Prince and Madonna weren’t quite as new or exciting anymore. MTV was heavily promoting horrible boring groups like The Hooters, The Outfield, Glass Tiger, Scritti Politti, Johnny Hates Jazz, and other failed experiments in corporate market-research-driven pop music. Their videos were boring as hell.
The PSBs were much better than these other bands, perhaps the only new band of substance and significance to emerge on MTV from 1986 to 1988 besides Midnight Oil. “West End Girls” was their signature song, an icy, dark, and ominous meditation on status, fashion, and sexuality in London. There is a tension, dissonance, and unease in the song that viscerally takes me back to those gloomy late-Reagan years following my own sexual awakening, years I wallowed in shame, guilt, frustration, anxiety, and panic every time I had a sexual thought, which, once I started middle school, was about every 30 seconds. West End Girls became a soundtrack to my late-eighties melancholy, fear, and helplessness.
There is a strong depressive tendency in most of the Pet Shop Boys’ popular MTV videos. Consider the opening lines of West End Girls: “Sometimes your better off dead/There’s a gun in your hand and it’s pointing at your head.” Talk about bummer lyrics. Yet they are a perfect expression of queer mid-80s melancholy. If you’re a gay man, you’re going to die of AIDS anyway, so why not hasten things? Suicidality has been at the core of the gay experience long before AIDS, but AIDS elevated gay fatalism to unprecedented heights. It was hard to believe in your own future when so many friends were being robbed of theirs. In the 1950s, gay people lost jobs and had their reputations ruined, but in the 1980s, gay men died by the thousands while heterosexual society reacted with fear, judgment, jokes, and, in some cases, cheered the epidemic along.
Other PSB MTV videos, such as “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” and “It’s a Sin,” also express melancholy and sadness in distinctly queer tones. In each case, the lyrics are general enough for many possible interpretations, but for sullen queers, the titles and lyrics instantly capture the decade’s homophobic hysteria and the gloom that accompanied it. “What Have I Done to Deserve This” wallows in gloomy self-pity and helplessness, while “It’s a Sin” implicitly references religious intolerance. The PSB’s own queerness suggests these lyrical themes were not chosen arbitrary.
But as was MTV’s pattern, queer expressions had to be muted or made ambiguous. According to PSB expert Wayne Studer, Ph.D., “West End Girls” features “ambisexual lyrics,” particularly the lines “East End Boys and West End Girls,” and “Which would you choose, a hard or soft option.” I would argue that potential queer readings of these lyrics are undermined by Tennant’s vocal delivery as well as the imagery in the music video. Consider how Tennant purrs out the words “West End Giiiirrrls” with a certain salacious vibe, like he’s really turned on by these girls, certainly more than “East End boys” he only quickly mentions without the same hint of seduction. Tennant, in fact, sings most of the song in a semi-rap, vaguely robotic style, and his inflections of “West End Giiirrrls” provide some of the song’s most sing-able, musical moments.
The video has a very closet-y vibe as well. Though ambiguous in many respects, the most logical interpretation of the video to me is that it shows two men (Tennant and Lowe) on the prowl, urgently looking for those “West End giiiirrrls” that Tennant so seductively sings about. I doubt the video would have achieved mass MTV popularity had it not established a fundamentally heterosexual mood, even if queer inflections occasionally crept into the frame. When I was 12-going-on-13, I assumed the song and video were about picking up women. There was no compelling reason to believe otherwise. Tennant wasn’t out yet. They lacked stereotypical queer mannerisms. They weren’t effeminate, flamboyant, or gender-non-conformist in any visible way. West End Girls’ video lacks Mulcahy-esque male eye candy or blatant queer innuendos. In 1986, heterosexuality was still the cultural default. You assumed everyone was straight unless there was a specific, compelling reason to believe otherwise.
And frankly, the queerness that can be detected in this video is so drenched in the song’s creepy, paranoid, downbeat tone that it comes off as menacing, threatening, and certainly something to be avoided. Echoing the song’s opening lyrics, if you did pick up on the video’s queer vibes, you might want to kill yourself afterwards.
Most of the video consists of Tennant and Lowe skulking around London looking aloof, cold, and bored as Tennant lip-synchs the noir-ish lyrics. We see them and we see what they see, shots of random people, storefronts, traffic. Many shots are filtered through visual effects or slowed down, creating an ominous, slightly surreal mood. The video’s depressed tone begins with the opening shot of Lowe looking glumly down at the ground, averting our gaze, like he’s about to jump into the Thames or something, then we see a shop window displaying two child mannequins, a boy and girl, who look threatening and creepy (like the children in the Village of the Damned) given the brooding synth chords and the creeping-along camera-style. These shots establish the video’s downbeat mood.
This is followed by a montage of neon lights spinning (creating a dizzying, disorienting effect) intercut with shots of people walking down the street. The editing accelerates until the drums kick in. We see quick shots of Lowe and Tennant, but mostly other people, male and female. If the video is meant to hint at cruising, this sequence is giving us a choice between men or women.
There are a few shots, for example, of three men who look like they might be gay based on their clothing and haircuts, but they might right-wing skinheads also.
There is also a recurring shot of two women who seem be holding onto one another.
But the overall effect is hetero because the editing takes us back and forth between men and women, as though one is chasing the other. Individually, the shots might hint at queerness, but the whole effect is overwhelmingly straight.
Interestingly, the final shot of the montage (coinciding with a punctuating drum beat, and left to linger for a couple seconds on the screen) is that of young man’s face staring blankly at the camera, as though perhaps men are the ultimate cruising choice for Tennant and/or Lowe. It’s a whiff of queerness, though pretty subtle for MTV.
Interestingly, “West End Girls’” director, Andy Morahan, found success directing videos for arch-rival Wham/George Michael, including Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, I Want Your Sex and Father Figure. Despite the “feud” between the PSBs and Wham, and despite their dramatically different emotive musical sensibilities, the fact that their videos were directed by the same person underscores the similarities between the two bands. They were both two duos with at least one gay member who strategically appealed to queer audiences (PSB more so) but hid their own sexualities while making videos that contained echoes of queerness yet ultimately reinforced the decade’s heteronormative currents. Both duos were constructed primarily as heterosexual pop stars, Wham more aggressively, but within each band was built the possibility that the two members might be ‘more than friends.’ Indeed, Wham’s manager deliberately alluded to that possibility in Wham’s early early promotion, and Tennant and Lowe were rumored to have been boyfriends early in their careers. To an extent, each group followed the same playbook.
During the first verse, both men stand stationary in front of an orange metal wall and door. It looks like the entrance to warehouse. Tennant stares straight at the camera with his hands folded, making none of the body movements or clichéd facial gestures seen in most music videos. He looks like a yuppie with his tie under his trench coat, short hair, and cynical attitude. Lowe stands off the side in the background, looking down and around, avoiding our gaze. Through a special effect, he appears transparent, like he’s only half there. The shot lingers for awhile; we are supposed to think about Lowe’s transparency and contemplate its meaning.
There are many queer possibilities: allusions to passing or compromised visibility, perhaps, or a commentary on the AIDS crisis. But the image could have heterosexual or non-sexual interpretations as well, like he’s hiding in the shadows nervous about picking up women, or he’s only half a man because of his failure to attract a woman, or, most likely, because he’s a East End Boy without money, hence lower status, hence invisible in Britain’s class-stratified society. Class-consciousness is considerably more prominent in Britain than the U.S., and the lyrics allude to class inequity.
The next verse and chorus feature them prowling the West End. Their togetherness hints they might be a couple or they might be two gay friends out cruising for men together, but the video shows more women than men passing by, further reinforcing the video’s basic heterosexual orientation. The video and editing suggest they are pursuing women, but they just happen to be passing men on the street along the way.
During the song’s dreary instrumental break, with its groaning synth-voice sounds and eerie distant-sounding trumpet, we see helicopter shots of London through a black filter, making it look ugly and dark. Tennant and Lowe walk glumly along the Thames as the sun tries to peak out from the grey haze behind them. Tennant sings the next chorus at the camera with Parliament behind him as Lowe’s eyes wander off, staring at people walking by, following them with his eyes, very much like a gay man cruising. But once again, the camera shows mostly women, and when Tennant again whispers and coos out “giirrrls” we see an erotically charged, slow-motion shot of an attractive young woman walking by. Given the video’s relentless parade of women as desired objects of attraction, queer interpretations start to seem far-fetched.
There’s another possible interpretation—unlikely perhaps, but not impossible. Perhaps Lowe is supposed to be straight looking for women while Tennant accompanies him as a gay best friend, loyal but frustrated at seeing his friend attracted to women instead of himself. During adolescence, gay boys and girls often develop deep feelings for straight friends, accompanying them anywhere to be with them. When the straight friend gets a girlfriend or boyfriend of the opposite sex, a painful gloominess and suicidal frustration can kick in. It’s a jealousy that can’t be expressed. Thus Lowe checks out girls while Tennant secretly fumes about it but doesn’t want to lose the friendship. This is a real phenomenon. I might be imposing too much here. But after singing “giiirrrls” in the final chorus, Tennant looks off to the side with a completely emotionless, empty look on his face, like he has no interest in girls. Lowe is absent from the shot. Maybe he picked up a girl while Tennant dutifully awaits his return so they can share the train ride home together. It’s so blank that I think anyone could impose anything on it. I have little doubt that straight boys listened to this song and probably identified with it, even if the synth-beat sounded a little “faggy.”
Ultimately, it seems to me that the video was intended to create a predominantly heterosexual visual interpretation of the song. Videos are marketing tools, after all, and this was 1986. But the sternness and doubt in Tennant’s face and voice in this final “giirrrlllls” leaves a lingering doubt that something more complex is going on, something a queer listener might pick up on. Plus, it should be noted that the video lacks the crude objectification (close-ups of boobs in bikinis, for example) found in so many music videos. For a song about picking up girls, there’s something very sexless about this video and song. In the era of AIDS, I suppose that makes perfect sense.
When I was 12 and 13, I don’t think I picked up on the video’s subtle queer overtones but I definitely picked up on the gloom, frustration, and despair that underlays the song and video. I knew all about that.
Postscript:
Regarding “Domino Dancing,” the video mentioned in Tennant’s quote at the beginning of the essay: I don’t remember ever seeing this video on MTV. It’s interesting. It came out in 1988, right when PSBs faded from MTV’s rotation. It’s more sexually charged than “West End Girls.” The story focuses on a shirtless hunk, someone you might see in gay porn. Throughout the video, he flirts with an attractive woman, but jealous men lurk in the background alluding to kind of homoerotic drama. At one point, the hunky protagonist rubs up against Lowe while he plays keyboards. Later, he cuts in to dance with the woman, but shares a long glance with the man he is cutting in on, as though they have a history. In the final act, he and another hot shirtless gay porn hunk splash around on a beach in slow motion, somewhere in between playing and fighting. It’s pretty gay.
Here’s what Wikipedia says (nothing on censorship or whether it was played on MTV): “The storyline is about a love triangle between two attractive young men who are fighting over one girl. Rolling Stone magazine calls the video “probably the most homoerotic pop video ever made”, citing the slow-motion shots of the boys wrestling on the beach:
| “ | As such, the video exemplified the mainstream exploitation of gay sex in the Eighties, most evident in Calvin Klein ads and feature films like Top Gun. Unfortunately, Domino Dancing was every bit as dishonest, titillating the straight world with images it could never acknowledge, then doubling the repression by keeping openly gay expression closeted. | ” |
| — Jim Farber, “Beyond the Big Hair – Video News and Notes”, Rolling Stone magazine, 14–28 December 1989, page 235 | ||
1980s Music Video Closet 