Mandatory Bieber Thoughts
My thoughts are similar to other thoughts, however it appears that you must write a blog post about Bieber's Christmas song in order to keep your steampunk license, so here goes.
Bieber's music isn't in my taste rainbow. I'm a Weird Al, Dresden Dolls, Tom Smith, Da Vinci's Notebook kind of guy. My steampunk music tastes run through Sunday Driver, Clockwork Quartet and the Decemberists. So there's not much point me commenting directly on the song itself (note, subtle foreshadowing!)
The set? I like it. It starts off with clockworks and is an industrial complex for making Christmas presents. You don't get much more Industrial Revolution than that, they just needed to add more urchins. Seeing as this is tied in with Arthur Christmas, that makes sense too.
The outfits? Double plus like it. The clockwork girl is just magic, as are all the other dancers. I thank Kent Syfer Locke Gooch for pointing out that the Bieber one-glove is also a tie into his admiration for Michael Jackson; I had initially just thought it was a cool glove that he actually used. So I challenge the "stuck a cog on it" nature of his outfit.
The dancing? Again, the clockwork girl here stole the whole show for me. She just played it magnificently; but that said all the other dancers did a fine, fine job with it. Breakdancing being the rebellious dancing of the steampunk downtrodden made great sense to me.
Now back to the song itself. No it's not steampunk. But it's a Christmas tradition in the western world to have some current pop idol do a nearly unrecognisable version of a Christmas classic. So, again, Bieber is playing to type.
In summary, I thank Bieber's agents for thinking steampunk would be a cool idea. Because really, steampunk is cool. I like it. Why should I be surprised if others like it? They're allowed to like it for different reasons. And if they do start running around claiming that Bieber is the one to thank for starting steampunk; then we can just have fun with it.
Imported comments
- [Kent Syfer Locke Gooch, 2011-12-16 06:58:59] Thank you, sir, and bravo. Well said. I agree on the clockwork girl whole heartedly, her dancing was the pinnacle of the video.
- [Matthew Delman, 2011-12-17 01:03:05] Yeah, the Bieber video didn't bother me the way it did everyone else. The set design was absolutely gorgeous, like you said, and the dancing was very well done too. All in all it was a fairly serviceable example of Steampunk set-design.