Radio - Rammstein (MV review)

Review of “Radio” by Rammstein

As you have probably noticed already, Rammstein has just come back this year with three music videos that stand out in the crowd of lyric-videos as they are the typical Rammstein MVs, that is: videos entertaining us with a fun idea, a good story, or shocking imagery.

I’m here giving the translation of my review of the second video, Radio, which I wrote right after it came out. My reviews of Deutschland and Ausländer will follow shortly.

A glimpse at the lyrics enables you to identify the theme of the song nearly right away. Someone living in the GDR is trying to find a way out while listening to western songs on the radio even if he (or she) knows that it is strictly forbidden. Neither the East, nor the West are mentioned in the lyrics but you can easily make up for the context if you know a bit of the band’s story. However, from the second half of the song on, the persona is describing an ecstatic moment, while listening to those forbidden songs, that gives the impression that he (or she) is leaving our world and experiencing something close to an orgasm (I’ll come back to this point later).

So I can identify two main ideas in this video. On the one hand, the radio epitomizes hope: it represents a way to fight against oppressors, or more precisely censorship here. On the other hand, it represents a consumer product which is fascinating, thus another way to oppress people, women here. I’ll study both aspects, which are linked to each other, one after the other in order to put the light on the video’s strange ambivalence.

A Radio to fight against censorship…

Right at the introduction, the context is set up: the town of Königs Wusterhausen, near Berlin, is mentioned by the host. This town is well-known for its radio transmitter in the communist era, so it enables us to understand that the video is set in an imaginary GDR in which Till, dressed up as Klaus Nomi (a West-Berlin singer, famous in the 1980s), is singing with a band wearing 1920s clothes while the police, who is led by a chief officer wearing a Prussian Tschako helmet dating back from the 1930s, are trying to stop the transmission in vain.

Why are they trying to do so? It seems the song on the radio is spreading a sudden need for freedom among women (and girls). After watching some of them making the radio receiver, you can see other women rebelling in order to claim for a freedom called “Sendefreiheit” (freedom of transmission) on one of the signs they are carrying while marching.

It seems contradictory to say so, but black and white here stresses on the timeless aspect of the MV, which could refer to a totalitarian past as much as a contemporary period: have a look at the way the cops are dressed, with their weird masks, or the European Union flags (which turn out to be red at the end of the video). Indeed, censorship remains a main issue even today in western societies, and Rammstein have already faced such troubles (for example, the song ITDW was censored in Germany when LIFAD came out). Moreover, the jumpcuts – a trick already used in Ich Will video directed by the same person – simulate interferences in the transmission due to the fluctuation of waves, and one should notice that both MVs deal with the media and the way a message can get out of government control. In Radio, the band cannot be stopped by the police; in Ich Will, the robbers are arrested but are later awarded for their mischief.

The police trying to stop the concert in vain shows how elusive music can be. One can curb freedom of speech but music, as it is universal, becomes a means to get over the limitation. In the lyrics, you can find a persona who “vanishes from the world for a couple of hours.” In the video, the idea is revealed by the group of police officers dancing while their chief is away. Even the most totalitarian state can do nothing against a need for freedom spreading among half of the population.

Besides, this fight for freedom is dealt with humor. The situation comedy, which can be identified in the scenes of excess – from the women’s hysteria to Till’s funny faces – gives way to the absurd, as a hairdresser is cutting a man’s ear off to sing with it or a nun is whipping herself in front of a sacralized radio. Of course, this type of humor is there probably because it is the easiest to understand, but you can also identify a meta-textual commentary on Rammstein, who have often challenged moral values and had to fight against censorship precisely because of that.

…and surrender against consumerism

Freedom of speech, however, is here immediately supervised by consumerism. Right at the beginning of the video, you can notice that the women who built the radio receiver are holding it like a trophy, symbolically putting it up over themselves. In the shop (on the window of which you can spot the sign “Radio für Sie” which can be understood as “radio for you” as much as “radio for her,” since women make up for most of the customers), they are fighting tooth and nail to get the brand new products, reminding me of those viral videos taken on Black Fridays, showing people fighting one another for just a TV screen.

Women here are just customers, whose common sense might have been lost. This idea is epitomized with the scene of a woman breastfeeding a radio which she walks in a pram, right in the streets, though owning a radio in this society is obviously prohibited. When the chief officer is confiscating it, she is immediately falling to her knees in a submissive posture – she symbolically expresses obedience to the police, thus to the state, but also to the radio, thus to the consumer product, as if it were a bare necessity.

Moreover, the women’s hysterical attitude reminds me of that of pop star fans. You may have noticed that the radios on sale are branded with the names of a few Rammstein members and women are buying them like fans would buy boy-group dolls or figurines, or any kind of band merchandising. This idea becomes obvious with the ending scene, in which a woman is rushing towards the band. Therefore, you could consider this video to be a star system criticism, star system which started in Western countries (everyone remembers the Beatles phenomenon) and made it possible for a band or singer to be promoted, even created, in order to please and entertain a specific audience.

Rammstein may be expressing a form of self-mockery here: they are identifying themselves with those modern icons, nearly deifying themselves as they end up being just holograms, which are impossible to reach, apart from other people. But self-mockery is not as cleverly used here as it was in Keine Lust video (which was directed by the same man): KL is symbolically more efficient as it avoids the problems I will mention in my conclusion.

Besides, the video shows the totalitarian state being submissive to Western consumerism as the police officers start dancing as if no political power could be as strong as well-conceived entertainment. You can notice that entertainment is the winner in the end, while the band is walking away – this type of scene has been a leitmotiv in Rammstein MVs since Du Hast) – their glory becoming all the more obvious as color come back to the screen at the same time.

The band’s attitude at the end of the video – they look serious, stone-faced – because it is radically different from their attitude in the rest of the video, creates ambivalence in the message. After a very burlesque imagery – with absurd scenes where women are enthralled by the music and start screaming, where a few musicians (Flake or Schneider for example) move in a ridiculous way, where Till even looks weird – the video is concluded on six men who are walking slowly, looking up to the horizon and away from the fan running towards them, not even smiling to anybody, as if they did not care at all. This strange conclusion gives the impression that the band does not accept their burlesque aspect, the “pure entertainment” in them, that all of this was just an act, even though it has become part of what makes Rammstein since the Mann gegen Mann, Mein Land or Pussy videos.

Their “badass” attitude at the end neutralizes any star system criticism or any commentary about consumerism that there might have been in the video.

“My radio belongs to me”: mishandled feminism

It is impossible to conclude without taking into consideration the way feministic imagery was used in the MV and helps neutralize any criticism that might have been offered.

Here are a few emblematic scenes not already mentioned so far: the stay-at-home mother who is hearing the song on the radio and rebelling against her husband sitting and waiting for his dinner before she knocks the table over and lets him fall on the floor, to her great joy and her daughter’s; the masturbating woman in her bed, with the radio between her legs as if it were representing her vulva, while a peeping tom is watching her from the streets until the chief police officer intervenes and takes a peep at the woman as he looks horrified; the threesome with a woman riding a man and kissing a woman who is giving the man a sip of champagne (from the way they are dressed, you could see it as a reference to the sexual liberation of artists in the 1920s). These three scenes, along with the marching one, all represent the women’s rights movement.

The movement calls for, among many other things, taking back one’s own body, which leads to controlling one’s own sexuality, on an equal footing with men. This is one of the main ideas claimed by 20^th century feminism. Sexuality may here be interpreted as pleasure, which leads to a new interpretation of the lyrics, especially the moment when the radio listener is describing an ecstatic ride:

Every night I secretly took off

Flying on Music’s back

I laid my ear on its wings

Singing quietly in my hands

Every night I can fly again

Straight ahead with the music

Floating thus through space

No frontiers, no borders

You should notice here that only at night can the persona listen to the “forbidden songs” and the “dangerous notes” that make him or her reach the climax. Music and masturbation may be the same thing.

However, a huge problem remains in the video: the feministic fight is associated with scenes in which women, subjected to consumerism, become hysterical in front of a shopping window or fight each other for mere radios. But feminism precisely denounces the way capitalism has turned women into the perfect consumer since the 1950s – and it is nowadays improper to associate two ideas that are radically contradictory. It is even ludicrous, if not alarming, for a band of males to associate the groupie with the feminist.

Nevertheless, it is hard to spot any reactionary intention in this video. I take as an example the breastfeeding in public scene, which is legitimate feministic message nowadays.

Consequently, there are a few blunders in the video – the strangest one may be the way Delacroix’s famous painting is reenacted, with Marianne (the allegory of France) standing on the barricades and showing the words “My radio belongs to me” on her naked breasts as if she were calling for submission instead of freedom, submission to a consumer product but also to that group of men who are just holograms in the end and who do not care much about the movement they have triggered (again, this is a huge mistake about feminism).

Let us be reminded that there can be ambivalence without contradiction. The band, without this ludicrous ending, would have given efficient self-mockery. However, the criticism against modern icons is neutralized by the way the band present themselves in the end, as they belong to another world – they are definitely not on an equal footing with the rest of the population. But if the band is the allegory of freedom of speech, fighting against censorship and joining women in a call for a freedom, the end contradicts the idea, as they reject the woman who rushes towards them: freedom cannot just be for the band’s own interests. Finally, if the band only symbolizes a new form of oppression, that of consumerism, manipulating people’s needs and desires, the whole video is incoherent because of the imagery it uses: feministic symbols, the red color of EU flags…

It is very surprising to see that many blunders in a video which is undeniably beautiful, with fine aesthetics and a lot of work done beforehand. This video was directed with a strong sense of beauty, and it gives a very interesting, ambivalent interpretation to the lyrics, with imagery never seen in a Rammstein video before (for example, the dancing cops, probably the best part of the whole video). Even though there are mistakes, Radio, like many of Heitmann’s MVs, will be part of the most memorable videos of the band. It is just a shame that he missed perfection – just a little.