Radiohead songs are like clouds: they can drastically change your mood depending on what kind they are and everybody can see in them what they want.
Like clouds, there are forces within that we don’t suspect but sometimes can see a glimpse of: the formidable energy contained within can be an awe inspiring experience when we get confronted to it.
The best Radiohead video is not really a Radiohead video: it’s UNKLE’s Rabbit in your Headlights song, written by Thom Yorke in 1997, before OK Computer. It’s a very Radiohead-like song, with a more UNKLE-like music.
The video is beautiful and simple, weird and compelling.
As usual, nothing is explained and easy, but it paints a very moody canvas onto which most of will find significance closely tied to their beliefs.
These are a song and a video that clearly have content, but that content is difficult to interpret systematically, and I’m not entirely sure it should.
I stumbled a while ago on a christian site that insisted on viewing the awesome video as a Jesus allegory, complete with the symbol of the man on the cross at the end.
Well, I see something else, in fact many things else.
To me, it could be taken on a simple level: a cool video that surprises you by its very grim representation of reality and casually extreme violence: a mad man, ranting in the middle of a lane in a tunnel gets run over many times until he removes his coat and stops after what seems like a eureka moment. The next car behind him is destroyed crashing into him.
A plausible interpretation could be that he represent humanity gone mad, pushed around violently by forces it created until it finds itself again, naked of all protection and stands in the way, deciding that this is enough. This could be an allegory for capitalism-gone mad or a poster video for the anti-globalisation movement: we can stand against the tide of what we unleashed.
The video/song could also be interpreted as an essay on our intrinsic fragility and our exposure to the selfishness of others: some people will run you over without giving it a second thought, but we can be stronger than them by standing our ground.
It could also be that we’re slowly getting into the view of the rambling madman, he gets ran over but by out of blind persistence, he changed the nature of the world.
The thing is, we have evolved to seek patterns and explanations. Unless something is painfully obviously nonsensical, we will try to dig and ascertain the significance of what we are exposed to.
A clever song and video like this one only shows how much our brain can be compelled to find explanations when it can’t get meaning quickly. It’s probably what makes art in general so interesting: it challenges you to dig into yourself to find an explanation to the feelings it evokes.
References
- Information about the video and the song. Especially telling is the bit about how MTV refused to air the video.
- A thread on the video containing links to high-resolution versions of it.
- The album UNKLE Psyence Fiction on Amazon, from which Rabbit in your Headlight is taken
- Lyrics to the song. Note the reference to Jacob’s Ladder.
