For Erykah Badu’s newest album “New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh”, she braved ridicule and possible police arrest by shedding her clothes to record the video for “Window Seat”, in which she walks down the street in public and ends up “shot” by the end of the video. The blood pooling from her wound spells out “groupthink“.
Badu filmed the video guerilla-style in her hometown of Dallas, Texas, very close to the site of John Kennedy’s assassination, which was part of her message. She plays with themes of individuality and conformity in her video, but of course it’s the nudity that is getting the bulk of the attention. Which is, in a way, also part of the idea. At the end of the video, Erykah states “They who play it safe, are quick to assassinate what they don’t understand. They move in packs, ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another. They feel more comfortable in groups, less guilt to swallow. They are us. This is what we have become, afraid to respect the individual.”
According to Badu, the bystanders are all just random people who happened to be present that day, and most of them were trying to ignore what she was doing. She points out the one guy picking up her clothes (you can see him early on in the video) in the background, but she didn’t stick around to find him, being more concerned with getting out of the area before the police showed up to arrest her for public indecency. It’s a one-take video, and it works well.
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