Last December, Doug and I met up with Lucas Leyva and Jillian Mayer in a cafe in Miami to record an interview for an episode of the Music Video Land podcast. We were interested in talking with them about a video that we were a little confused about at the time - "Glazin'" by Jacuzzi Boys, and we were not sure if Mayer\Leyva (their directing duo name) would even talk to us about it as themselves.
We weren't sure because up until that point we were only aware of Mayer\Leyva giving interviews in character as "Jacuzzi Girls", a fake group of six ladies who obstensibly filmed a music video featuring their own vaginas painted as different characters, "singing" the song "Glazin'". The video had a very weird story, and even had its own talk at SXSW, so I think we should check it out.
Originally, this video was presented as (like I mentioned above), something that a group of girls had done independently and put up online as a fan video. The video showed up on YouTube with a message that read (in part):
we are 6 girls (and one tiny dog) who looooove the Jacuzzi Boys!!!!! (don't wory 18+, don't be gross) We made a fan vid a few nites ago we all got together at Karen's new apt. Anyways, this is our favorite song from the new album.
At the bottom there was an update with a message from the band as if they had been shown the video and adopted it as official:
Yes! we're absolutely down to make this public... We'll now call this the "official" video for Glazin'! It's a masterpiece!
I have to be honest - I was completely fooled by this at first glance. It was just weird enough to be plausible, and it was clear that there were vaginas in this video so it wasn't like there was a lot of reasons to be suspicious of the basic facts. Eventually it was revealed that Mayer\Leyva were behind it, but they spent much of the time after the video was released responding to press inquiries as the Jacuzzi Gals and even made it clear that they talk about the video in character, so we weren't sure. Luckily, the talked about it as the directing duo and we cleared up a lot of things about the video we weren't sure about (which is a lot).
After it was released, it was obvious that someone didn't want the video up, as the video started being taken down and then popping up before being taken down again. Behind the scenes was a tiff between Jacuzzi Boys' label and Mayer\Leyva that seems to have started with the fact that some of the vagina characters are copyrighted (like Homer Simpson). The rest is a pretty extreme version of a director vs. label fight, and if you want a very in-depth look at it from Mayer and Leyva's point of view, they actually had an entire talk about it at SXSW that was recorded:
The video is still on Vimeo (which is the embed that we use) and is also apparently hosted on the same server the KKK and Nambla use because it is run by people who do not answer to things like DMCA takedown notices.
But aside from the crazy route this video took, it's still interesting to look at it just as a music video.
When it was released, a lot of the reaction was along the lines of "you ruined vaginas for me". And it's true, this is a really odd look at vaginas - they have been dressed up using really messy arts and crafts style materials that are crumbling and cracking. There are cotton balls, googly eyes, and then there's the fishing wire that makes the vaginas "sing", but only really manages to animate part of the vagina. (I know that there are other words for the vagina parts, but as Mayer\Leyva discuss in their SXSW talk, it's easier to use a blanket term.)
The thing that gets me is the fact that this video appears to have been filmed on a Hi8 camcorder from 1996. It's yellow, extremely lo-fi, and adds a level of grittiness that is unsettling as people used to suck slick images. That combined with the crudeness of the puppetry makes for a video that maybe sounds sexy (vaginas! in a video! you'll love it!) and turns it into some sort of funhouse mirror version of it by taking all the elements usually surrounding female genitals in media and warping them until you get what you see in "Glazin'". It's ridiculously explicit and weird, and I count it as one of the most WTF music videos we've ever come across in our time as IMVDb curators.
The more you listen to Mayer\Leyva the more you realize that themes of reappropriation and the ideas behind images are pretty central to their work (of which music videos are just a portion). This leads to the one fact that was mentioned in the SXSW talk that really blows me away - at one point a possible release venue for this that was floated around was a website like Hustler or Playboy. Maybe one day the internet will be the home of a new vaginas-dressed-as-stuff fetish, but I don't think the people of Hustler or Playboy were ready for this.
