uses stop-motion animation and long exposure times to effect a curious discur-
sive positioning between the realms of still and moving images. It uses manne-
quin stand-ins for the band members in a number of shots, which further iter-
ates a tension between the still and the moving, as well as between the
inanimate and the animate. The video was awarded theMTV Music Video
Award for innovation. The following fifteen years saw a creative surge in music
videos, often using animation in various forms to depict un-photographable
fantasies, also involving play with mutable temporality.
Street Spirit
Jonathan Glazer’s video for Radiohead’sStreet Spirit() was groundbreak-
ing in its use of acceleration and de-acceleration effects, as well as in the com-
bining of two irreconcilable temporalities within the same frame, allowing sub-
jects in the same space to move at different speeds. One or both of these effects
is featured in almost every shot.The video, shot in black-and-white, shows a
s trailer park at night with a thunderstorm looming in the distance. Mem-
bers of the band are sitting on chairs outside one of the trailers. The opening
shot shows the lead singer Thom Yorke standing on top of a trailer, letting him-
self fall backwards towards the ground. The video decelerates to slow motion
and we never see him hit the ground. It cuts to him lying on top of the roof of a
damaged car. In the next shot, Yorke is standing in the foreground, singing. His
right arm has been digitally removed. It looks as if the footage of him has also
been altered in terms of its speed. In the background, the guitar player, Jonny
Greenwood jumps out of the trailer and seems almost suspended in the air as
the footage of him slows down. Yorke is not affected by the slow motion effect.
This is typical of the way in which irreconcilable temporalities are combined in
the same frame throughout the video. A bit later, we see Yorke smashing win-
dow-panes with a hammer. He moves at a normal speed, but the windows
break in slow motion. Shortly afterwards Yorke also encounters himself. While
one Yorke jumps in slow motion, another Yorke strikes a stick horizontally un-
der his feet at a normal speed. Between these various tableaus of irreconcilable
temporalities, we see shots of Yorke singing, often in double exposures fading
over each other, as well as tableaus with three female dancers slowed down and
speeded up again, a man’s face covered with tar, and guitar player Ed O’Brian
falling backwards in his chair as the slow motion effect halts the fall. The video
ends with Yorke jumping, while slow motion erases gravity and leaves him
suspended in thin air.
164 Arild Fetveit