new vid - "High and Dry" - Kings
High and Dry
Fandom: Kings
Song/Artist: High and Dry by Radiohead
Duration: 4:23 minutes
Summary: Jack character, Jack/Joseph. The best thing you've had has gone away.
Spoilers: whole series
Thanks to deathisyourart for the very helpful beta and littleheaven70 for help with source.
Password: redballoon
You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com
kings_HighandDry from Nicky on Vimeo.
Two jumps in a week, I bet you think that's pretty clever don't you boy.
Flying on your motorcycle, watching all the ground beneath you drop.
You'd kill yourself for recognition, kill yourself to never ever stop.
You broke another mirror, you're turning into something you are not.
Don't leave me high, don't leave me dry.
Drying up in conversation, you will be the one who cannot talk.
All your insides fall to pieces, you just sit there wishing you could still make love.
They're the ones who'll hate you when you think you've got the world all sussed out.
They're the ones who'll spit at you, you will be the one screaming out.
It's the best thing that you've ever had.
The best thing that you've ever, ever had.
It's the best thing that you've ever had.
The best thing you've had has gone away.
The closing narrative went quasi-AU. I had 40 seconds left at the turn, and the way I saw it, I could either spend that time frantically trying to cover the Machiavellian shitstorm that went down in the last three episodes, or I could carry the tone and narrative that the vid built up thus far, and take it to its emotional conclusion. I went for the latter, even though it may undercut the expectation of viewers who have seen the show.
Additional footage from The Red Balloon and Flight of the Red Balloon. As the vid turned out, the red balloon seems a specific metaphor for Joseph. Which wasn't my intention, as it was supposed to be more of a concept than a straight character metaphor. But upon reflection, I guess it does make sense because Joseph is a concept more than he is a fully-grown character. In the world of Kings where both major and minor characters are painted with care, he alone is not so much a person as he is an idea, giving a face to Jack's repression, and providing plot points when Jack needed prodding.
When did a series of late-night trysts become real love? How did it start? When did they find time to actually learn to know each other? How could something like that turn into something that you could take your own life over? (Or, as some have pointed out, was his death something else entirely, as Rose has done more over less.) I don't think we would have ever gotten answers to those questions, even if the show lives. In the end, this isn't so much a vid about Jack and Joseph as it is about the choices that Jack made and that he must live with.
I couldn't figure out how to integrate the external source into the vid, somewhat ironic given that not 12 hours before that I was posting a meta piece which discussed external source integration at length. In the end, I was heavily swayed by Radiohead's own music videos circa The Bends/OK Computer, and also REM's videos from around the same time. A mental image I have of those videos was that they seemed to be all about tableaux of people just watching things happen, with a trace of sympathy but mostly detached and motionless, not because they don't care, but because they know they are powerless to stop whatever injustices they're witnessing.
That may or may not have been what the videos actually looked like, but that was certainly the general mood I took away from them. The tone of this song seemed to epitomise that feeling, so in the end it's just the people of Gilboa, perhaps not emotionless but certainly motionless, just watching as Jack lets go of everything that's worth something.