Music Video Review
Animal by Maroon 5
While many disapprove of the message given off in the video for Maroon 5's Animal, in which Adam Levine plays a stalker to a gorgeous woman (played by his real life wife, Behati Prinsloo) who enters his butcher shop and continues to follow her around, eventually making love to her in his mind, I find it very artistic and the story was well portrayed in the allotted time.
I'm particularly intrigued by the symbolism and parallelism between Adam hanging the pictures of her and hanging with the meat in the basement. The purpose of the two is to show how his obsession went from wanting to see her, to wanting to be with her. He was able to control the images, but he wasn't able to control her. He hung on a spot in the basement surrounded by meat, but not containing meat itself. Perhaps he realized his action would make him just as "low" as the dead animals around him. Or perhaps because he had been able to control a copy of her on the clotheslines in his room, he now wanted to control her body and just created a connection to the hanging of the meat. He saw her as a prize.
During the bridge of the song, Adam imagines making love to the girl and between shots of them together, he is seen in the basement somewhat mimicking his actions between him and the girl with the meat: he kisses her, he kisses the meat. This is yet another example of him seeing her as nothing more than a prize, a piece of meat that he can do what he wants with, can control. Before, he had hung with the meat, then he was distant from it (on the opposite wall) when she was rejecting him, and then finally, when in his mind he was with her, he was all over the hanging meat, arms wrapped tightly around it and caressing it.
That's just some of the symbolism I saw in the video, but overall, I quite enjoyed it. Though I understand the message that some people are getting from it (stalking, raping, and the fact that his character seemed to think she was enjoying the whole thing), and though I absolutely don't support that message (seriously. I want to make that completely clear), I love the art of the video and it definitely expresses his thoughts in a way that makes you feel his same desire for this girl.
Here's the link for the full video if, for whatever reason, you haven't seen it yet:
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