Long time no see

If you've been following my blog long enough, you'll have seen this video before - not that I expect you to complain about seeing it again. This is one of my personal-hot-button classics, right up there with Bjork's video for "All Is Full of Love" and Massive Attack/Young Fathers' "Voodoo in my Blood" (which you can look on YouTube if you like, or just wait for me to post again one day. I'm sure I will).

But this time I'm adding a new element to this familiar scorching video. I've figured out a plot which, I think, makes perfect sense considering what we see onscreen. In fact, it might even have been what the director had in mind, if he or she is an MC fetishist.
 

Let's start with a recap, making note of the most important points. We start with a woman alone at night, locked in a house yet fully visible to the outside world thanks to a wall of solid glass. Locked behind that glass, wearing such a delicate, fluttery gown, she might as well be a fish in an aquarium...but fish get put into aquariums by their owners, people who buy them and display them as mindless ornaments. Our protagonist doesn't seem too bright, either, when she gets frightened by a simple clattering sound on her phone - a sound that, incidentally, causes her nipple to pop straight up...or is she frightened because the sound aroused her?

But when the phone rings again, but she seems less frightened by what should a scarier sound: a woman's gloating laughter. Who is it, sounding so confident and almost diabolical? It's not the fetish zombies who spring up a moment later. They don't smile or speak, and their faces are empty of everything except a firm sense of purpose. Our protagonist flutters away, but the zombies drag her back to the front room (Look closely and you'll recognize the furniture and bookshelves), where they can be seen. Apparently they aren't afraid of unseen watchers. Their firmness turns to flat-eyed pleading, and they begin to pose for her. Eventually they make her over, but not into one of them. Her lingerie is shimmering white while theirs is black with chains. Her face is bold, while theirs are almost soft. They kneel behind her as she looks straight at us.

Now, tell me: what was all that about? What do these images suggest to you? To me, they suggest that our protagonist began the story as a captive, imprisoned by someone who thought they could own her and display her at will. That person must have been very powerful, to wipe her identity and turn her into a fainting flower. But the zombies are "Fleurs du Mal" - flowers of evil, and they've come to reclaim her. Our protagonist recognizes the clacking noise: it's made by beads or chains, something a real slave might wear. And hearing it stirs the first of her memories just as it stirs her nipple.

Then comes the second call, and the laughter....which doesn't come from the zombies who spring up with supernatural speed. They aren't t capable of laughter any more than they're capable of truly threatening this woman. She only runs because she doesn't remember, so they drag her back to the front room, back into the sight of her "owner," and begin to pose for her. They're reminding her of all the perversions she taught them; they're pleading with their eyes for her to remember. She is the owner, and even without her direct influence, they're still so deeply enthralled that they'll rescue her rather than free themselves. They can't talk - she's taken their voices from them - so they do what they can. They obey the commands she once gave them and hope she'll remember again.

It happens, finally, when she fetches up against the boots of her majordomo. The memories flood back and she sinks to the floor, half ecstatic, half horrified because she knows now how she was trapped. But her slaves descend on her, loving, ecstatic, and redress her in the familiar lingerie of a domme. Then she snaps upright with the same supernatural speed she gave her puppets and she stares at the window, knowing her ex-owner is watching, knowing how frightened that person is to see her returned to herself.  They'd captured her by trickery, but she was always the more powerful of the two. Now that she's free, she'll be out of her prison in an instant; and she'll make the false owner grovel mindlessly at her feet. She'll laugh that laugh again, and her her slave will shudder in delight. Already they've forgotten who they were. They're even glad to have forgotten. But they'll never be like her other slaves, the privileged ones. She won't dress her ex-owner, or let them touch her ever again. She'll have something nasty in store, something only a mind as brilliant and powerful as hers could dream up. And no matter how degrading it is, her former owner will love it.

No one fucks with this woman and gets away with it.