Hurricane by 30 Seconds To Mars came out about a year and a half ago, but it had a lot of stops and starts – which might be why you might have missed it. In fact, people are still unpacking the controversy, deep layers and imagery around one of the most arresting music videos to come out recently. It’s certainly on par with Gaga’s Telephone, and goes much, much further with the sex, extreme fetish and violence than what Telephone colorfully alluded to. If you haven’t spent the 13 minutes of your time to watch Hurricane, it’s highly recommended – even if you don’t like the music.
This video was clearly a labor of passion and philosophy, and I’ll admit it includes a lot of references that for me are unexpectedly personal. Still, what is written about it online isn’t complete and I think that perhaps you’d need to know a bit about eroto-fetish subcultures to recognize the players. My point is, much is written that has associated Kanye West with this project, but he’s not in this at all – and overlooked are Terry Richardson (cameo, still photos), icons like the Porcelain Twinz, and outrageously sexy ancillary photography by one of my all-time favorite couture shooters, Aram Bedrossian.
Check out Bedrossian’s delicious Hurricane gallery.
When Hurricane was released, MTV clenched its rectum so tight that the video appeared to be under MTV’s banhammer – only to later surface in en edited version on MTV2 after hassling the fuck out of singer, performer, writer and creator Jared Leto.
Here is one letter out of several we received about the inability for networks to broadcast HURRICANE as is:
(…) 09:17 – WOMAN RUNS FINGER OVER OTHER WOMAN’S G-STRING CLAD BOTTOM AND TOUCHES HER ANUS –
This shot makes the video completely restricted.
Well, then I guess life makes living “completely restricted” too. Oh well.
