Duran Duran: Girl Panic!
Half band bio, half grandiolquent centerfold advertisement, 100% Project Runway art
Girl power is the energy that galvanizes Duran Duran’s nine-minute concept video for “Girl Panic!” Like so many music videos that are looking like Oscar contenders for Best Short Film, the Eighties boy band, still reverbating on the specatcular comeback holstered by Mark Ronson’s Rio Revisited production, bends the rules once more.
No stranger to the idea of art redesign, Duran Duran puts supermodels back on the saddle again for a display of glorified lady admiration. Naomi Campbell leads the troupe as the band’s frontwoman, while Cindy Crawford gets into the character of John Taylor. Eva Herzigova, Helena Christensen and Simon Le Bon‘s real life wife Yasmin fill up the rest of the cast. With the eye candy inserted into the roles of the band, Duran Duran hangs to the side as secondary aids, helping to make glossy reality-TV-natured clips for the next E! True Hollywood Story.
The song itself is spliced and cropped into the Jonas Åkerlund-directed montage while the ladies, in their own voices, give us a brief history of Duran Duran’s evolution. Sure the video is full of pompous, ego-driven adrenaline and alienates the fun of one of the album’s delightful disco moments, but the band reinvents the wheel of the video once again while also keeping viewers glued to stunning black and white visuals, camera angles, wicked girl-on-girl partying and a plush view of London’s Savoy Hotel. Hell, the video even gives you a quick acid flashback of all their culture-changing music videos taken from their early work, particularly their love for having “girls on film.” Girl Panic! is like Glee for adults.
J MATTHEW COBB
