MVK #2: portishead - glory box

Glory Box by Portishead is Music Video Kino! 

directed by alexander hemming

produced by lizzie ross for fat fish films

released november 14th, 1994

for those of you who were actually there - was glory box the slinkiest song of the 90s? i know slink was big, but this has to be up there right? right under no ordinary love? this song just makes me want to gather my hair up in my arms and tip-toe around my very cold, very sharp penthouse. or appear in penthouse. it's just so good and so bleak - i feel like most of the best sexy songs are very depressing. 

of course i love the drag element of the video. notably, the low-fashion drag element of the video. really transformative high-concept avant-garde drag is beautiful, but there's just something about a woman in slapped-on sideburns and a masc mouche that i think is perfect. drag kings especially have had to show up & show out to earn their place in the zeitgeist, and nowadays you see a lot of fantastical contour and bizarre cosplays (thinking of river glass as a scrub daddy), but never forget your heritage! lesbians doing adam lambert in bedazzled smoking jackets, ace bandages, and wife-beaters (out of drag call them anything else, in drag that thing is a wife-beater! it's kayfabe!). 

i just love this shit. everyone in this video just looks like they're on an old soap opera. and sometimes that's the drag i love. i love the makeup of the office lady characters too - it's very 'guest spot on mad men'. i like that the video is using drag to dig at old-school gender roles without relying on 'haha, crossdressing'. you don't really get the sense that the male cast, especially, are like 'lol, wouldn't it be dumb if i were a woman'? it wouldn't be! that's part of the narrative of the song! it's just dumb for men to avoid tenderness and refuse to take a little look from our side! 

so yeah, i love gender songs, i'm especially a little weak to straight people gender songs because they really seem to be going through it (see: running up that hill). i imagine being taught that there are 2 discrete sexes that are also immutable personalities with special jobs and that they will never understand each other and then just being sent out there, trying to have relationships about that, must be insane to experience. idk if i would make it. currently my imaginations of what it's like to be straight are 1. the 'man vs. bear' scenario and 2. this music video. i don't think i'm totally off. beth gibbons ty for your plea! 

please recommend me your favourite gender-tension songs.