By Juliette Tang
Having been a latchkey child in the ’90s with ready access to that extinct and sorely missed era of MTV when VJs and actual music video programming were my after-school treat, the dawning of my sexual awakening was catalyzed in part by videos like “Closer” by NIN, “Erotica” by Madonna, and, more disturbingly, “Wicked Games,” by Chris Isaak. Watching minute particles of sand lodge themselves between the crevices of Helena Christensen’s sun-kissed bosoms (or, creepily, Chris Isaak’s briary armpits) resulted in, to this day, an irrational fear of any combination of pompadour and wifebeater.
It’s odd that watching Eric Wareheim’s music video for “Hole to Feed,” by Depeche Mode, ushers me back, a la little madeleine, to my days on the old plaid couch in front of the wood-paneled TV, silently praying that I’d see something shocking before my parents came home. More specifically, it makes me acutely aware of that sedentary, vaguely molested sensation I experienced when I witnessed Marilyn Manson ride a pig in “Sweet Dreams” for the first time, my eyes wide with fascination and horror and my mouth agape with Fruit-by-the-Foot.