Video for "Love Action (I Believe In Love)" by The Human League

My boyfriend was watching a Human League video on YouTube and left the site up after retiring to bed. The next morning, I decided to watch videos for some of the other songs on their 1981 album Dare other than the hit "Don't You Want Me." "Love Action" sounded familiar. Within the first few seconds, it all came back...being 9, 10 years old in Phoenix watching the video on MTV circa 1982-1983. I distinctly remember the wedding scene and Susan Sulley throwing household items at the camera. Until yesterday, I had forgotten how much this video had influenced my preferred modes of filmmaking to this day and my conception of romantic relationships growing up. To me, it encapsulates the best of the early MTV "New Pop" videos from the U.K., in their expert location of a common ground of paranoia in 70s gritty social realism and 80s vogueish "acting as if."



If you watch this after "Don't You Want Me," you could construe this video as its sequel. Here you have the band/crew assembled to make another movie, scenes of which are intercut with Phil Oakey's memories of his failed relationship with Susan Sulley (in the videos only...in real life, he dated the brunette singer, Joanne Catherall). He confuses between the realities of the film and his personal life; plus, his actor self breaks frame to prosthelytize about love to us viewers directly. I think this confusion is wonderfully realized in the editing and choice of shots, and goes to show how much experimentation with music video as an art form was embraced by MTV in those days. Back then, this was a major factor in the channel's decision to include a video within its rotation, which opened the door to a refreshing swell of new faces and voices. In his amazing book Rip It Up And Start Again: Post-punk 1978-1984, Simon Reynolds quotes David Byrne of the Talking Heads reminiscing about this state of affairs:

You could do a vaguely experimental film thing as cheaply as you possibly could, and if it was connected to a song, MTV would play it, because they needed stuff desperately in those days. So you didn't have to tour in order to build up an audience. It was a bit like how I imagine the early days of pop singles were - you'd record something real quick, and then a month later it'd be a forty-five single in jukeboxes and it would be on the radio.

By 1984, this was all over. Radio hits and exorbitant budgets seized the day at the network. Before long, game shows and reality shows eclipsed the music. But I'm glad I was an avid and impressionable viewer during MTV's glory days.