Music Video of the Day: My Love, My Life by ABBA (1976, dir. Per Falkman)

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIaN-HRR92A

It’s been so long since I did an ABBA music video that a lot of their videos are now listed on IMDb. I don’t remember them being there before. It doesn’t look complete, but somebody went through trying to hit everything they could. I bring this up because I didn’t know about this one till I looked at the list of their videos on IMDb. I would have missed it otherwise.

It’s a simple video that would have you believe that it was a solo effort by Agnetha. It’s not. This was on the album, Arrival.

It uses some video effects, but that’s about it. It keeps a tight focus on Agnetha. It’s a nice song, and the video tries to get out of the way, which I think is appropriate.

According to IMDb, the video was directed by Per Falkman. He apparently also directed the videos for Tiger and When I Kissed The Teacher. I didn’t know that before. I’ve updated the titles on those ones, but I can’t fix the links at this point. There are too many of them.

Enjoy!

ABBA retrospective:

Music Video of the Day: Tiger by ABBA (1976, dir. Per Falkman)

Posted on March 3, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

Well, this is different for ABBA. Mvdbase says that this was released in 1976. The album it is from–Arrival–did come out that year. However, I’m not 100% sure. The reason I say that is because this and the video for Night Fever by the Bee Gees are pretty much the same video. I’m going with 1976 since you can see that Frida is wearing a T-Shirt that says 1776 on it.

While the video is similar to Night Fever, there are some key differences. They both share footage of the nightlife in common, but the Bee Gees aren’t actually part of it in their video. They are just superimposed over the footage. In this video, you actually get to see band driving around the city at night.

The other thing to notice is how little lip-syncing there is in the video. It’s almost non-existent. There’s a little at the beginning, and that one shot where Frida and Agnetha seem to have switched seats to sing to the camera. Otherwise, it’s just Agnetha driving the band around at night while the song plays. There’s plenty of shots where Agnetha and Frida could be lip-syncing. But instead, we are treated to Agnetha looking very serious, and Frida giving us a quick smirk at one point. Night Fever has them lip-syncing throughout. I like the lack of lip-syncing. It makes it feel gritty. It helps the visuals fit this song.

Enjoy!

ABBA retrospective:

Music Video of the Day: When I Kissed The Teacher by ABBA (1976, dir. Per Falkman)

Posted on March 2, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

This video never gets any less weird to sit through. I love the song, but are they supposed to be in college or high school? It sure looks like high school. Considering Agnetha sings about being taught the laws of geometry, I think it is meant to be high school. It’s also a sexual reference of course. Watch Benny on the right during the video decked out in his Miami Dolphins shirt. It’s so ridiculous that it looks like Björn–on the left–can barely keep himself from laughing.

I originally thought that the teacher was Lasse Hallström himself. However, it turns out that it is actor Magnus Härenstam. He seems to have been best-known as the host of a Swedish version of Jeopardy.

According to author Gene Provenzo, in his book called The Teacher in American Society: A Critical Anthology, this song is an example of “how teachers are viewed by [students] as sexual objects.” I only have that quote from the Wikipedia article on this song, so I have to assume that there’s some context that goes along with it.

School uniforms mean one thing these days, and that is sex. Yet, schools harass students if they dress in a sexual manner, and then will come along to institute school uniforms. In other words, they replace the student’s choice whether they want to dress in a sexual way with making it mandatory for all students. That doesn’t normalize it or anything. It institutionalizes it for the students.

Let’s not forget cheerleaders. Apparently it’s perfectly okay for them to go around wearing their uniforms during school, but spaghetti straps are forbidden. There are male equivalents to this too, such as Letterman Jackets–I know that women wear them too. How are those any different from other sexualized clothing?

You can go on and on with this. The point is, stop that nonsense first, then we can talk about teenage sex-drives causing teachers to walk on pins and needles around their students via ignorant knee-jerk parents and pushover school boards along with–I hope–the rare student who flat out lies about sexual harassment. Here’s one fix: Don’t require the teachers to dress in such a “professional” manner, aka a uniform, which plays into them being viewed as sexual objects.

I hope there’s context in that book to go with that statement. However, the reviews on his 1991 book called Video Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo say otherwise. The Teacher in American Society: A Critical Anthology was done in 2010. People change.

Enjoy!

ABBA retrospective: