Oingo Boingo’s Weird Science (1985) Is Feminist Actually
So in the video is a visual mess on the directors /editors part almost like they didn’t understand what Boingo was and physically tried to distance themselves by putting the camera in between the people in the video. I’m not here to talk about but I think it’s hilarious that even the people working with Danny Elfman and Oingo Boingo didn’t understand the point of it all.
Besides that, the video is about Danny who is a mad scientist and he is bringing mannequins to life. I feel like I don’t have to say much about this but Danny really likes dolls and playing with things is what he does best. He’s getting those creative juices flowing by giving life to something that was never truly alive.
So we see the first mannequin emerge and Danny is the one to lead her into the world. He immediately shows her where to work “GET TO WORK!” and she goes to push the gears with the other working women.
I’d also like to point out that each mannequin girl has a “style”. The first blonde girl is very Madonna and the bored redhead is very Cyndi Lauper and the third is a sexy cowgirl. And all of them have something in common. Yes, even sexy cowgirl! You see, these are all working girls in the entertainment industry, thus they turn the wheels of production that have been set in place by the men in charge. Notice how all of our main boys get to be scientists and doctors and set everything up?
Danny has an awareness of how the entertainment industry and media in general exploits women. Little Girls or Nothing to Fear are the most obvious songs about this topic. There are a lot of songs where women are implied to be sex workers and how he is okay with that as long as men aren’t the ones pulling the strings. (Home Again, Mary, Sucker For Mystery, Piggies) He’s okay with women being sex workers because the media has only shown women that is their only option and that is not their fault. Because he is aware that women are not in power.
Now, back to that cowgirl.
I’m personally so fascinated with the image of the cowboy/cowgirl because it is one of the best examples of something that was completely invented by the entertainment industry. Cowboys have never looked glamorous. They are working-class people and were mostly black men and other people of color. The term “boy” isn’t supposed to be very nice. Cowboys literally feed the people with their work and they have over the years been erased and whitewashed from history. This first started back in the day with Wild West shows and slowly graduated into this overall whitewashed version of the west in western movies, novels, and art.
My favorite Hollywood image of the cowgirl is the statue from The Sahara Hotel’s billboard that was once located on Sunset Blvd. This giant mannequin girl is probably mostly made famous from Gore Vidal’s book Myra Breckinridge, in which Myra (a sexually empowered trans woman in the 60s) who critiques what men in power have to say about the media they produce. I’m very certain that Elfman has read Vidal or is aware of his work.
We see this whitewashed image of sexy sexy cowgirl and she’s turning the wheel. She and these other working girls are only doing what men in power have told her to do, feed the people. She feeds them her image. The image of the male gaze.
I saw this argument about how Boingo rarely talks about women and I just think that is not true. It’s crucial to identify how other Oingo Boingo songs and videos depict women.
First, you have the hardest video/song to digest: Little Girls(1980). Wherein you have a few different types of girls but I think the most important one to point out is the vampire/monster. This frames the exploitation of young girls/teenagers so sinisterly. Men no matter how disgustingly depicted (which Elfman does so well I may add) will always be seen as a helpless victim at the clutches of monstrous over-sexualized women, as framed by capitalist American media.
Later in videos like Nothing Bad Ever Happens to Me(1983) you see women starting to be portrayed as statues. There is the woman who is playing Elfman’s wife who is posed like a sexy housewife mannequin wearing nothing but hair curlers and lingerie while she picks up after him. She is picked up even as if she is a statue and carried away with the household objects while Elfman is distracted by his dreamworld that the television gives him.
Next, we have the statue (and yes she literally looks like a statue) who brings Danny his razor and assures him “Why should I care”. These women are again playing the role of lifeless servants. It is apparent that Elfman is aware that women are depicted this way in order to sell us a fantasy world and to serve men.
Like the statue presented in the Nothing Bad Ever Happens To Me(1983) video, we have a similar style of Greek-like statues in the video for Just Another Day(1985). These statues are doe-eyed fans, muses, the audience if you will. I think it is very important to point out that Danny Elfman has a softness for fans, especially teenage girls and a disgust towards men. In the song, he tells the audience of the end of the world and that why it is okay to keep on living. They watch. They listen. They are content.
These statues are a little different than the others. They are here to represent that Elfman is preaching to the choir. He knows that his audience, his true fans, already know the meaning of his songs. They are not alarmed by his edginess, his mocking, his perverse sexuality, or his strange looks because they know that he is there to serve them and not the likes of men.
Now, back to Weird Science.
Mad scientist Danny has a glitch in the system and a plastic Barbie doll comes out instead of a “real” woman. She’s useless to him and he throws her into a big ol’ TV set. When the media machine spits her out, she has learned so much more from it than Danny could ever realize. Our “real girl” is the star of Weird Science, Kelly LeBrock.
In the film, she is a sex symbol gone rogue. She’s an incel’s wet dream. A hot lady that is a mommy to the two leading teenage boys who teaches them how to behave. I bring this up because Weird Science is the least feminist and unaware film probably of any John Hughes film. I’m not really going to go much into John Hughes movies but basically, he doesn’t have kind things to say about women and always thinks of them as being teacher, parent, or sexual servant to any male character in his film (Uncle Buck, The Breakfast Club, Career Opportunities).
Kelly LeBrock appears and Danny Elfman is starstruck, visually disgusted, and turned on. He backs away from her and knows the true power of her sexuality and he is powerless to her and the music video ends.
(There are a few songs where he praises women’s knowledge of their own sexuality one being Everybody Needs.)
Now, we are posed with a problem because Danny Elfman is caught red-handed because he too, unfortunately, likes women who are seen as a teacher, parent, or a sexual servant. You can tell that after a while he grows tired of writing songs about sleazy men for sleazy men who make sleazy movies that exploit women. Because, again, under Danny’s horrible disguise of being a scary man, his whole ideology revolves around how much work women have to do under this fantasy world that men have created.
Weird Science is when Elfman stops writing from the main perspective of the male characters. My favorite sleazy film examples being Bachelor Party and The Last American Virgin. And even in the songs for these films, he doesn’t really seem to favor the intentions of the characters in these films.
Goodbye Goodbye from Fast Times at Ridgemont High is from the perspective of the main character Stacy who spends the whole film learning about her own sexuality.
Look to the sky above and the mud below
Something drives me crazy, got to got to get away
Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye
Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye!”
In Weird Science, he writes about the work that he is doing. He questions the morality of it.
It’s my creation–I do not know
No hesitation–No heart of gold
Just flesh and blood–I do not know
From my heart and from my hand
Why don’t people understand
My intentions, Ooh, weird science”
He is afraid that by writing songs for these sleazy movies that he so enjoys, that his creations will, in turn, end up harming his audience. And the only audience that he cares about. Women.
WHY DON’T PEOPLE UNDERSTAND MY INTENTIONS UwU
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