According to the Dictionary, the term “psychosocial” is used to describe interactions between social and psychological factors. New Zealand recording artist, Brooke Fraser, plays with the word to describe stalkers’ actions on social media pages in her first single from Brutal Romantic, her latest album. The music video for “Psychosocial,” released on YouTube and Facebook on August 29, 2014, shows through symbolism the interactions between social media stalker and victim.
Visual Summary
The video, shot in black-and-white, opens with Fraser singing as the camera pans upward on what looks like a range of tiny mountains. It jumps to a shot of a sheer black fabric billowing in the breeze. We see Fraser in profile wearing the black fabric as a veil over a hood reminiscent of a monk’s cowl. Her fingers slide up beneath the veil, almost as if to remove it. She toys with it in the next few seconds of film.
We are then introduced to the central figure of the video: a shirtless young man. We also see a running motif involving a slowly rotating sculpted head. The camera creeps up on the young man from behind while he carries a javelin across ground that looks like pieces of torn-up insulation. Fraser appears again, this time clawing at the fabric. The sculpted head rotates to face the viewer before slowly facing away. This action is repeated several times throughout the video.
The camera cuts again to Fraser. This time, we see her from the front, but her eyes are covered by the hood. The man pulls out a lighter and lights it. The camera zooms in on his face as he looks away from the lighter and closes it, dispelling the flame. In another shot, he passes the javelin from one hand to the other. It slips from his hand, falling to the ground.
In the next shot, an arm enshrouded in the black fabric appears on the screen. The breeze moves beneath the fabric and threatens to slide it off the arm, which it eventually does. The arm is bare; the veil is off. We see the veil descend before the camera cuts to another shot of the sculpted head rotating to face us.
We see our central figure from the front: he falls to his knees in a defeated posture, raises his arms above his head, and pounds the ground with his fists. He gathers some of the fragments of the insulation bits in his clenched fingers. One of the fragments ascends as we see the frame tilt upside down. The video ends with Fraser standing in the center of the frame next to a statue on a high pedestal.
Symbolism
The tiny mountains and insulation floor indicate features of a world not grounded in reality, or a fantasy world, which in turn represents the Internet. People can be whoever they want to be on the Internet; they can project a fantasy version of themselves onto the screen and into the world for anyone to see. All in all, most of what you see on the Internet isn’t real.
The sheer fabric/veil is the metaphorical veil we use when interacting on the Internet. Social media is an edited version of your life. A veil, so to speak, is thrown over your true life, blocking your followers from seeing the dark side. In this case, the social media stalker (represented by Fraser herself) is wearing a veil that hides her ulterior motives.
Speaking of Fraser, her position in relation to facing the camera is a sort of visual wordplay on the word “profile,” which is the word used when talking about personal social media pages. Her costume also says a lot: the cowl is symbolic of the stalker’s almost worshipful devotion and idolization of her victim. She wears the veil over this cowl to disguise her obsession with him. Playing with the veil symbolizes her toying with the idea of revealing her true nature to him. When she claws at the fabric, she demonstrates the stalker’s troubled state of mind. When we see Fraser again from the front, the veil is off, but the hood covers her eyes. She’s still hiding herself from her prey.
Our central figure, our symbolic victim, is shirtless to demonstrate his lack of defense. We wear clothes to protect ourselves from the elements of the weather, and this man is unprotected from the menaces of the social media stalker. Oh, sure, he carries a javelin with him, so we know he can defend himself; but when he drops the javelin later in the video, the guard is down; he’s defenseless. We see him from the back first because it shows his lack of awareness about the social media stalker.
The sculpted head represents our central figure’s own online persona. When it turns away from the camera, the young man turns away from the frightening situation of someone stalking him over social media.
Now to the lighter: light in art often represents truth. Turning on the lighter means that he’s seen a glimmer of truth, but by turning away while extinguishing the flame, he’s making a conscious decision to avoid the truth he’s found out about the stalker.
When we see the fabric fall off Fraser’s arm and descend in front of the camera, we can infer that, in essence, the jig is up. The stalker has shown her true colors to her victim, which is why we see him fall in defeat to the ground and (literally) hit the pavement. He’s now under the stress of having someone stalk him online.
The tilt of the camera indicates the victim’s world turning upside down due to this stress. The statue Fraser stands next to in the final shot is the idolized victim himself, having been put up on the pedestal by the social media stalker.
Conclusion
The Future Forward and Scott Ligertwood’s audiovisual production combines beautifully with Fraser’s husky vocals and eerie choir and abstractly demonstrates an Internet stalker chasing after her prey. While the video may shock fans, this piece of art is a frisson-inducing taste of the artist’s new musical direction.