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dbgmode · 8 months ago

Text

a close read of the lyrics/video of "Cheerleader" by Porter Robinson

... the irony of immediately, spontaneously spending several hours doing is extremely not lost on me (and crossposting only deepens)....

(a self-xpost from /r/porterrobinson: from cohost! Deluxe edition! ( peppered with a few additional links for the chosting tumbling crowd)

The song/music video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzJbz9qSsd0

Based mostly on lyrics

[before I then close-watched the video]

Placed in the context of what we have seen so far in other promotional media,

after a couple listens, it seems to me that this is also, in essence, a work commenting on parasocial relationships and fame in the [early] social internet age:

the potential unhealthy character of idealization of someone you don't know,

the ways in which that idealization drags the sense of self and esteem out of an internal locus for the "object of affection".

I'd go so far as to say "the objectification of affection"

and somewhat in particular the ways both parties in this relationship experience some of both aspects of this.

To that last end, there is some tension in my understanding of who the speaker is and who the cheerleader / "she" is . The most surface level read is to assign those to: speaker = (more or less) Porter, the cheerleader(s) = us, the fans; or like "fame" itself

{The cheerleader archetype also steps specifically onto both American high school "teen movie" archetypes, and (given the use of mask etc.) probably the interpolation of that in anime I am less personally familiar with. [a big reach, but I would contend there is some possibility that there is an invocation here also of like ... homestarrunner absurdist prior art: teen girl squad, trogdor?]. (cohost and tumblr exclusive addendum!: also like ... the idea of the cheerleader as specifically the victim of masked killer in a slasher-film, here (probs not for the first time) directly-inverted.)}

That holds especially for:

The per-chorus " Cheerleader / Thought she needed me, but I need her "

The bridge, which is more or less the extended version of the pre-chorus ("Somehow, I don't ... ")

And it probably can read all the way through the verses and chorus too, but I think its also admits some inversion:

"I can tell you're acting your heart out" applying in some ways more cleanly to a performer per se than a fan, though certainly in the context of like ... fan-sites, stan-accounts, etc. that line breaks down and that's part of the point

"I don't even know what she does now" feeling to me harder to read as any version of porter wondering what his fan base is like (though it does read better when taken as like "what even is fame now?") - vs an enthusiast fanatic feeling spurned by a modern "celebrity" exercising more privacy and/or "going dark"

Video "text" (scene by scene, interpretation-biased description):

Cast (in order of appearance):

frame-story fangirl (FSF) (or possibly femmeboy?) - sits alone in bedroom. implied a high school student.

we have what I'm not-not gonna call 2021 MGK Porter. Idk at this point if this is to be understood as being identically the "Porter weston Robinson" of the broader album cycle or is more constrained to this video. I also used the phrase "cringecore porter" elsewhere, and while I think that applies metatextually, not as much in text.

this is NOT nurture porter. nurture porter had long blond hair and wore loose-fitting clothes. nurture porter was into upright pianos, acoustic guitars, and wide-open spaces.

this porter is un-blonde, plays analog synths and electric guitar. he is on the floor of his bedroom or studio, and while outside is there in the window, he does not go there.

of not no consideration is whom I'd call "nurture Together porter" (also "happy fiance Porter" => the man is allowed to be a person outside of aesthetic choices, but I'm not gonna ignore it either). That man (who first appeared at Second Sky 2022) wore a lot of cardigans and cable knit sweaters, and had brown hair that he kept pretty short and neat. Who we see here is both not that guy (see all the "my chemical robinson comments" and yet is closer probably too that guy than he is to either early nurture era guy, late-worlds anime sadboi, or fuckboi [though ... ])

clothes:

His pants look kinda like his shirt in Get Your Wish, as well as somewhat like beetlejuice (... the musical?) and other ~harlequin figures.

The sweater is somewhere between the styles preferred by nurture-Together porter and late-worlds porter.

Shoes are ... kinda fancy? (cf. bare-feet in Get Your Wish).

His colors are red, white, AND BLACK. the cheerleaders for the most part are just red and white. (by contrast the porter from "scene 8" on is pointedly black and grey)

doll cheerleader. possibly specifically the sort of doll used for practicing pose drawing? or doing doll fashion?

other psudedo-human cheerleaders (whom we can probably assume include frame-story fangirl)

additional porters, introduced in scenes 5 - 8, no spoilers.

Scene 0 :

FSF sits alone in her room, doing her best to embody the cheerleader persona, but needing to remove the mask at least a bit to eat. it is unclear whether their hair under the mask is not visible or if it is also styled like the wig

[P.S. posted as reddit self-comment "I also missed the scene 0 important detail, that the candy is literally a chibi-porter-u head (gummy? gusher)"]

Scene 0.5:

hyperspace/cyberspace tunnel - "going down the wire", bubblegum pop logo

Scene 1:

Meet this porter. he jams alone in fairly-large room (synths, some guitar, room is inside but painted like sky. It is lit as fluorescent drop ceiling. Doll cheerleader vibes. You can see (cartoon) outside (invocative of some specific past work, maybe flicker, maybe easy; probs others), and you can also see [same size, eyes on him] ... bubblegum cat (FSF also has a cat).

zoom out through pixels of screen

Scene 2:

Karaoke amongst the cheerleaders. "Perfect!" and other text on screen invokes rhythm games as much as socializing karaoke. Everyone pretty much is signing. One has maracas. There isn't any food or booze.

Porter walks out of (behind) screen and seizes stage mic, at least initially the cheerleaders stop singing to fangirl instead.

Scene 3:

Someone (we can presume FSF) plays with a character creator, and creates (in miniature) dragon Porter. Next she builds a chibi doll of him. (Is this her OC/custom? or did it already get merchandised by e.g. Funko). It briefly stop-motions before exploding into

Scene 4:

Porter is very pop punk now. He has grown the dragon wings and tail. Both the makeup and the pink/silver confetti do remind me of _specifically_ "Tickets to my Downfall" MGK (and perhaps "congratulations" Post Malone?). Though with the blue of the walls (which sometimes have cliffs that are very "Language" video), also is evocative of a common color palette of nurture tour.

Scene 4.5 [intercut]:

FSF is literally playing out this scene in doll-house form, dropping the confetti on her figure. We see the city models preceding the next scene; she is taping this with a gorilla-podded point-and-shoot ; she is not in frame. Next to the porter-room is another much more "normal" doll-house, it doesn't match this room but ... it might have at some point? (it actually is the room from scene 8, but ... I didn't realize that when I wrote this, and neither can the first time viewer)

she picks up and moves figure to the city

Scene 5:

Dragon porter become Kaiju/Rampage porter. Doll cheerleader is here and hyped, and immediately gets stomped.

Scene 5.5:

Reality break. Kaiju porter has breached containment and is outside of FSF's window. She is initially ambiguously scared or excited but approaches the window

Scene 6:

Kaiju porter eats FSF (who is an even smaller less detailed doll/figure to him), this immediately makes him sick, probably dead. Intercut is cartoon chibi porteru (where? in the mouth/GI of kaiju porter? in the brain?)

Scene 7:

meet hot air balloon chibi porter. Note that there is someone in the basket. In wide, she does not appear to be a cheerleader, but also use of binoculars makes it unclear. In close up, she absolutely is.

The body of pom-pomed cheerleaders (who we did meet briefly earlier intercut in scene 4-4.5) form a landing target(?) with the pom-poms, briefly striped, but then chibi face.

Scene 7.5:

Once we have entered the mountains (of Sad Machine?), Porter of Scene 1 is running from but likely spotted by hot air balloon porter and his basket's occupant. The size scale is implied flipped now from scene 5-6. He seeks refuge in a doll-house-ish safe house

Basket radios to ground and her landing target is gone in pursuit/seige of porter

Scene 8 [bridge]:

FSF returns (un-eaten) to her bedroom and sits down on bed out of frame; zoom into new doll-house which is also interior of safe house. Mid-zoom, FSF removes their mask/wig, but we do not see them without it

Here porter sits also on bed, in largely undercoated (but for much smaller version of pink cat in frame), vaguely sky-blue (but no clouds, no cliffs) bedroom.

Arrangement of synths and guitars lightly suggests that _if_ this is understood from Porter's perspective rather than FSF's that he is maybe been sitting alone in dark-ish on bed the whole time.

Outfit is different from every earlier scene as well; fairly generic, but also (to me) kind of evocative of Virtual Self concert dress specifically

In wide shot, there is no one at window. In close up they press against it.

Scene 9 [chorus]:

cheerleader headbutts in and they precede to fuck up his bedroom, synths, one piece of art, before one of them tackles through the drywall

Scene 9.5:

One cheerleader is briefly alone in the scene 1 room, cat art becomes cartoon and jumps from frame, gives chase (to whom? the only one we saw enter this room was a cheerleader);

brief passage flanked by cheerleaders. shit gets trippier

Scene 10:

tracking shot down a sky space tunnel (scene 0.5) in which Porter of Scene 8 jams while a cheerleader (FSF?) and Scene 1 Porter both get spun around. Cat falls down center of that tunnel until camera is obscured.

Scene 11:

chibi porter (dressed like scene 8 porter but with the legs of dragon-doll-porter) is pursued by now giant doll cheerleader, while cheered on by roughly-same-scale dolls and video walls of selves. Also seemingly some holographic-projection cheerleaders who are holding a synth in way that almost suggests they might be playing it (keytar style) but its backwards so ... probably smashing.

Giant doll cheerleader catches and eats chibi porter. Whereas we saw the vore of scene 6 in silhouette, so we don't know how FSF felt about it. Here we dolly zoom on chibi porter who honestly: fuckin thrilled. (in start contrast to terrified expressions in the rest of scene 11)

Scene 11.5:

We (the camera) follow him down, but he is gone from view quickly. the gullet of doll-cheerleader is the cyberspace tunnel of scene 0.5 except that by strobe it is also explicitly the wall of FSF's bedroom. Not for nothing, but the effect is also Windows 95/98 maze screensaver at those times.

Scene 12:

Scene 8 porter crowdsurfs on the cheerleaders hands. Intercut flash jump-scare-ish (but no, cause context) face closeups including:

the pigeon from the window in scene 2

scene 8/12 porter's face

scene 8/12 porter wearing a cheerleader mask

low poly cgi cheerleader

real fast blinks on what probably is just porter's face in even closer-closeup, but might also include un-masked FSF? (I'm kinda loathe to do the frame-by-frame look that would tell me that or no)

Scene 12.5:

oops, crowd surfing porter became a chibi porter pinata, which is ripped apart by the hands of the cheerleaders, splling out hard candy and rock candy, like FSF had in scene 0.

Scene 13:

a single very quick, extreme closeup of FSF's candy bowl

So yeah... I don't want to over-explain (my over-description), but ... relative scales, who appears to control whom: you probably get it.

---

Video paratext:

The description on youtube here is extensive liner notes style credits. Contrast that to the overwhelmingly self-promotional and (few) lyrics description of last music video release ( do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti-do)

or the major credits and lyrics of most early nurture stuff.

I'll grant that this is a more involved production, probably, but also - I think taken with the late-nurture move to a live band show & what we think this album is about, it is both an artistic and a practical decision that this says

I DIDN'T MAKE THIS REMOTELY BY MYSELF

---

release context:

It's a Porter Robinson album first single. It is tone-setting intentionally. He (et al) picked "Sea of Voices" largely cause it was the furthest thing from (for example) 100% in the Bitch / the State - and indeed a big (if smaller, to me) contrast from Language, Easy, Say My Name.

Ditto "Get Your Wish" is not Sad Machine or Lionhearted. And pointedly it is less that aesthetic than even Something Comforting is (Look at the Sky ... idk)

So here, we are doing distortion, we are doing fairly simple analog synth patches, we are doing singing in largely-unprocessed voice. But hey, also, in the bridge, we are doing acoustic guitar - nurture porter isn't actually gone. [Also, while the arrangement works well, I think, there is an amped up section contrast that - in the context of the promotion so far to me - reads as "I know only one part of this is good for tiktok"]

This song is ... about the same things as Get Your Wish. It has a very different outlook on it. but its that, again.

So ... take that as you will.

🌈📣

---

metatextual P.P.S

posted as self-comment:

Not to suggest this is any more than happy/unhappy accident (or possibly emergent from user behaviors?), but YouTube does want to auto-play the most meta-textually appropriate thing next:

And the existence of that piece of ~fanon single art did at least passingly occur to me as relevant to Scene 0 / the frame-setting of this video.

[Additional context: this song, "A Sound for Lonely People" was a demo leaked following either the hacking of Porter's dropbox or the loss/theft of a laptop containing it. No finished version of the song was ever released (and its not clear that that was for lack of "done", lack of desire, or it being a mostly-for-self / private work of art)

His discouragement at this (and other?) leaks is a thing brought up both in both:

the "anachronistic video essay from 2028" about his disappearance on March 1st 2024, which he posted on February 29th. (but then instead dropped an album announcement. Whether there is any intention to go through with any back-scrub is tbd, but there has not been within the first 3 weeks. I might have over-reacted and yt-dlped 69gigs of stuff about it)

the tweet / 𝕏 post feigning(?) such discouragement yesterday

following the "early" release of the song to streaming services in only japan (and not other countries in the same time-zone) for a few hours( or less?)

a thing that could certainly have been genuine data entry confusion, etc. but also is speculated in the context of other album promotion to have potentially been intentional

The most popular youtube uploads of this use imagery of a person or people sitting alone in bedrooms, much like Cheerleader (twice) does]

#porter robinson #parasocial relationships #sarapocial relationships #dramatic irony in post form #parasocial moment #porterrobinson #new music #porter robinson cheerleader #porter robinson music video #hyperpop

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