Velvet Sky — A remix music video

There is a part of pro wrestling production that rarely gets discussed, and that’s directon. Wrestlers are characters, and the way we view these characters is through a lens directed by someone who wants us to see certain things. They also want us to not see certain things. They often don’t want us to see humanity, flaws, vulnerabilities. Wrestlers are characters, and these characters are supposed to be superhuman. But they’re also “fucking human beings” to quote David Foster Wallace, and what is fiction — stories told using characters, who are sometimes wrestlers — if not to show some humanity?

Que the music video. It’s by Montgomery Gentry. They’re a country band. They’re that type of country band: oversized hats, oddly deep tans, and designer cowboy boots. It’s a matter of taste, of course, but I didn’t much care for the song, the tone, or the direction of this video. It was shot in the Impact Zone, and featured Velvet Sky.

Velvet Sky is a character that is a pro wrestler. She’s played by a human being (one that does not have children), who embodies the role defined by her. Because pro wrestling is loosely situated in real life, it’s sometimes difficult to see the layers. But they are there. Even if Velvet Sky were her real name (which it is not) she still wouldn’t be playing her. She’d be something different. And because wrestlers are characters played on a stage, we very rarely see them doing anything other than performing acrobatic exhibitions of violence or overdramatizing every plot-serving syllable. We almost never see them wake up.

In this Montgomery Gentry music video, half of which I really, really like, we see Velvet Sky wake up, make breakfast for her child (does Velvet Sky the character have a son? Or is it just in the realm of this video?) drop him off for the day, drive to a gym, work out, drive to an airport, fly to a destination, spend some time in a hotel room, then prepare for a wrestling match. We see glimpses of a contest, though we don’t know who she’s wrestling. We don’t see who wins. It cuts back to the band, and then back to her, where she sits backstage getting treated. This is another thing we almost never see. Medical staff treat her, and she holds ice packs to her body. Then, later, we see her talk to her son over a webcam. The day is done. The next day, she wakes up, presumably to start over in this life she’s chosen.

This part of the video is wonderful, but it’s difficult to parse while hearing that song. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad this video was made. I’m glad they did this, because now I can do something with it.

Remixing videos is nothing new. Remixing wrestling is nothing new for me. Longtime readers know that in 2010 I remixed two episodes of Raw as an experiment to see what different pacing, lighting, and order could do to a viewer. It was called “A Better Raw,” and it was incredibly time consuming. A music video is much more manageable.

Below is my reinterpretation of the Montgomery Gentry video. I cut out all instances of the country band, the country song, and any sense of levity. When I watched all the clips of just Velvet Sky, the video became incredibly maudlin, so I picked a suitably maudlin song. Of the few people I’ve shown this to, they all had their own ideas of what a better song could be. I really like that. I hope they take this and make it for themselves. But I picked a Sigur Ros song so there would be no English lyrics to add context or meaning to the images. I wanted people to really see this character being played.

Because I’ve gone and infringed on copyright, it’s possible this video won’t be up for long. So enjoy it here. I’d love to hear your thoughts on twitter.

Velvet Sky from Kyle Paul on Vimeo.