Where the Stripper Pole Leads: A Comparison of "Montero" and "cellophane"
Image courtesy of MusicFeeds // MusicFeeds.com
If you use the Internet, you likely know of the incendiary Lil Nas X music video for his recently released song, “Montero (Call Me By Your Name).” This video had all the right components to become an unforgettable cultural moment, including dramatic fashion statements, opulent special effects, and heresy. It’s a beautifully queer spectacle and a fervent “screw you” to those who use the concept of hell to silence and torment LGBTQ individuals. In the aftermath of its release, Lil Nas X seemed to revel in the icon status he knew he’d achieved, basking in the slew of TikToks inspired by “Montero” and clapping back at haters on Twitter.
Remember that breathtaking scene where he pole dances into hell?
There’s another music video in which an artist ascends a stripper pole, sees a mysterious figure unfold wings above them, and then plunges wildly downward into parts unknown, a visual sequence which “Montero” imitates almost frame-for-frame: FKA twigs’s frightening, ethereal “cellophane.” Andrew Thomas Huang, the director of that video, expressed frustration and hurt over the apparent artistic robbery, writing on Instagram, “Consider the power you wield and the artists who you harm when you capitalize on our blood sweat tears and emotional labor.”
Thankfully, this did not lead to a scandal. Lil Nas X promptly and publicly acknowledged what happened, posting a clip from “cellophane” on Instagram and praising Huang and FKA twigs in the caption. Twigs responded with her own post, thanking Lil Nas X for the “gentle and honest conversations” between the two and writing, “i fully support your expression and bravery in pushing culture forward for the queer community [sic].]” She also shouted out sex workers “for providing the physical language” of the visuals, and plugged the Sex Worker Advocacy and Resistance Movement, a grassroots organization advocating for the decriminalization of sex work.
As a fan of both artists, this interaction delighted me. These are two of the most fascinating people in music right now, performers about whom you can say “no one is doing it like them” and be absolutely right. It’s interesting that this is what brought these two together, because retrospectively their eventual connection seems inevitable. Despite their differences in genre and sound, Lil Nas X and FKA twigs are similar in many ways.
The best music videos from both artists involve explorations of intense and scary visual concepts. For twigs, this often happens through physical contortion; she always seems to be putting her body through something grueling, whether that’s pole dancing, sword fighting, being twisted up in a bondage rig made of her own hair, or dancing frenetically with a group of women as though collectively possessed. In “Holy Terrain,” she towers over the camera with two-tone eyes, looking like a witch, an alien, or maybe a spider.
Lil Nas X portrays the stuff of nightmares in a different way. Monstrosity is a consistent motif in his music videos. With the help of impressive prosthetics, he’s been a vampire, an evil elf, and most recently, a serpent. These are campy characters, but that doesn’t stop the image of him running Pennywise-style towards the camera in “Holiday” from haunting me.
“cellophane” came two years before “Montero,” and apart from the sequence in contention, the two videos are completely different. For one thing, there’s nothing inherently biblical about “cellophane.” Its story came out of twigs’s separation from Robert Pattinson, the illness she grappled with in the same year, and her anguished struggle to be great in the face of these adversities. Still, something about it touches me in the same way “Montero” does.
“Didn’t I do it for you?” twigs asks as she mounts the pole. It’s the central refrain of the song. And haven’t we all asked that of someone, at some point? Lil Nas X certainly understands what it’s like to not be accepted for something he now recognizes as wonderful. Just as religion rejects queerness, society rejects sex work, belittling something that can be, as twigs demonstrates, singularly beautiful. Each project advances a marginalized culture in its own distinct way. This is truly the most meaningful link between “Montero” and “cellophane.”
At the end of her descent down the pole, twigs lands in a pit where strange, two-faced creatures crawl toward her and begin to smother her body in wet, red clay. She looks calm, almost content, and it seems as if the creatures have embraced her arrival. Lil Nas X finds sexual freedom and power in hell, and FKA twigs finds welcome and acceptance in this pit, wherever it may be.
I don’t think there’s much more the rest of us can hope for than that, except perhaps for these two to collaborate.