Within the first 20 seconds of Maroon 5’s new music video for “Animals,” viewers are provided with the plot’s two basic themes.
One: women have a lot in common with pieces of meat.
Two: stalkers are dark and scary, but, you know, in a sexually suggestive way. For some reason, being hunted, like an “Animal” is supposed to be a turn-on.
The camera’s first two shots establish the first association: a woman walks into a butcher shop, and then the camera cuts to Levine’s toned arms chopping meat.
As the vocals begin, Levine is in a dark slaughterhouse swinging on a meat rack between ?gigantic carcasses.
He rubs blood on himself and sings, “Maybe you think that you can hide / I can smell your scent for miles.”
The sight of Levine singing and suspended by a meat hook is indelible: he’s a predator eagerly fantasizing about the moment when he can at last “eat (his prey) alive.”
With those themes, we’re off to the races.
The twisted objectification throughout this entire presentation is so overt, it borders on satire.
But just as the audience begins to hope this is tongue-in-cheek, the tone suddenly shifts from dark and bloody to ?intensely erotic.
The transition is undoubtedly meant to be violent.
The scene changes: now they’re in a nightclub, no blood in sight, and both Levine and his target look fantastic.
This is the moment that eradicates all hope of making a case for satire: Levine is a noticeably attractive man, which turns the scenario into a dark sexual fantasy rather than a dangerous nightmare. When he approaches her in the club, she takes one look and rejects him, turning her back multiple times to deter his advances.
The audience is encouraged to react with disbelief: why would someone snub such a hot guy? Why is she being so high-and-mighty?
We’re meant to project ourselves into that dark club and say, “If I were her, I’d be thrilled to have him hit on me.”
This dynamic change is where the ringing endorsement of rape culture that’s been tolling dully beneath the catchy beat begins to go off like an alarm.
Rejected, Levine begins to fantasize about sex with this woman, and the video cuts back and forth between them naked in bed, her sleeping in her underwear while he watches, and him back in the slaughterhouse, swinging gleefully on a bloody carcass and singing: “Baby I’m preying on you tonight / Hunt you down, eat you alive / Just like animals.”
The lyrics leave no room for misconception: even though he tries to claim that she is a willing participant in an attempt to absolve himself of guilt — “You can’t deny the beast inside” — the truth is that he is hunting her down and plans to consume her regardless of her wishes.
As a cherry on top of this hypersexual predatory dream, the camera cuts to a shot of Levine and the woman kissing naked under a waterfall of blood while he howls like a wolf in the ?background.
It’s an undeniably beautiful, intense visual, and the overall aesthetics of this video blurs the line even further. The whole piece, even the bits in the meat locker, have a sort of — pardon the pun — raw, dark beauty that nudges audiences toward adopting this scenario as a fantasy of their own.
Maroon 5’s glamorization of sexual crime is dangerous and wildly insensitive to individuals who have been the victims of stalking, rape and domestic violence inflicted by a partner.
There is nothing beautiful about being stalked. There is nothing erotic about being hunted. There is nothing consensual about being “eaten alive like an animal.”
It’s worth noting that the actress who plays Levine’s stalky is his new wife, which adds another layer of acceptability to his perversion: we assume his wife enjoyed making a sexy video with her handsome husband, so why wouldn’t a woman in real life enjoy a similar encounter? If you’re married to a woman, it’s totally okay to objectify her, right?
Everything about the scenarios in the “Animals” video is superficial, one-dimensional and founded on stereotypes that threaten the safety of men and women alike.
“It’s like we can’t stop, we’re enemies / But we get along when I’m inside you” is not an acceptable premise for a sexy hookup.
We are not animals.
