(PART 7) Armond White on LL Cool J "Six Minutes of Pleasure"

(PART 7) SAT, July 28, 2007 -- SCANNERS 2007 Video Festival. Film Society of Lincoln Center. CRITIC Armond White's "Official History of More

(PART 7) SAT, July 28, 2007 -- SCANNERS 2007 Video Festival. Film Society of Lincoln Center. CRITIC Armond White's "Official History of Music Video: An Introspective" Music Video Presentation (15th Annual). Surprise Guest in the audience! Here's an article promoting the event: http://www.nypress.com/20/30/news&columns/feature.cfm (Part 7) EROTICA Genre CRITIC Armond White on LL Cool J -- "Six Minutes of Pleasure" Director: Marcus Nispel NOTE: Something happened with the projectionist. This particular video started late. LL is already rapping when the video played. Armond White can be reached courtesy of the weekly, the New York Press http://www.nypress.com Or the newsletter, First of The Month http://www.firstofthemonth.org/ "...By decorating the set as a bedroom filled with the toys and sunshine of a child's romper room, Director Marcus Nispel plays out the complex of sexuality with bemused clarity..." "...LL's physical activity -- he is shown playing with outrageously, blatantly suggestive double-entendre items as that bouncing ball, a phallic balloon, the nipple of a baby's bottle - - shows him in thrall of (symbolic) eroticism. Nispel does as much with the rap stars smile as with his supple-sinewed torso and warm-brown flesh. L.L embodies the pleasures of the flesh and his boyish happiness over this discovery keeps the story in the song from being sordid (or exploitative as in last year's hilarious, bodacious Big Ol' Butt video in which female posteriors rose and heaved like the floats in a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.) " "Nispel's camera (and candied) sensuality plays a sly trick on commercial iconography; as in C + C Music Factory's 'Gonna Make You Sweat', he breaks down Madison Avenue's color barrier by emphasizing merchandise, then fetishizing it through its manipulation by performers of color. Underneath 6 Minutes' parody of a Saturday morning Mattel toy spot (complete with L.L's Cat-In-The-Hat wriggly, expandable headgear), Nispel virtually advertises libidinal excess. Madonna's 'Justify My Love' had nothing as lubricious as LL's wet lips sucking a baby bottle filled with Kool-Aid, or as witty as the three fingered Mickey Mouse glove he offers to his playmate. LL and Nispel are deep into playtime; they're bred-in-the-bone orgiasts in toyland. Their imaginative use of 'innocent' props is just short of pornographic and that distance is threatened by LL himself, who has the charm of the boy next door with something more..." "...Nispel picks up on this thrill by keeping in rotation the nursery school colors; the primal, childlike lurching, humping, fingering gestures; the skin; the smiles; the healthy good humor..." The City Sun, Sept 18-24, 1991 NOTE: In August of 1996, Critic Armond White devoted an entire music video presentation to the work of Director Marcus Nispel, the director of this music video.
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