In the article The Outside Meets the Institution by Jenny Gunn, the author is unpacking the music video Apeshit by The Carters, as the video portrays the couple in the Louvre museum, and is filled with imagery and concepts making throughout the song, and the author seeks to define the concepts such as the message of the video being a form of a new, radical archiving of the arts. Taken at face value, the video only provides a little bit of depth with some complex and confusing imagery that would go over one’s head, which is exactly why the author is dissecting it and illuminating certain themes and nuances that are not easily apparent to the regular viewer. As such, the author approaches the video by first looking at the parallels shown in the video and comparing them to certain pieces of art, such as the opening shot of the video with the couple standing together in front of the Mona Lisa, with the piece The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger, comparing the imagery of the two as representations of something that is present in the record (for the painting, an image of a skull,and for the Louvre the history of blackness as a whole) but is not truly considered and observed. Another example of this view that the author is using to better understand and define the video is a shot going from . Théodore Géricault’s The Charging Chasseur to an image of a man standing on a horse, which is further drawing parallels between what is shown in the Louvre and what is not portrayed. The author also goes on to illustrate that though the art of “swagger” is indeed present and used throughout this video, it shouldn’t be viewed as pure, unadulterated posturing. If one were to view it like the critic Sebastian Smee, one would be viewing the swagger as “merely ‘stunting’ on the Louvre”, as he instead views “the swagger of the Carters’ ‘Apeshit’ ” in comparison “to the art of Jeff Koons or the rise of Donald Trump, Smee fails to concede ‘Apeshit’ ’s social and political radicalism”. (Pg.6) So, as articulated in the argument put forward by Jenny Gunn, viewing the media as vague, bombastic music video that just happens to be using the Louvre as a sign of wealth and power that could be achieved by simply showing lots and lots of expensive objects is completely missing the point of the video. Instead, if we view it through the author Jenny Gunn’s lens, one gets a more comprehensive, deeper, and much more rewarding understanding that helps to understand why this video was even published in the first place.
When I personally first viewed this video, I was simply overwhelmed by all of it that I wasn’t even able to scratch the surface of the surprisingly deep underlying complexity that one can start to gather in pieces with subsequent viewings. Looking through it a few more times, I was certainly able to tell there was more at work here than just Jay-Z and Beyonce at the Louvre. But by fully being able to unpack it through a more informed, critical, and expansive lens that is illustrated through Jenny Gun’s critical analysis, it creates a much more complete picture of what the video is trying to illustrate. The only real area that I might like to see a little more illuminated, though it is certainly referenced in the critique, is how more do the backgrounds of both Jay-Z and Beyonce help to contextualize the image making in the video as a whole.
