Get your kit off on screen as a woman, and everyone thinks you're a hoe. Do the same as a man, and everyone admires your 'commitedness' or 'bravery' as an actor. It's bullshit, but hey, if it works for Michael Fassbender and Harry Potter, surely it'll work for Shia LaBeouf, Disney alumnus and hugely irritating torchbearer of the Indiana Jones franchise? Right guys?LaBeouf gets his dick out in the video for Sigur Rós' new single, "Fjögur Píanó". To be fair, he does loads of stuff to convince us that this is a big arty statement: He contemplates a butterfly. He punches a mirror. He does some ballet in his pants. His baleful, watery-gaze and ratty hair-do suggest a man trying hard — too hard, perhaps — to dispel the public's image of him flirting with Megatron.Isn't it time to get to the bottom of this NSFW malarkey once and for all? Is all this gratuitous T&A really in the name of art? Why can't fannies just mean fannies and dicks just mean dicks?The Flaming Lips ft Erykah Badu: "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"This cover of a tune made popular by Roberta Flack (and written by pinko folk great Ewan MacColl in 1957) is undeniably awesome. So what any of that has to do with the sight of Nayrok Badu dripping in cornstarch mixture made to look like semen, Lord knows. And while there is a kind of mystical eroticism at play in the original, there have to be subtler ways of teasing out the song's love-as-fire-of-creation motifs than by slopping Ms Badu in enough jism to suggest a second cumming. And a third, fourth and so on.But is it art? Er dunno. It's bad art, perhaps.Yeasayer: "Ambling Alp"OK, great song, but this utterly meaningless accretion of trippy images is damn-near archetypal in its uninspired plundering of a modest budget, only with an unconvincing 2k10 twist thanks to some hippy kids running about in the buff. Why are these people all naked? Oh, no reason! The Holy Mountain this ain't.But is it art? Is it chuff. The faces on psychedelic worm-stalks are quite good, though.Girls: "Lust For Life"Christopher Owens' wacked-out California troupe tick a lot of very annoying boxes in this notorious promo clip: topless girl in American Apparel tights, nostalgia for disappearing childhood (check the Michael Jackson 'DEAD' headline at 0.48), general air of hipstamatic wankery. But then, whoops, directors Aaron Brown and Ben Chappell drop that image of some dude singing into his boyfriend's stiffy and somehow, the whole enterprise becomes suddenly endearing. Well, that and the fact that "Lust For Life" is an anthem for the ages, as sweetly unaffected as they come.But is it art? Depends. If one of art's prescribed functions is to make you go 'd'awwww-isn't-it-adorable?' at the sight of a man's erection, then sure, why not?El Guincho: "Bombay"Topless girls cavorting with sparklers! Topless girls in gold bodypaint listening to ghetto-blasters! Topless girls in high-waisted denim cut-offs brandishing Kalashnikovs! Hell, if this isn't art we don't want to know what is. I don't speak Spanish, so I have no idea if Pablo Díaz-Reixa's boobalicious video in any way reflects the lyrical contents of this fine song. It's all a bit Carry On Luis Buñuel, and that's essentially great.But is it art? Who cares?Matt & Kim: "Lessons Learned"The NY-based duo told cops they were shooting a mayonnaise commercial while striding around a freezing Times Square in their birthday suits for this NSFW classic. The lesson being that if you want to get away with being totally naked in the middle of NYC, you just have to say you're doing so in the name of condiments. Americans love condiments. They spread it on sandwiches, salads, pizza, even their dead.But is it art? No, it's a naked hairy man and his partner scaring the kids on holiday.CONCLUSION: None of it's art, it's just dicks. And what's wrong with that?
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