Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings' Plainspoken Cancer Catharsis, “Stranger To My Happiness”

Before we talk about Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings' “Stranger To My Happiness,” I'd like to briefly return to Ke$ha's “Dirty Love,” highlighted last week. Within hours of posting “Ke$ha Confounds Slut-Shamers with 'Dirty Love,” news of Ke$ha entering rehab to treat an eating disorder appeared on the Internet. Given the video's focus on her body and this unfortunate news, the “Dirty Love” video becomes even more significant. And it further raises the stakes for its satirical attack on conservatives who view the female body and sexual expression as not only worthy of censorship, but as a weapon to harm self esteem. I decided to reach out to a friend who knows much more about eating disorders than I to get a more informed and well-rounded perspective on the video, in the context of Ke$ha's recovery:

“The first thing there is to know about eating disorders is that they are not necessarily about body image. They are about control. The second is they are comorbid. They don't appear out of the ether, they are a result of another disorder/life event/illness. For instance, a very common trigger event to the manifestation of ED is rape, or other sexual abuses: 'If i starve myself until there's nothing left and I am invisible then no one can bother me again.' Conversely, other girls pack on the pounds so they will not 'be attractive' anymore, creating a visible barrier between them and predators. Notice both examples are the individual exerting control after an event where they felt they had none. I think this video was another way for Ke$ha to exert control over her body and how it's seen, literally and figuratively.”

She also added this, which I thought this was brilliant in terms of capturing the potentially transgressive power of sex and pop in music videos: “When I was in college there was a girl on my hall who said when she saw Christina Aguilera's “Dirrrty” video that she knew she was gay. I'm thinking this will be that video for another couple girls, for sure.” Best wishes to Ms. Sebert and her recovery.

Which brings us to Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings' video for “Stranger To My Happiness” directed by Rob Hatch-Miller and Paloma Basu. It's a deceptively modest performance clip, full of sensitive hand-held camera work and intuitive no-frills editing, tilting all of the focus onto Ms. Jones' fiery charisma. What immediately stands out about the video is Jones' bald head, the result of chemotherapy that she's still receiving following a pancreatic dancer diagnosis in June of last year. But observe how the video doesn't make a big deal about the physical evidence of Jones' cancer. It refuses to treat her as an oddity or someone to gawk at, while still allowing her to become a symbol (very much on her own terms) of perseverance.

We don't get that many quiet videos like “Stranger To My Happiness” these days. They don't really court YouTube likes or pageviews for the websites that post them. It's easy to imagine a much more melodramatic video that called attention to Jones' struggle over the past year, doting on her baldness and “going there,” as it were. The G.O.A.T. suffersploitation clip being Johnny Cash's icky, affecting “Hurt” directed by Mark Romanek, right? “Stranger To My Happiness” lets Jones' cancer just sit there, as a loaded visual detail, both heartening and a little bit disturbing. It hovers around an otherwise “conventional” performance clip. There is a tendency, when confronted with incomprehensible suffering, to either make a big deal about it or pretend it isn't happening at all – that nothing is out of the ordinary. Hatch-Miller and Basu capture the mindful middleg round between those two ultimately, selfish impulses.

Hatch-Miller and Basu run [Production Company Productions](http:// http://www.productioncompanyproductions.com) along with director (and comedy hero) Tom Scharpling, whose fourth wall-revealing video for Monster Magnet's “Mindless Ones” similarly captured on-stage energy with simple cinematic grammar. And though the stakes are nowhere near as high as “Stranger To My Happiness,” seeing Dave Wyndorf of Monster Magnet, older, still grinding out space-rock riffs, is similarly ennobling. The wear and tear of age and experience as inspiration in and of itself. “Stranger To My Happiness” and “Dirty Love” (and even “Mindless Ones”) sensitively understand the visual power of the music video and the way that bodies and faces can be “used” by sensitive directors to bely objectification and exploitation and get to something empowering.

Brandon Soderberg is a writer and dog owner living in Baltimore. He's on Twitter - @notrivia

For more on Sharon Jones, read Noisey Managing Editor Eric Sundermann's extensive interview with her here.