Robert Palmer's eccentric fetish
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Robert Palmer
jeffyoung1 — 17 years ago(October 20, 2008 10:30 PM)
It was a sad day in 2003 when prolific and talented 80s rock singer Robert Palmer passed away from a heart attack. Robert Palmer was one of the better-known 80s rock singers and as such he was a part of my young adulthood. When he passed on, so did a part of my memory as a young man.
Don't get me wrong, like so many young men in the late 1980s, we were all turned on by his bodacious babes in, "Addicted To Love", and "Simply Irresistible". What more could you ask for than statuesque, beautiful babes with shapely legs clad in black pantyhose under black, short, lycra form-fitting party dresses, often without bras. These young women oozed with overwhelming sexual power that turned on and intimidated at the same time. Exploited? Who was exploited? These women knew their raw sexual energy empowered them.
I'm not going to be hypocritical. I loved Robert Palmer's two, signature rock songs.
Now that I'm a much older man, I can sit back and analyze his peculiar composition of rock video with these young women posed as they were. It now becomes apparent to me that Mr. Palmer may have been expressing, albeit evocatively and harmlessly, his own unique sexual tastes and fetishes. He was peculiarly attracted to what now looks to be an ideal, female mannequin type, come to life, as in the movie, Mannequin back in 1987. All his main female models in the videos sported the oiled and tightly bound-back hairstyles that are not common, but what is typically molded onto female mannequins. The white facial skin complexions and the bright, glossy lips, and pronounced black eye mascara, are all hallmarks of high-quality department store mannequins. I can only speculate here that quite possibly, Mr. Palmer as a young boy or adolescent, found himself awestruck staring at beautiful department store mannequins and at that young impressionable age when boys are solidifying their conceptions of female beauty, imprinted himself with those manufactured images. Later, as a successful, wealthy rock singer, he could sublimate and idealize and give life to what aroused him long ago as a young male. The other touches, the black pantyhose, the tight, short lycra mini-dresses, are other female garment fetishes he acquired later as a more mature young man. I can hardly say those were truly fetishes, because millions of other young men, as myself, were equally turned on by shapely young women in black minidresses and black nylons. Remember, back in the 1980s, it was frequent to see young women at dance nightclubs wearing some form of black, short dress 5b4and most often black pantyhose to match. The short, often very short hemlines precluded the old-fashioned garter belt stockings so we young men (at the time) knew the nylons had to be pantyhose. And there many times these young ladies at the nightclubs did not wear bras, and possibly nothing underneath their black pantyhose given the lack of pantylines. All of the above sexual imagery, Mr. Palmer added to his original fetish and oila! there was, "Addicted To Love", and "Simply Irresistible". He gave life to that which was among our strongest sexual yearnings, framed in 1980s fashion style. For that men of our generation will always esteem the late Robert Palmer.
While I remember how sexually excited watching those idealized humanized female mannequin-like models could make me, watching those videos back in 1986 and 1987, today in 2008, I'm not sure I would want to run into one of those ladies in a dark alleyway. Imagine some statuesque lady dressed in black, with a pale white face and bright, bright red lipstick, walking up to you unexpectedly. I now half-expect such models to open their mouths and show me their fangs.
Back around 1991 or so, if I remember correctly, a Los Angeles television station tracked down one of the girls who acted in the video, "Addicted To Love". She was past college-age by a few years, but had gone back to college to earn a degree.
She claimed that sh5b4e was paid over $600 for working in the video. She remembered being instructed to look at a spot on the back wall, as were the other models. This gave them the blank, mannequin look that infuriated the feminist critics. As I recalled, she was still pretty for someone in their latter twenties but looked nothing like in the video, without her tightly bound hairstyle, white face makeup and no bright, glossy lipstick. She looked like an ordinary pretty girl you might past on the street in downtown Los Angeles. You would never have recognized her in 1991 from the video back in 1986. She remembered something of the controversy surrounding the video at the time but she simply shrugged it off with a grain of salt. It was a chapter in her life that had come and gone and she was off doing other things five years after the video. -
blackturkdog — 17 years ago(November 19, 2008 08:33 PM)
Hey Jeff, sorry but Robert Palmer gave an interview to GQ magazine in the mid 80's saying that he hated the look of the womenin his videos.He said women would come dress like the mannequins to his concerts,etc.
He understood those videos gave attention to his music which he always experimented with on each album but I think he grew to hate the machine so to speak.
In the interview, he also express an interest in acting. -
WarpedRecord — 16 years ago(April 16, 2009 12:21 PM)
I'm not surprised Robert expressed an interest in acting, and it's too bad he wasn't able to nurture a career in that field because I think he would have been excellent.
As for the videos, Robert was an established soul singer years before the star-markers in the industry decided to remake him for the MTV era. Those videos are entertaining but have nothing to do with the man singing the songs. In some ways, they eclipsed the man singing the songs. And in many ways, this original post in this thread is extremely misguided.
Robert Palmer didn't have a fetish for models or mannequins. The A&R folks at the record label did. Or rather, they used them to sell records. Mission accomplished but at what expense? -
Loomis_Orange — 16 years ago(July 20, 2009 04:57 PM)
Robert Palmer was one of the most interesting things to come out of the MTV era. The man had extensive talents, most of it untapped i'm afraid. He once said that when he was interviewed the interviewer didn't care much about the unique music he was making, they cared about where he had his suits made and asked about the chicks in the videos. Sad Sad Sad. There wasn't much timelessness in the MTV era, not much leading up to it and not much coming after but I always found alot of Palmer's songs to be just that. Timeless!
Count No Man Lucky Til He's Had A Good Death ~~ Euripides~~ -
WarpedRecord — 16 years ago(July 22, 2009 12:38 AM)
You are absolutely right when you say there was no sense of timelessness on MTV. Of course, you're always right.
It's interesting how the most unlikely musicians like Robert Palmer, ZZ Top, Hall & Oates, Rick Springfield and Tina Turner reinvented themselves for MTV. All of them had already been established in their careers in the '70s and were perhaps thought to be past their primes. But where did they go after their MTV makeover? By the '90s, they pretty much faded from sight, and MTV was less interested in music than in putting obnoxious trust-fund kids together in the same house or having jackasses whack each other in the genitalia. Music became grunge, and MTV became "reality TV."
It's probably no coincide that the music all these artists made in the '70s (or earlier) sounds more contemporary today than anything they released during the MTV era. When your goal is to capture the spirit of the moment, you become dated very quickly.
I sense that Robert Palmer was more happy making his '70s R&B with excellent session musicians than in filming videos in front of green screens with emaciated models who have probably starved themselves to death by now. -
Loomis_Orange — 16 years ago(July 22, 2009 01:38 AM)
Hey Warped Long time, No communicate!
Out of all the artists you mentioned, ZZ Top are the ones who did themselves wrong the most. They really bit the dust! They were real musicians and they sold their souls to MTV! When their whorin' was over they had NOWHERE to g5b4o. It was like they had gone and done the unforgivable to their true blue life long companion and that companion kicked them out of the house forever! Texas Don't Fergit and Texas Don't Fergive neither! Here these guys were, Legends in the entire state of Texas, respected and exalted and then what do they do? For Fame? For Money? Billy Gibbons goes and dresses his axe in a mink stoll, the three of them grow outlandish beards and wear red boots and sing songs like "Legs" I was never so ashamed. I took my La Grange album and busted it over the window sill. How dare those bastards trade great Texas Boogie for MTV! Omar and the Howlers didn't do it! Never done it!
Hey, I got a book in the mail today called The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People. It's revised and now includes chapters on more unusual and remote famous people Aleister Crowley, for one. Guess what his last words were?
Come on, Guess!
Give up?
His last words were
"I Am Perplexed"
I figure he seen the same demons that he danced with over there in his castle and they were all smiley and happy at him when he was alive but as he was passing into death, they suddenly changed their tunes.
Be a good boy, Warped!
Count No Man Lucky Til He's Had A Good Death ~~ Euripides~~ -
WarpedRecord — 16 years ago(July 23, 2009 10:40 AM)
Hello, Mavvy_Chin!
It's baffling how a band like ZZ Top would ever become MTV darlings, but they certainly did it, and they were never the same again. So was it their doing? Their manager's? Their record label's? Or some sinister combination of the three. I suspect that their concerts became a bit tense, with the good ol' boy fans wanting to hear "Tush" and the newbies screaming for "Legs."
"The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People" sounds like my kind of read. Is it gossipy like the Kenneth Anger's "Babylon" books? So who else is in it? I suspect David Carradine's sex life could fill several volumes. And did Mr. Crowley die during sex, or was that "I am perplexed" comment unrelated to the theme of the book? -
Loomis_Orange — 16 years ago(July 24, 2009 01:37 AM)
I don't know who's "doing" it was but it sure pissed a lot of people off! The had the legendary status as "The Biggest Little Band In Texas" and they just threw it away fer cash and fame as far as their fans their real fans were concerned! They're still considered traitors in their home state.
This book I been readin at was compiled by the Wallaces back in the early eighties and recently revised to include a bunch more entries. It's got a chapter on sex symbols, of course New entry on:
Anna Nicole Smith and Josephine Baker (of course)
Actors. W.C.Fields is a new entry
On the painters, Gauguin, Goya, Modigliani, Picasso. Diego Rivera, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec ( I was hoping they'd have one of E.J. Bellocq but alas, no one knows anything about him I guess.
ohh Quills such as Colette, George Sand Gertude Stein and Virginia Woolf
this is an enormous book. It goes into rock stars and everybody else.. I haven't read it yet, just glanced.
The library probably has it.
No Mr C didn't die during sex - he died sick and I guess the faces from beneath that used to smile now didn't smile.. Maybe he found out that hell was a real place or something.
Count No Man Lucky Til He's Had A Good Death ~~ Euripides~~