Samuel Bayer
Bullett With Butterfly Wings (The Smashing Pumpkins)

Samuel Bayer (U.S.A.): music video  for "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", The Smashing Pumpkins (U.S.A.) from "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" (1995) 

These are difficult years we are living in: for heaven’s sake, History tells us that every generation is convinced they are living in the worst of times (something that is always refuted by the "passing" of time) but there is no doubt that the cover that "Time" dedicated to protesters "in general" could have been proposed in any year of the past 15 (and I’m being modest).

In the last fifteen years we have seen various "movements" arise, all different and all the same: from the various "people of no" (about ten years ago my friends and I, in front of a banner "No to any Plant" thought of writing under it a nice "even the milk ones?"; but we refrained, lost in real economy activities) to the so-called "anti-politics" movements to "end up", broadening our view, in the "Noglobal" movements (as if "globalization" in the strict sense of the word is avoidable) in the "Arab Spring", in the Greek and Russian protests etc. 

It is obvious that each thing makes history on its own and one does not "bundle" everything together (the "Arab Spring" receives all my sympathy, for example, but it is obvious that it will end with the establishment of fundamentalist governments, just to say) but my cynicism leads me to question the very foundations of the protests (one above all: "but do they know what they are protesting for?") and the true "democratic" intentions (which, in 99% of the cases I have verified, do not end where mine begin… as it should be).

Let it be clear that if it were up to me I would return to subsistence farming and bartering in a "bio" world without borders but I also know that the Italian sixty-eighters are the last generation untouched by the Monti/Fornero pension reform (may the gods have them in Glory).

I know, I know: I'm making a somewhat populist, somewhat generalizing hash only that "despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage and then someone will say what is lost can never be saved"

Directed by one of the most important music video directors in History (see the videography) and inspired by the photographs of Sebastião Salgado it was the first promo to be extracted from the "infinite sadness". The visual power (strengthened by such an accurate photography that it is an exception in the genre) lies in the dichotomy between the raw images of the open-pit mine and the look (Corgan for the last time without hair issues) of the band: a bold and "shanty" mix of glam & glitter. The direction, despite the full "nineties" style with resounding mystical-mythological references, remains raw and essential: a masterpiece of "synthesis".

It still is one of the most viewed videos on YouTube.