Rey portrays a sort of Marilyn Monroe Jackie Onassis hybrid, and the video features A$AP Rocky as a Jack Kennedy/Barack Obama hybrid.
The video has already sparked a lot of controversy for recreating the 1963 Kennedy assassination, and the interracial relationship has raised a few eyebrows. Director Anthony Mandler says that was the point.
"We used the Kennedy framework to kind of implement this new Camelot, this maybe socially diverse Camelot...bringing it into the modern era, but still keeping that classic framework. There's a kind of micro commentary on this new royalty. I think with an African American president, it's still controversial to see him playing JFK, its still taboo, even though it shouldn't be."
He goes on to say "We didn't want to make it be a mockery. How many artists and rappers and singers have you seen running around in badly fitted suits acting like the president?"
Mandler says he wanted the video's theme to be about a loss of innocence and sort of a Romeo and Juliet story. He felt the Marilyn. Jackie O and Jack Kennedy love triangle "became this kind of ideal of what seemed perfect from the outside but was maybe rotting on the inside."
The video is amazing and it channels a modernized early 60's feel. It is hard not to have some emotional response to it. Rey is simply stunning in it. Is it controversial, perhaps? But it is also bold and I think the director created his vision successfully.
