Vaka Video

So I rewatched the video for Sigur Ros' "Untitled 1" (a.k.a. "Vaka"). And everything makes so much more sense now. And with that, it's all the more sadder. Not only is everything so fiercely dystopian, its extremely, extremely fiercely dystopian. You have the kids checked for lesions in the school, and then they put on their gas masks and heavy clothes and such before they go outside. They do all this because they live in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland. Everything outside has been charred and it looks like they live in a volcano. The sky is a crimson, blood red. And for fun they build an ashman (instead of snowman...) and trash a derelict car that is in the playground. One could even assume that it was brought in to serve as the equivalent of a real playset.

So anyway, a fight breaks out between two kids, and, to make it simple, after a dramatic choking during the climatic 44th octave singing, the camera zooms in on the "oh no I'm dying!" look in the eyes of the child, whose gas mask has come off and she is lying on the ground dying. The children crowd around and watch her die. Before I had thought "Gee, thats sad, they killed that kid." But now I realize that they killed her because they have absolutely no value for life in a post-apocalyptic world, and, for a good reason one could argue. This is a life where death comes early - the children, possibly not even out of their first decade of life, are being checked for cancerous lesions. In such a society one does not live - rather, one exists for a (short) period of time and then dies. One could almost say "expires" instead of die; one's value may as well be the same as that of a carton of milk. It is no surprise that the children did not seem at all shocked by the death of their peer. Soon, they would be the same as him.

So that's my take the second time around. Very, very dystopian.