The sex machine

George Michael's Starr report

by Charles Taylor

As a piece of pop impudence, the video for George Michael's latest single, "Outside," beats anything in Velvet Goldmine cold. The song is his response to being arrested by the LAPD earlier this year for solicitation in a public bathroom. Michael's coming-out song, "Outside," which can be found on the new two-disc stocking stuffer Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael (Epic), is a great dance track. The sound of the number swirls around his playful vocal like the gay rumors that have swirled around his public persona for years. He's not just owning up here, he's flaunting his sexuality. "When you shake your ass/They notice fast," he once sang, and "Outside" operates on the same principle as his "I Want Your Sex" once did. Let's get everybody shaking his/her ass, Michael is saying, right under the noses of the people who'll be most upset by it. This is the real legacy of the yippies' call for "fucking in the streets" -- and, thank goodness, it's much more elegant.

In Vaughn Arnell's video for "Outside," scenes of couples -- gay and straight, rich and poor -- making public love in LA alternate with a dance fantasy in which a public bathroom is transformed into some after-hours disco. Mirrored balls drop out of the light fixtures, the porcelain urinals are replaced by sparkly silver models, and into the scene struts Michael himself, sporting an outfit that might be described as Adam 12 reimagined by Tom of Finland -- mirrored glasses, knee-high leather boots, and a shiny nightstick that's ready for action. It doesn't much matter that the two prominent dancers are busty redheads -- this is the queer Busby Berkeley production number that the disco era never delivered.

Michael's attitude toward the people who expect him to be upset or chastened by the public revelation of his gayness is comparable to the famous New York Post headline: "Madonna on Nude Pix: So What!" And if "Outside" were no more than a fuck-you to the LA cops who apparently have nothing better to do than hang around public restrooms, it would be a nifty bit of naughtiness.

But Michael's refusal to apologize links up with something else in Arnell's video that suggests the current climate of the country better than anything else on the pop scene right now. The video's aerial shots of couples making love -- in the backs of flatbed trucks and on rooftop landing pads and swimming pools, in toilet stalls and glass elevators -- refuse to remain fixed. Starting off in sun-drenched glossy magazine color, they shift abruptly to grainy, surveillance-video black-and-white. Time and again, the shots begin by encouraging a voyeurism so pervasive you wouldn't think of it as such, any more than you would when you're flipping through Vogue or GQ or flipping to Baywatch. And just when you settle into that voyeurism, you're reminded that someone else is watching. What you're seeing, in Arnell's video, is an erosion of even the notion of private space. After a while the effect is anti-erotic. Every time you see sex begin to happen, you know it's being watched -- by the security cams that monitor public spaces, by hovering helicopters that fly through the background of shots -- and you know the cops will swoop in.

Arnell's video is just as glossy as anything else on MTV. But seen amid the other hot new clips or as a break from the impeachment hearings, it doesn't fade from memory to make way for the next video or ad or Real World episode, as most MTV fare is designed to do. It's a pop image of what's happening in Washington, a vision of private behavior surreptitiously monitored and thus opened to public scrutiny. And its impact is, finally, inseparable from Michael's absolute refusal to pull a Hugh Grant and beg the public's forgiveness for trying to pick up a guy in a public toilet. You could see that refusal during his MTV appearance to promote the video and the new album. It was utterly different from what we're used to from celebrities caught in compromising situations, just as Bill Clinton's appearance before the country following his grand jury testimony ("Even presidents have private lives") was startling -- and bracing -- for its refusal to grovel, its rejection of the idea that the public is owed an apology for something that's none of its business.

"Outside" doesn't have the depth to address the magnitude of the threat posed by Ken Starr and the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee. It's a clever, opportunistic move by Michael and Arnell to capitalize on a gossipy bit of news and create publicity for an expensive new greatest-hits package. What makes it a real rock-and-roll act is that it also doesn't give a fuck what anyone thinks about it. Michael is convinced that the people who busted him are anti-sex tyrants and that the best weapon against them is to rub their noses in what clearly makes them freak out -- just as a kid learns the best way to annoy parents is to turn up the volume. The message of the "Outside" video could be taken from the Bikini Kill song "New Radio," where Kathleen Hanna shrieked, "Let's wipe our cum on my parents' bed." Having been caught sticky-fingered, Michael isn't interested in being anyone's damn father figure.