Madeline Leman And the Desert Swells’ new video clip for Diva With The Fever of Changes is a powerful feminist statement that takes a vicious stab at the patriarchy, channelling the power of spoken word poetry.
Leman and her posse are pissed off with the patriarchy and they’re out to take it down, one sharp diss after another.
Madeline Leman And the Desert Swells are here take down the patriarchy, one acerbic line after another, channelling 1960s protest music and the power of spoken word poetry.
She sings about not only the everyday experience of being a woman, but also “the absurdity of the gendered experience of being a woman in the music industry.”
“Can you see me?” she asks repeatedly, echoing the sentiment of women wanting to be seen for something other than their spells of rage, their hair or the clothes they wear.
Leman wants herself, and other women, to be seen for the “sick lick on my guitar that I play tastefully and don’t caress like a dick.”
She shows us that we are practically preyed upon and seen as something to be devoured, consumed.
Literally. Leman represents this idea awesomely with a meat-faced girl. In one shot, she’s mindlessly typing away at a desk, in another, she’s playing volleyball and posing suggestively in her teeny clothes.
When talking about the inspiration for the clip, Leman says: “The main idea for the clip came from wanting to subvert these typical female roles and find the strength/power/anger in the ultra femme.”
In the heated atmosphere surrounding today’s gender politics, Madeline Leman And the Desert Swells make a powerful statement that forces us to listen and incite change.
Watch the new video above.
