The music video, “Flesh without Blood/ Life in the Vivid Dream” made by Grimes, depicts a heartbroken girl coping with the breakup of a seemingly toxic relationship. She travels through several phases of a dream that leave her beside herself, crazed, on a mountain top. The format of the six-minute-long video is split into two Acts, signifying the switch from a dream state to what is seen as her person heaven and hell. The video in its entirety is made to feel like one is in a daze as portrayed by slow motion of frames and rogue scenes settings. She dives into the hard truths of what heartbreak is capable of doing to one’s mental state, by showing her own demise. In Grimes music video, the use of recurrent color, the imagery of the baby doll and a look at nostalgia paints a picture using harsh realities to depict her former relationship gone bad in a dreamlike atmosphere.

The utilization of the color pink, blue and black throughout Acts I and II depict the femininity but also level of drama in the video. The color pink is found in almost every scene of “Flesh without Blood”, but most predominantly in the bed room location where there are pink walls, a pink door, pink flowers, bed sheets and even her own hair is dyed pink. The waves of this immense color throughout, consume the viewer and scream all things feminine. It is her throwing the most distinct girl symbol to rid of everything guy related as she tells her story. In Act II, there is a part where Grimes is on top of a hill with a beam of light and the open sky behind her. The high contrast from the dark black hill with the beaming bright blue skies behind her creates the sense of both heaven and hell or good versus evil in her battle of heartbreak. The use of a low angle shot followed by a long shot, still playing with the heavy contrast, makes for a unique point of view. It sets her in a higher power, looking strong on the hilltop with the low angle and with the long shot, it reinforces her aloneness felt by the vastness of the open space she finds herself in. The culmination of the color and camera shots together add to the raw emotion in her struggles to be okay in her dreamlike setting. The pink elicits feminism without having to articulate the meaning for it, regardless of having the lyrics while one watches.

The baby doll that is seen throughout the music video symbolizes Grimes herself as a puppet in the relationship with her ex, where she essentially is the doll. In the first Act, we see the doll being coddled by the guy in her bedroom, as if she is helpless in his arms, who holds her sanity like he did when they were still together. The one man remains in the room holding this doll in the scene of the bedroom where everything is pink, setting a heavy contrast between the lines of femininity and masculinity. He is strategically placed to where Grimes depicts him to still having a presence in her life and thus rendering her helpless even in her own dream. In the second Act we see the doll now covered in blood and being stabbed by Grimes. The transfer from the man’s care to the arms of her own exemplifies the shift in control, where she now with dagger in hand, is knifing the doll “lifeless”. This represents her loss of sanity and how she is ridding of what she was with the boy before she took things into her own hands. The doll throughout the video being transferred from the arms of the man to the arms of her own is a trivial detail but has such sly symbolism of her being the epiphany of the doll and the back and forth control of sanity.

Grimes throughout the music video is seen several times in an over the top, pink, voluptuous, floor length dress that one would wear perhaps in the 1900’s. This costume is interlaced with scenes of modern time so that when she is in the gown, it puts an emphasis on the culture convergence of nostalgia. It is a grab at a return to premodern times and a desire of wanting back what she once had. Back then, dresses like what she is wearing were made in America and hand sown, qualities as such, people hold on to in our modern society in order to keep the sanity of what America is known to be true for. An amazing use of costume design to play with not only the emotions of what the words of the song are saying but to physically take the viewer back to further develop what she is going through in this conglomeration of a video. The dress is also a shade of pink and makes one think that Grimes is trying to lay out a connection between nostalgia and feminism (which we earlier established to be associated with the color pink). The nostalgia mixed with the pink dress, one can infer that the nostalgia is blatantly of the former relationship but more so of her individuality as a woman. Meaning that not only does she miss the boy, but who she might have been prior to him, strong-willed and independent one could argue. Little trivial details like that, add to the all-around aesthetic of what Grimes is trying to depict from her feelings of nostalgia.

In summation, the music video is diligent in exploring the stages of Grimes heartbreak in looking at color schemes, props being used and the past. The dream like aspect of the story has the implication that she is avoiding the problem and trying to cope, vividly expressed through her all sides of the spectrum scenes. From the bedroom, to the dance floor, to the tennis courts with 20th century clothing, to the middle of the nowhere, Grimes lashes out and eventually loses her sanity because of a boy. She conveys the monstrosity of a presence the boyfriend had in her life and what can happen when things do not go according to plan. Everyone will have heartbreak in one’s lifetime and whether one choses to eat ice cream for weeks, buy a multitude of cats or make a mind questioning music video is entirely up to the heart.
