Video: Digging in the Dirt
"A lot of love went into making this video," Peter Gabriel said as he accepted a Grammy for "Digging in the Dirt".
It must prove that love hurts, as a lot of sufffering had to be endured by PG and numerous video animators.
Hopefully you're familiar with the first few scenes: PG lying in a garden...a snail crawls across his ear, eyelid, nose, mouth (the sushi version of escargot. Yum!). Then the grass envelopes PG and he's swallowed into the earth, followed by scenes of PG trying to dig himself out.
If that wasn't visually intense enough, there are details that is a dream for those who love to dig (no pun intended) for symbolism.
More scenes: PG pulls up in a jeep with a woman. She angrily throws a glass of water at him. That in and of itself isn't too dramatic. Throw a glass of water at whoever is with you right now if you don't believe that.
But thanks to slo-mo technology, it seems like the most dramatic thing in the world. The way PG recoils to the water, you'd think she threw a glass of acid at him instead.
And there's enough psychological references going on here for any student to have a Freudian field day. A boy's father is seen casually knocking down his son's sandcastle and then smiles as Dad spills hot tea on him. And his mother laughs as the boy becames emotionally scarred for life.
Back in the Jeep, Gabriel becomes more and more furious as he tries to swat a wasp, going as far as to ram his fist through the windshield. Sure Gabriel is only acting, but it's enough to hope and pray you don't get to see him get that angry for real.
There's enough special effects to fill up an entire book, but it's the little details that come through. One scene shows a field at night, with a silhoutte of a man in foliage. The kicker is something some people might miss in the foreground: a yellow police line tape that reads DO NOT CROSS.
The live version of "Digging" ends on one bitter note, suggesting a feeling of hopelessness. The album version ends with a fade-out, implying "I haven't found salvation yet but I haven't stopped searching either. Still looking." The video ends with the word "heal" spelled out in flowers, doing a neat trick: it's one of the very rare times the video surpasses a song in meaning.
Overall, one of the best videos ever made, only tieing with "Sledgehammer" because "Sledgehammer" happens to be the first video that gave videos any value as an artform. But "Digging" takes the art to the next level.