Interview with Kevan Funk

Word Is Cheap has an interview with 'Miniskirt' video director Kevan Funk. Here's an excerpt:

“Miniskirt” has strong female messages, visually and aesthetically how did you explore this theme?

As much as I love the song musically, I was drawn to it specifically because of the content. My narrative film work is almost always driven by some sort of sociopolitical interest, so the track fit nicely with that, something that is fairly rare in music videos. I mean, you can say that the song has a strong female message, because the authorial voice is that of a woman but I think that its message, in terms of being a position or opinion, should transcend gender at this point. I find it incredibly bizarre and frustrating that the label of feminism is often used to marginalize a particular view/statement/issue as being extreme or niche. It’s a manipulative semantic perversion, one that has long been perpetuated. I think to not identify as a feminist (regardless of ones gender) at this day is age, to not acknowledge that equality should be the minimum expectation, is legitimately insane. When it came to the video, I think we quickly realized that we needed to find a visual language that was complimentary, as opposed to trying to create images with the same direct force of the lyrics. It would just be too exhaustive for the viewer and likely diminish the power of the track. So in finding that visual language for the video, I went back to the basic thematic element of the song, which to me is this assertive defiance towards a culturally entrenched patriarchal construct. That ubiquitous patriarchal apparatus operates through these means of control and commodification. The parallel between the exertion of that power over both femininity and nature (two things that are often historically linked in this cultural narrative) became the conceptual basis of the video. It seemed to provide the right sort of visual language for what we wanted to achieve, something that was direct but not literal.