Katy Perry's "E.T." Ft. Kanye West

 

One would not usually think of Katy Perry's music videos as works that would qualify as particularly artistic pieces of visual culture, but her recent release, E.T., is a visual masterpiece in its own right. The scene is set in space, supposedly many years in the future as an alien (Katy Perry) floats in the void, traveling to what we find out is a post-apocalyptic Earth. She seems to have heard the call of a robot on the surface, and she responds to his memory of earth. This prompts her body to change from the stereotypical large-eyed, smooth-skinned alien, to a human with unnatural eyes and hair. As she thinks of flowers on earth, her clothes billow like petals around her, and her hair is similarly positioned to make one think of a flower. Deep reds contrast with the black space and bright blue light of a sun behind her, accented by the pink of a nebula. Her motions are fluid and graceful like a flower stem bending in the wind.

Images of a white cockatrice stimulate another change in Perry's appearance as her eyes become amber-brown and have slitted black pupils like an animal. Her clothes turn white and become stiff and unmoving as she seems to have wings and talons, and her skin is pale. She seems to be fascinated with earth's past and eventually lands on the surface where rusted pieces of machinery litter the floor. When she steps down to earth, she has made another change after viewing memories of a deer, and she wears a golden bodice and bracers as she has brown and blonde hair. She seems to look almost like a roman goddess or nature nymph when she reaches down to the old robot that was shown at the beginning of the video. Her touch on his glowing chest-plate brings him to life, and her kiss turns him human again in the flash of light that shows the rising sun. As they two face the dawn together, Perry is shown to be half-deer, and they seem to face a new life together with hope. The visuals of the music video are both aesthetically pleasing and make sense with the loose plot. 

Perry manages to capture the strange beauty of an "alien" people while remaining aesthetically pleasing in human form.  Though her colors and clothing are unnatural, her message and emotions are human and draw the viewer into the music video.  She seems bother otherworldly and human, an extraterrestrial lover and inexplicably fascinating siren.