What makes Despacito the most watched video on YouTube?
Gazillion grey cells toil every nanosecond to figure how to break the internet. There is however no formula to reach the height of digital stardom.
"Despacito", sung by Puerto Ricans Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, deserves attention from all quarters, not just fans. With many more than 3 billion or 3,000,000,000 hits, it is at the moment the most watched YouTube video.
Despacito is "slowly…" in Spanish and the lyrics candidly suggest the unhurried approach of racy sex. Titillations include: "Want you to show my mouth - Your favourite places (favourite, favourite baby) - Let me trespass your danger zones - Until I make you scream" and "...it’s just that your beauty is a puzzle - But to finish it, I have the missing piece!"
This is not avant-garde erotica. This is what the Jaspals and the Rosies (or Buajis) want to tell one another when caked in lipstick under the burkha.
The song is entirely in Spanish and yet has made waves across the globe. The video does very well to communicate the message of the song to a viewership without knowledge of Spanish. To give an overview, four things make the video an ideal platter to serve the song. These are (a) dirty dance (b) multicultural sensitivity (c) modest urbanism (d) street fashion.
Dirty Dance
Dirty dance is an essential feature of nightlife. Rightists have derided it as uncivil and Leftists have knocked it as capitalist. But the hedonistic or Bacchanalian cult has a long tradition. In his 1940 classic, which took 25 years to be published in communist Russia and was finally translated as Rabelais and His World, in 1968, Mikhail Bakhtin writes:
“The grotesque body, as we have often stressed, is a body in the act of becoming. It is never finished; never completed. It is continually built... transgressing its own body, in which it conceives a new, second body: the bowels and the phallus [and the vulva]. These two areas play the leading role in the grotesque image, and it is precisely for this reason that they are predominantly subject to positive exaggeration, to hyperbolisation...”
The focus of the text is on the "grotesque body", ie the undisciplined body, which wakes up once the grip of the civilised body is loosened post intoxication. The unrestrained human is alerted to the thrusts of the pelvis and pursues them endlessly in what Bakhtin has called the "carnivalesque" space. Here, the body is bootylicious and thrusting.
It contorts in ways otherwise unknown to the inflexibility that civilisation burdens it with. And because it explodes in the cultural underground, it has the viral tendencies of the forbidden.
If the more than three billion hits is anything to go by, then "Despacito" has expanded that carnivalesque space. And the privacy of the internet means that it reaches the Rihannas who must hide their Miley Cyrus selves, little black dresses, high boots and lipsticks — all under the burkha and other diktats of control — in their daily struggle to own their bodies.
Multicultural sensitivity
The multicultural crowd of background dancers in Despacito lays strong emphasis on social diversity. White, black, brown and yellow men and women are not only tucked in the backdrop, but also occupy the forefront in regular bursts of sexualised jigs. This inclusive spirit of the song is a welcome break from regular barks about the apparent necessity to erect cultural borders. Another big club hit, "Shape of You" similarly includes a visibly multiracial cast.
However, conspicuously absent in the video is a black stud. The old, black men in the video are too "cute" to challenge the boys in carnal spins and twirls. The women in the video have little choice but to select from the pool of white, brown and yellow boys.
Modest Urbanism
The video showcases merriness in a modest locality. The first half is shot in La Perla of San Juan, Puerto Rico. The rocky Atlantic coast and the brightly coloured houses initiate the lively mood which is permanent on the screen.
The camera follows a siren-like Zuleyka Rivera into the narrow paths off the coast and in the midst of the colourful walls. Here, old men sit around a table parked in the middle of the alley and play board. Young men and women gyrate to the music. The mood is that of cheerful leisure.
Street fashion
Zuleyka Rivera is the 2006 Miss Universe. Yet she sashays down the La Perla lanes in clothes that can be picked from any trendy flea market. Be it Sarojini Nagar in New Delhi or Colaba Causeway in Mumbai; chances are that her magenta blouse and denim shorts will be spotted in every shop. Her wrap sandals are an exception though.
Designed in ancient gladiatorial style, the footwear is likely to take stores by a storm. In fact, the wardrobe of the peppy crowd in the video; complete with round neck T-shirts, low drop harem pants, knot blouses, hot pants, spaghettis and miniskirts; is common and affordable.
Quite obviously, the target audience of the video is the swelling number of millennials. Many of them may be quite poor but weekend clubbing is as much a necessity as the next smartphone for them.
But is "Despacito" sexist? That charge is as potent as its success in one instance at least. While men of all ages – kids to oldies – frolic in the video; the sole image of women is that of the young babe as street courtesan. While boys and men scamper, take a haircut, play board or drink; the missies only pirouette. The probing eye can spot only a handful of women doing other things in the deep and blurry background.
Unfortunately, this inequality is also behind the cult status of Despacito.
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