As Marina continues to promote the Love + Fear album via another leg of the tour and an EP featuring five of the sixteen songs off the record in acoustic format, the pop phenom still has time to release videos for some of the newly rendered singles. After “Superstar” and “True,” Marina has turned to one of the most resonant ditties on the album, “Karma,” to lend a sparse but effective visual spin on it.
With the help of L.A.-born director Nikko LaMere, stylist Mercedes Natalia and makeup artist Kate Lingan, that effect turns out to be one of a very urgent Pierrot. Imbued with Marina’s own spirit, of course. Opening with the musical equivalent of what sounds like magic dust being sprinkled onto someone, Marina takes the core of the “Karma” choreography she’s been showcasing on tour and implements it into the video as a lone spotlight shines on her to tell the tale of, presumably, a man who’s “getting off on bad behavior” but that, ultimately, “when your world comes crashing down/all of the money in this town/won’t save your reputation now.” That she’s dressed in such attire and painted with such makeup to deliver this message only serves to heighten the notion that Karma–and Fate–has nothing if not a sense of humor. How it eventually chooses to repay those who have been living recklessly in terms of their comportment toward others tends to have a tinge of irony to it.
For example, the taking down of Harvey Weinstein by an article from Ronan Farrow. Whose own father is accused of sexual misconduct. Incidentally, Marina has stated of this song, “It’s partly about how men in the music and film industry can’t get away with abusing women anymore.” Her shadow cast pronouncedly as some sort of sinister double in the spotlight, it looks almost as though she might pull a Peter Pan at any moment and detach it from herself. But more to the point, this image of a shadow double seems to represent the true inner soul of a malevolent person posing as someone decent on the outside. But as Marina insists while doing her best version of jazz hands, “Real hearts don’t lie/Take it from me, I know.”
Her earnest belief in the notion of karma is evident in the close-ups on her face, telling a story in itself that seems to infer she’s seen her fair share of cunts fall. Pacing a bit as she spins the yarn to let us know how it’s all going to shake out in the end, there is a dichotomy in the seriousness of her tone when paired with her Pierrot-like appearance. There’s even one particular moment around the two-minute mark when she seems genuinely to have had the revelation, “Oh my god, I think it’s karma.” It’s after this moment that her dances appear to have even more of a spring in their step. For there’s nothing better than resting assured in the idea that you need do nothing to execute vengeance on someone. Like Death, Karma always comes around to collect. She can just be a bit slow about it sometimes (even letting Death do her job at times).
But if she’s dressed anything like Marina as a clown, surely you can forgive her this tardiness.
