Belgian queer performance artist Dolly Bing Bing has revealed the music video to her latest single “Eat Me”, which was recorded last year in the gorgeous Belgian port city of Ghent.
“Eat Me” contrasts the light, pop-style production and the high tones of her angelic voice with lyrics which can be described as just short of macabre. The track was inspired by the death of Dolly’s husband, who died from a terminal illness in 2018, as well as one of their shared heroes, Edgar Allan Poe. His poem “Annabel Lee”, which is referenced in the lyrics, holds a special place in Dolly’s heart, as her late husband recited it to her at their first meeting.
“It curls around the desire to overcome sickness, desperation and pain in my scream for the escapism of sex and pleasure and of being ‘eaten’, ‘beaten’, ‘raped’, ‘tied down’ or overpowered (by lust),” explains Dolly. “It does so by interlacing “Annabel Lee” into my personal story, mirroring both narratives as well as turning them upside down. Both depict the terrible trauma of a loss of virginity or of a tender state of paradisiac innocence. “Eat Me” has a calming and healing allure and wishes to unlock the aura and definition of beauty as ‘nothing but the beginning of terror.’”
The video was shot and directed by Andrew Strasser while self-styled and produced by Dolly Bing Bing. It features themes ranging from all types of pleasure, from a garden in bloom to what heavily resembles a sex dungeon, and further references Edgar Allan Poe with Dolly wearing black wings – perhaps a reference to his poem “The Raven”?
“The video plays with the cruel waves between desire and death, bondage and battle, arcadia and madness, eventually dissolving into the calming sand of a faraway Poe-like ‘kingdom by the sea,’” she explained. Watch below.
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