If there’s one thing we can learn from MGMT’s new music video for their single, "Congratulations", it’s that fame is never what it’s cracked up to be.
Oh and also…never bring a thestral to the desert.
Looking uncannily similar to the misunderstood horse/bird creatures in Harry Potter, the monster MGMT duo, Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, follow around for the entirety of the four minute video, what appears to be a metaphor for MGMT’s disenchantment with fame and cynicism towards the community who brought it to them. It’s an interesting spin for a theme that has been rehashed over and over again over the past few years by other artists of varying influence, sparing the pair from the near deadly indictment of plagiarism.
It’s unclear, though, what the viewer is actually supposed to feel towards the monster. During one point the monster’s eyes innocently fall on a beetle. Aw, cute. And then his beak falls off. Aw, sad. And then he loses footing and topples down a massive sand dune. BAHAHAHAHA.
I’ll admit it, I laughed at the poor bird/horse…thestral…fame monster…thing. But I can’t help but feel that that’s the sort of reaction MGMT would expect from a music lover who totally buys into the ideology of fame. For me and, arguably, for the rest of the world, the only thing more entertaining than watching celebrity rise, is watching it fall.
