right, can we please take a moment to talk about the bridge sequence in bad habits because oh my god the SUBTEXT??
at the start of the video, the distance between miles and alex is really highlighted, e.g. opposing colour palettes, the kind of divided imagery above, alex standing several paces behind miles etc. they're constantly in each other's eyeline, but also constantly apart. throughout the video, they gradually get closer, and the biggest catalyst for this is miles's guitar solo at the bridge of the song, where they start off at opposite ends of the room and miles moves backwards to alex as he's playing; by the end of the solo, they're finally properly side by side for the first time.
this is then immediately followed by shots like this of the two of them together:
in the earlier stages of the video, miles's singing was just intercut with sexual imagery of either women, or him and women - now, in the build up to the song's climax (and as the sexual imagery gets more heated), his singing is intercut more vividly and more frequently with clips of him and alex; the images of women become fainter and more infrequent, outnumbered by moments of him and alex wrapped around each other, while the women remain hazy and separate from miles.
this is then followed by a full on physical altercation between them; throughout the video, alex has been this silent, imposing presence behind miles, and at the bridge of the song here, miles finally turns around and confronts him in a way that has distinctly sexual undertones - and idk, this just feels so much like a metaphor for being followed around by desire and finally grappling with it (i.e. alex is the desire that's following miles around)
we then this gorgeous shot of miles's gaze and the fantasies behind it where (unlike earlier in the video) the images interposed behind it aren’t of abstracted female bodies, but of a woman walking up the stairs to him and alex lying entangled with each other, and then some fleeting imagery that clearly shows the three of them engaged in sexual acts together.
then - and this is the part that really gets me. the undertone of lust and fantasy laced through the video is finally being played out explicitly (in the scenario we get a glimpse of between miles and alex and the woman), and then is then IMMEDIATELY followed by a sequence of imagery that is ONLY OF ALEX AND MILES. and not just only of them, but of them being increasingly close to each other; they're no longer at opposite ends of the room, they're lying on each other and their faces are pressed together and they look utterly blissed out. all the shots of proximity are of them; the intercutting imagery of women has completely disappeared at this key point of the song and it's just them. them together in a situation that has been established as explicitly sexual.
the fact that throughout the song, alex and the two of them being together is inextricably linked with the fulfilment of desire and fantasy is just - it makes me a little bit insane, actually.
because it’s only once the two of them come together that the sex behind the images of fantasy interspersing miles’s singing actually come to fruition. it’s only once they’ve touched each other that others touch them, only after they come together that the sexual images that have been chasing them come into focus and become anything other than hazy, fleeting fantasies. in a music video so explicitly about sex and desire, it’s all about them.
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
areudirty
dailybridgerton
turnnoffyourmind
