Remembering the 80's Volume Four: The Tubes "She's a Beauty"

Tonight in Remembering the 80’s I review a video that managed to simultaneously ruin my views on strip clubs, circuses and amusement park ride security measures. Yes, it is time to do a recap of the video for The Tubes “She’s a Beauty”. For convenience sake I will timestamp my comments so you can follow along with the video.

Pre-Video: Seriously, who names their band “The Tubes”? That is either a horrible attempt at a double entendre or just grabbing some random object for use as your band name. For reference, this song is from 1983.

0:00: We start with a carnival background banner that I am pretty sure would get the video banned if aired today. Seriously, we can all agree that we can totally see her boob there, right? We have barely started the song and already ten year old me is wondering what the hell is going on.

0:20: Given the horrible acting and / or lip synching that you see in early music videos I will admit that the lead singer’s carnival barker routine is actually pretty good. Points for the tip of the straw cap.

0:45: Apparently twelve year olds can get entrance into the sideshow / strip club. Reminds me of one of my trips down Bourbon Street when, while following two parents with their ten year old son, I heard the strip show sidewalk barker yell “Come on in, it’s Family Night.” I stopped in my tracks right in front of the door because, I mean, it is Family Night.

1:00: For some reason I have spent a lot of time recently learning about the history and the operation of the Disney theme parks. Being a Florida resident I now have an annual pass and instead of enjoying the shows and meeting Mickey Mouse I want to learn everything about how the parks and rides are designed. So this looks like your standard fixed track dark ride. However, for a restraining device the “Masked dominatrix with a night stick” is certainly not standard operating procedure. Though it would make “It’s a Small World” a lot more palatable.

1:03: The entrance is a pair of female legs adorned with razor blades that you pass between and then close behind you, nearly decapitating you. The Freudian implications of this don’t even need to be elaborated upon. Incredibly, on the list of disturbing things we will see in this video this doesn’t even make the top ten.

1:15: We move on to the giant female lips that rise to feature dancing girls. In my past I may have, ahem, attended establishments that featured dancing girls but never had to look at what might have been an advertisement for the Rolling Stones to start things off.

1:30: The fabled “Let’s meet the band” portion of every early 80’s music video. Think about it, every video had one scene in which you get to see the band perform and, as this video clearly shows, do the “Let’s act like we have to run away from the camera.” There are at least a half dozen dramatic spins by the guitarists and keyboardists as they try to flee the camera operator. And I have no clue what the drummer is doing back there. I believe that he is missing both arms. Take that Def Leppard.

1:35: “She will give you every penny’s worth. But it will cost you a dollar first.” Sadly inflation has really caused this video to become dated. Now it will cost you at least a twenty and to be honest your rate of return is nowhere near as good as it used to be. Or so I’ve been told….

1:50: Seriously, why the hell does this band have two keyboardists? That is at least one too many.

1:53: Superfluous nipples on the drum kit. Oh, before I forget my band “Superfluous Nipples” is playing at the Fric and Frac on Tuesday. Everyone stop on by.

2:00: We now run the ride car through the boob. Again, not only was this video broadcast I saw it a hundred times when I was ten years old. Given my warped view of life I wonder if I could file a class action lawsuit against The Tubes.

2:05: In what makes the top five of “What the hell is going on here” we go straight from blasting through the paper boob to what looks to be a seven year old ballet dancer. Seriously, who the hell let the seven year old on this set? It’s bad enough that we have a twelve year old boy being subjected to this but in a video that is essentially one long, exploitive view of women we suddenly have to watch an innocent seven year old. I am just going to assume that one of the guy’s in the band had a daughter who really wanted to be in the video.

2:10: Hey, a trapeze artist! Why not? This is clearly like every circus that I have ever been to in my life.

2:15: We now run the car, which again let’s remember holds a twelve year old boy being restrained by a dominatrix, through a stack of amplifiers. There is no reason for this other than roughly every third video in 1983 featured the destruction of amplifiers. I guess Guitar Center had a sale on them or something. Still, it’s a nice way to try to kill the cast members in slow motion.

2:20: Dancing cave women in cages! Eleven year old boy being choked out with a baton! Somehow this is meant to be sexy I think but I can’t be sure. Right now it just reminds me that Opposite Worlds will be on SyFy tomorrow night and I really need to write about that train wreck of a show.

2:40: And now the part of the video that I always remembered but only until rewatching it this week that I figured out what my ten year old mind could not comprehend. There is a mermaid, which is fair enough. A mermaid that looks rather plastic in certain parts but even as a kid I figured that was just part of the mermaid costume. But watching the video a few times I began to realize a few things. Like the fact that the mermaid has a rather large Adam’s Apple and really harsh facial features and makeup. Google says it is actress Katy Johnson but decide for yourself. That mermaid still freaks me out.

3:09: Back to the trapeze artist with what must be the most gratuitous acrobatic routine ever performed. For a song that is essentially a warning about falling in love with a stripper this video sure has a hell of a lot to do with the circus. I keep on expecting for an elephant to show up at some point.

3:20: Yep, the dominatrix now has a chokehold on the boy. Nothing wrong there…

3:25: And in the fabled ending shot, our twelve year old boy has been turned into an old man as a result of going through this entire experience.

Fascinating post-video fact that I learned this week that I cannot believe is actually true: Ever wonder who the poor twelve year old boy is in this video? It is Robert Arquette, the younger brother of Roxanna, Patricia and David in his first acting role. Wait, you don’t know who Robert Arquette is? Oh, that is probably because he had a sex change and is now happily known as Alexis Arquette. Now, far be it for me to link these two events but that is the most mind blowing piece of trivia that I have learned in years.