Gordon von Steiner | Rush / 2023 [music video]

addicted to touch

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gordon von Steiner (director) Rush / 2023 [2.60 minutes] [music video]

 

From gay Australian singer Troye Sivan’s album Something to Give Each Other, with choreography by Sergio Reis, the video Rush begins with the image of a young boy (who looks very much Sivan himself) standing and looking over a lake, his shorts pulled half way down on his right buttock, as he slaps it, the lyrics immediately reiterating the song’s major theme: “I feel the rush / addicted to your touch.”

    The camera pulls to the right past several other young men and women to show Sivan sitting on a lawn chair in a pair of chaps open in the front to reveal his white undershorts, as he chugs down some beer before beginning to sing the lyrics:

 

                Big communication

                Tell me what you want

                Translate your vibration

                Let your body talk to me, baby love.

    And for the next 2 minutes, we are presented with an onslaught of half, sometimes fully naked bodies kissing, hugging, and making love when they aren’t busy ingesting beer, pot, and perhaps cocaine.

     As its title suggests, the “rush” of sexual desire is akin to the rush of liquor, the rush of drugs, and the addiction is similar.

      It’s not the music, however, that will addict the listener, but the beautiful young bodies in various states of undress that tease the viewer and, along with the gymnastics and group dance numbers make this a truly entertaining video. Below are a series of quick shots, not necessarily in the order in which they appear.

      I should add that while many of the images are gay, as Sivan has in several of recent video work he also represents bisexuality and transsexual behavior.

 

Los Angeles, June 20, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2024).