In this music video we participate in two parallel worlds which are inseparably connected to each other. The outside is different but the inside is the same. We notice marriage as a constitution of sexual (and emotional) exploitation and economic dependence which is determining for all relations. But we don't see it that clearly at the rich couple, they are affectionately. The pimp and the prostitute are violent trash, they are the dark site of our civilized society. But they are what the rich couple really is. Both women realize that when they are glancing at each other. They are in shock and want to do something but the men hold them from it. What is starting harmlessly is ending up in a tragedy, because the rich woman is not willing to take it, to accept the truth and that is for me the mendacious and blocked double moral of the entire mankind.
The captured pictures are so overwhelming that you tend to forget the lyrics. The music and the soft voice of Mylène Farmer are guiding you to a gentle but also very violent world, typical for Mylène Farmer. She sounds like just another pop-singer but that is just masquerade! In fact she is a wolf in a sheep fur.
The lyrics of "California" are about that Mylène has to leave (France) whether she wants or not to find herself again. There is no alternative, she has to leave everything behind. Love is not explicitly mentioned but she refers to a well known poem (Le Pont Mirabeau from Guillaume Apollinaire) which is about love floating away like water and at the same time you are still standing at the same place and haven't learned anything. So Mylène is leaving with bad feelings and without any joy, not knowing what life in L.A. will bring. Her first impressions are just visual and overwhelming, suggesting her a perfect material world for all her heart desires. And there she wants to find herself? Impossible. Slowly she is realizing that this is not a dream world, she is getting a punishing note. And now everything becomes surreal and she wants to be at the "L.A.-perfect-world-trip" again. But there is only melancholy: I am the ice in the water. Melancholy and the awful truth: The violence in life and the inseparably connection between wealth and poverty, the civilized world and it's trash.
She combines the good and bad experiences in the chorus:
It is sexy the sky of California; Under my skin, I have L.A. in overdose; So sexy the spleen of a road movie; Retrospective my life appears distorted
Mylène Farmer is a really talented and incredible woman and since 20 years a singer/actress. If you experienced her once, you will forget everything else you ever heard before.
