Elastic Heart is about mania, the upswing of bipolarity. I’ve known that person: she's irresistible when she’s high, her energy ballooning to fill a room. Her mania is effervescent and urgent and sometimes frightening. She’s the best part of life—until she isn’t. When the mania ebbs, she’s as wilted as if she’d been to battle.
Sia knows this; she's smart about it, too, because—as her music video depicts—bipolarity isn't defined by two opposite and contending halves as much as it’s parasitic. In Sia's video, Maddie Ziegler is that affliction, charismatic in her wildness and her anger. By the video’s end, she’s driven Shia LaBeouf to exhaustion, to his slump at the cage's edge.
Mania’s push and pull requires an elastic heart. It’s a battle, as Sia writes, not to "fall apart."
@shavonneee Your comment hit the nail on the head; This is exactly what I took away from the song and the video. Very powerful, and moving interpretation.
@shavonneee Your comment hit the nail on the head; This is exactly what I took away from the song and the video. Very powerful, and moving interpretation.
@iOSUsere -- I'm bipolar (and thankfully stabilized due to meds) but I caused a wake of destruction during my last manic episode which landed me in the hospital for 2 weeks and left a broken marriage and a broken-hearted boyfriend who didn't know I was married. When I first heard this song (without reading your analysis of it) I thought immediately that the two men I hurt must feel something like this towards me. It's weird being on the stable side and knowing how I was.
@iOSUsere -- I'm bipolar (and thankfully stabilized due to meds) but I caused a wake of destruction during my last manic episode which landed me in the hospital for 2 weeks and left a broken marriage and a broken-hearted boyfriend who didn't know I was married. When I first heard this song (without reading your analysis of it) I thought immediately that the two men I hurt must feel something like this towards me. It's weird being on the stable side and knowing how I was.
Elastic Heart is about mania, the upswing of bipolarity. I’ve known that person: she's irresistible when she’s high, her energy ballooning to fill a room. Her mania is effervescent and urgent and sometimes frightening. She’s the best part of life—until she isn’t. When the mania ebbs, she’s as wilted as if she’d been to battle.
Sia knows this; she's smart about it, too, because—as her music video depicts—bipolarity isn't defined by two opposite and contending halves as much as it’s parasitic. In Sia's video, Maddie Ziegler is that affliction, charismatic in her wildness and her anger. By the video’s end, she’s driven Shia LaBeouf to exhaustion, to his slump at the cage's edge.
Mania’s push and pull requires an elastic heart. It’s a battle, as Sia writes, not to "fall apart."
@shavonneee Your comment hit the nail on the head; This is exactly what I took away from the song and the video. Very powerful, and moving interpretation.
@shavonneee Your comment hit the nail on the head; This is exactly what I took away from the song and the video. Very powerful, and moving interpretation.
@iOSUsere -- I'm bipolar (and thankfully stabilized due to meds) but I caused a wake of destruction during my last manic episode which landed me in the hospital for 2 weeks and left a broken marriage and a broken-hearted boyfriend who didn't know I was married. When I first heard this song (without reading your analysis of it) I thought immediately that the two men I hurt must feel something like this towards me. It's weird being on the stable side and knowing how I was.
@iOSUsere -- I'm bipolar (and thankfully stabilized due to meds) but I caused a wake of destruction during my last manic episode which landed me in the hospital for 2 weeks and left a broken marriage and a broken-hearted boyfriend who didn't know I was married. When I first heard this song (without reading your analysis of it) I thought immediately that the two men I hurt must feel something like this towards me. It's weird being on the stable side and knowing how I was.