Synopsis

Pat Benatar performs in a deliberately overloaded television world where live-action footage, video screens, animation, split-screen effects, and advertising imagery collide. The clip turns the song's warning about using sexuality as manipulation into a satirical attack on the way sex is packaged and sold by mass media. Benatar appears as both performer and media image, while stylized commercials and looping television visuals create a frantic, self-aware presentation that treats pop music itself as another product competing for attention.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was built around the idea of commenting on sexual imagery used to sell everything from household products to rock music itself.

• Its deliberately degraded image quality was part of the concept rather than a technical failure. The production used an Ampex Digital Optics system and repeated video passes to create an oversaturated, media-overload appearance.

• Television screens were processed to look intentionally degraded, helping the clip imitate the unstable, over-processed character of images copied repeatedly from one generation of videotape to another.

• The video received major industry recognition during the 1985-86 awards season, including an American Music Award for Favorite Pop/Rock Female Video.

• At the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards, it was nominated in categories including Most Experimental Video and Best Special Effects in a Video. It also appeared among the nominees for Art Direction, Editing, Cinematography, and Choreography.

• "Sex As A Weapon" was released as a single from Benatar's 1985 album "Seven the Hard Way." The single reached No. 28 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and No. 5 on the U.S. rock chart.

• The clip is notable for treating the music-video format as part of its subject. Its screens within screens and advertising parodies make the viewer conscious of how pop images are constructed, repeated, and consumed.