"Oil" (DJ Smash, Vengerov and Bobina featuring Matua, Averin and Kravetz)
Creator
Andrew Shirman, known by the alias DJ Smash, was born in 1982 in Perm, Russia. He is a popular musician in Russia and is known for his house and electronic music. In 2018, he was amongst many musicians who appeared in the video of the song “Guiding Star,” encouraging people to vote for Putin in the upcoming Russian election. The song “Oil” was originally released in 2013 but was made accessible on YouTube in 2015 and presently has close to twenty thousand views.
"Oil. / I like Oil. / Oil. / Oil."
Summary
The music video “Oil” begins with a worker bringing home a bucket of petroleum for his wife and daughters. The family’s faces immediately light up with excitement. Subsequently, the worker’s wife goes on a shopping spree and dumps a handbag full of oil on the cash register as payment for her purchases, to which, the shop attendant responds with a smile as though this is a normal occurrence. After these initial scenes, the music video picks up pace. The oil worker, his wife and several other people can be seen dancing in a nightclub to the upbeat tune, “Oil … I love Oil.”
The viscous black fuel is everywhere — it is poured into wine glasses, used as sunscreen, applied as lip gloss, and even consumed as ice cream by children. In fact, the video even shows oil oozing out of fire safety sprinklers in the nightclub. Occasionally, when the focus is not on oil, it is on symbols of luxury such as a Birkin bag, mink fur coats, and expensive cars.
"Oil is a mink coat. / Oil is a pink Bentley. / Oil is shopping in Milan"
Analysis
While the unusual imagery in the video might appear solely for entertainment at first glance, repeated views indicate that it is also a critical commentary on oil.
The first theme in the video appears to be about oil as currency. Due to global dependence on oil — for all activities from suburban driving to large-scale manufacturing — the whole world is reliant on nations with oil reserves. Consequently, the economies of these nations, such as Russia and Saudi Arabia, revolve around oil. This video highlights the centrality of oil in ordinary people’s lives in Russia — everyone from women and children to oil workers and the Church can be seen celebrating the abundance of oil. Additionally, it emphasises how oil is the basis of many people’s livelihoods, to the extent that oil and money (a means of exchange) become synonymous. This is seen in the clip where the main character pays for her purchases with oil (Ello, 2015, 0:16-0:24), and where the bank tellers are forced to empty their oil-filled registers for thieves (Ello, 2015, 1:51-2:07).
Wealth comes in tandem with oil. After all, the value of oil exports runs in the billions. Due to the hyper lavish and luxurious lifestyles of people associated with oil production, the term “oil money” has made its way into colloquial dictionaries. The frequency with which status symbols such as jewelry and expensive cars appear in the video highlights the sheer power and extent of oil money in Russia. While this lifestyle might seem exceptional to many, the video hints at the fact that it is ordinary in an oil-rich nation: The shop attendant, whose register oil is dumped on, simply smiles in response and acts as though payment in oil is not uncommon.
The second theme that stands out is about how oil has seeped into all aspects of our daily lives, not just symbolically, but physically in the form of chemicals, lubricants and microplastics. Polymers occurring in petroleum undergo several catalytic reactions in laboratories in order to form plastic (Vodovotz, 2022). Cosmetic products these days contain small plastic fragments – of less than 5mm size – known as microplastics. They are used in place of natural salts and seeds due to their durability, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness (Zhou et al., 2023). For instance, a grain of salt in a product might graze the user’s skin, but a spherical, lab-designed microplastic does not feel abrasive. Similarly, a natural product might have a short shelf life, but when replaced with microplastics, its longevity is increased. From these examples then, it becomes evident that there is deep truth to the exaggerated depictions of women in the music video – lathering oil as sunscreen on their bodies, swimming in pools of oil, and using oil as lip gloss (Ello, 2015, 1:09-1:12).
The third theme deals with the general reverence of oil in Russia, and perhaps around the world as well. The fast and upbeat soundtrack combined with the visuals of adults from various backgrounds dancing at a nightclub drives home the realisation that oil is celebrated by so many people. The only point in the video where the music stops completely is the scene wherein a man tries to light a cigarette and thereby threatens to “blow up” all the oil around the club — signifying how any threat to oil and its undisturbed flow causes alarm (Ello, 2015, 1:35-1:41). When DJ Smash extinguishes the cigarette lighter, the upbeat soundtrack resumes along with the happiness in the club.
Although the video highlights the fascination with oil as well as belief in the fuel’s ubiquity, it focuses so heavily on the monetary side of oil, that it glosses over some important criticisms of the resource. First, the video shows an oil worker bringing home the fuel for his wife. The reality of oil workers, however, is that they rarely get access to the oil or its riches and have been historically assigned poor working conditions. Oil wealth is amassed by a small section of society — the elites — who own and run the oil companies. Second, the video fails to emphasise the tumultuous history of oil in Russia, specifically, the clearing of indigenous land for drilling wells. At various points in the video, women in traditional clothing can be seen pulleying oil out of wells and dancing with oil rigs in the background, making it seem as though the discovery and proliferation of oil is a celebration for their communities (Ello, 2015, 3:01-3:14). However, there is stark difference between the lifestyle depicted in the video, and the Indigenous accounts catalogued by Vaschenko and Smith (2010):
"After a long silence, he says: “Nothing. Just give me land. Some land where I can pasture the deer, hunt, and fish. Give me some land where my deer would be safe from the teeth of stray dogs, where my hunting paths won’t be tramples by poachers and machines, where the black fat of the earth doesn’t flow over lakes and rivers. ...”” (56)
References
Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). DJ Smash. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJ_Smash.
Ello. (2015, October 7). DJ Smash, Vengerov & Bobina feat. Matua & Averin & Kravetz — Oil [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqLfL9bP5EA.
Troitsky, A. (2018, March 13). "Why Russia’s Pop Stars Are Backing Putin" (Op-Ed). The Moscow Times. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2018/03/13/why-russias-pop-stars-are-backing-putin-op-ed-a60778.
Vaschenko, A., & Smith, C. C. (Eds.). (2010). The Way of Kinship: An Anthology of Native Siberian Literature. University of Minnesota Press.
Vodovotz, Y. (2022, May 30). If plastic comes from oil and gas, which come originally from plants, why isn’t it biodegradable? The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/if-plastic-comes-from-oil-and-gas-which-come-originally-from-plants-why-isnt-it-biodegradable-179634.
Zhou, Y., Ashokkumar, V., Amobonye, A., Bhattacharjee, G., Sirohi, R., Singh, V., Flora, G., Kumar, V., Pillai, S., Zhang, Z., & Awasthi, M. K. (2023). Current research trends on cosmetic microplastic pollution and its impacts on the ecosystem: A review. Environmental Pollution, 320, 121106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2023.121106.
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