Jean-Jacques Goldman - Les choses (Clip officiel)

NOV 20 2001 · 12:00

Jean-Jacques Goldman - Les choses (Clip officiel) (2001) Director: Yannick Saillet Era: French Pop / Early Digital Era (2001–2002) - Late period of Jean-Jacques Goldman's solo career, coinciding with the album 'Chansons pour les pieds' and a broader French chanson engagement with consumerist critique in the post-millennial moment. High curatorial value as a confirmed, commercially released official clip representing the peak of Jean-Jacques Goldman's final solo period and the socially engaged French pop video tradition. The pop-art aesthetic, satirical consumer vignettes, and rapid-cut editorial rhythm make it a visually distinctive document of early-2000s French popular culture. Its lyrical density and philosophical referencing (Descartes inversion) give it sustained relevance for cultural studies and media literacy curricula, while its chart and broadcast reach ensures it is a significant artefact of French music video history. Context: Released in late 2001 as a single from 'Chansons pour les pieds', 'Les choses' arrived at a moment of peak Western consumer anxiety, post-Y2K euphoria collapsing into post-dot-com-bust uncertainty, with brand identity and conspicuous consumption newly contested in French public discourse. Goldman's lyric directly inverts Descartes' 'cogito ergo sum' into 'j'ai donc je suis' ('I own therefore I am'), a formula that resonated powerfully with French youth sociology around branded sportswear, car culture, and media celebrity. The video's pop-art register draws on a long tradition of French visual wit while engaging the Anglo-American consumer imagery (Jordan sneakers, fast food, VIP culture) that had colonised French youth culture by the early 2000s. Goldman, by then a dominant figure in French popular music, also central to Les Enfoirés charity work, used the clip as a social commentary tool aimed at mainstream audiences. Director notes: Confirmed as director of 'Les Choses' via IMVDb (https://imvdb.com/video/jean-jacques-goldman/les-choses), with a listed release date of 2001 and copyright © 2002 JRG Editions Musicales. The video is documented as adopting a pop-art visual style, presenting a series of vignette scenes in which consumer objects comically overpower their owners, reinforcing Goldman's lyrical critique of materialism and identity-through-possession. The clip includes a noted visual reference to the aesthetic of Tim Burton's 'Mars Attacks' in its staging of object revolt. Goldman himself appears as a detached observer of the consumer-society tableaux, concluding the video by symbolically unplugging his guitar. Saillet had an established working relationship with Goldman, also directing 'Tournent les violons' from the same album cycle, for which he received a Victoire de la Musique in 2003.