MARINA’s “I <3 You” Delineates The Ways in Which Love is Performed/Commodified

As the fourth single from MARINA’s Princess of Power, “I <3 You” stands apart not just for being the only song with an “internet slang” symbol in its title, but also for harkening back to the sardonic sense of humor present on a song like “Oh No!” In fact, the visuals for “I <3 You,” directed by Olivia De Camps (who also directed MARINA’s “Cuntissimo” video), have a similar vibe to the advertising/pop art-oriented pastiche of the Kinga Burza-directed “Oh No!” This “flavor” is made immediately apparent by the opening scene of a bouncer who is “captioned” with a purple box at the bottom of the screen that reads, 

Diesel, 64
Club bouncer for 43 years. 
Hasn’t felt anything since birth. 
(Refuses to speak about that one night in ’89)

These The Jerry Springer Show-reminiscent captions will appear again for other people in the video, cementing the overall “reality TV” effect MARINA partially incorporates (in addition to heightening the commentary on how we only see what people want to show us, but what would we see if there was no self-imposed “curation” to their proverbial mask?). And while most viewers would automatically assume that what Diesel is “bouncing” is a club, it’s, in fact, an art exhibit. Not just any exhibit, though—for MARINA is the art itself. Leaving herself open to the commentary and criticisms of all who observe. Just as people do every day by posting images and videos of themselves on social media. As though to emphasize that point, one of the “museum goers” remarks of MARINA, “She looks more human on Instagram.” Outfitted in what can best be described as an homage to Vegas showgirls (making her, too, on par with Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl), Marina sports a feathered headdress and white lace bodysuit. 

To give the viewer (both in the video and out of it) a sense of what they’re looking at, there’s a museum label featuring the title, “Specimen, True Love (Extinct?), 2025” and the description, “In this intimate performance, a living artist poses on a bed seductively as visitors observe and critique her—on display to be desired, judged and loved. She shifts through idealized feminine roles, each carefully performed to meet unspoken expectations. A meditation on modern love, where the line between performance and reality is constantly shifting—and the masks we wear to be wanted.” Often, those masks are quite literal thanks to social media filters. So for MARINA to offer herself up to this public IRL is quite a big deal, striking poses (and yes, the Madonna influence will be present again, just as it was in the “Butterfly” video) and giving her all to them before De Camps cuts to the next iteration of MARINA: a pop girl on TV (some MTV-esque station called, what else, Pop TV).

In this context, MARINA further reminds her fans of the “Oh No!” correlation as it featured the line, “TV taught me how to feel/Now real life has no appeal.” So little appeal, in fact, that the MARINA of “I <3 You” would rather be on TV than in so-called real life. Except that what we initially believe is a music video for Pop TV turns out to be a soap opera as MARINA holds onto a shirtless, tan-/glistening-skinned man. The camera then pans out to reveal the television in its entirety again, with the clip of MARINA and this muscled man (fit for the cover of a romance novel) making itself known as a teaser ad for the next episode of I <3 You, with a tagline to go with it that’s oh so soap opera-y: “Drawn together by love. Torn apart by life.” This then leads into a “real” commercial break, with MARINA as a spokesperson for a hairspray brand that does the thing so many corporations have been wont to do since the beginning of modern capitalism: turn love into a commodity (see also: Jay-Z and Beyoncé for Tiffany & Co.). Hold it up as something to “achieve.” And also as something that can only be achieved if you look (smell, taste, etc.) the “right” way. Hence, the hairspray’s tagline, “Call it love. Call it hold.”

Throwing more MARINA personas into the mix, De Camps’ next shot is of the chanteuse suspended in the air by a satin sheet (as Madonna said, “Satin sheets are very romantic”) against a cloudy backdrop with a movie title-looking font above her (all of which sort of makes her look like the Columbia Pictures “torch lady”). With text that reads, “Untethered.” Beneath that, the explanation, “This Saturday. Free wine. An installation on Modern Love. No Strings Attached.”

At the one-minute-eighteen-second mark, the final persona is incorporated into the video: Dance Floor MARINA. And yes, once again, she’s paying homage to Madonna by wearing her most bombastic cone bra yet. Nothing “understated” about it this time, like it was in “Butterfly.” What’s more, the dance floor and its disco balls channel the same imagery of what was in Madonna’s “Ray of Light” and “God Control” videos (with the latter, like “I <3 You,” also possessing a disco-fied musical breakdown). Proving, once more, that her influence in general and on MARINA’s latest album remains invaluable. It’s also on this dance floor that she sings the lyric, “Get onstage, take a bow,” a phrase Madonna essentially “patented” with her 1994 single, “Take A Bow” (though Rihanna didn’t seem to get that message with her 2008 song of the same name). She also mentions smoking a Vogue again (as she does on “Cuntissimo”) during this sequence—in fact, Vogue should really be paying MARINA for all this unprompted promotion. 

While on the dance floor, MARINA grabs another shirtless guy just in time to declare, “There’s nothing to complicate, I can see you’re into me/Call it love or call it fate, I wanna feel your body heat!” The chorus, too, aims to reduce all overcomplication when it comes to attraction, with MARINA getting straight to the point by singing, “I love you, and I know that you love me too/I want you, and I know that you want me too/I love you, I’ve been waiting to make you mine/I want to be holding you tonight.” But these lines, when paired with the capitalistic, “Oh No!”-esque imagery, can also apply to the relationship between consumer and product, in which the latter is the allurer who knows that the consumer wants and “loves” it and should just go for it without hesitation. For the term “buyer’s remorse” can just as easily apply to regretting not buying something. Which is exactly what They want you to feel. Not just “love” for objects, but as though you will never be “good enough” if you don’t buy the “right” ones. And, of course, you’ll never have all the products you need to be your “ultimate best self.” There’s always “just one more” you have to get. And one more after that and that, ad infinitum until you’re in the ground. 

In this sense, too, there’s a certain “Intuition” quality to MARINA’s “I <3 You” video. The 2003 Jewel song that satirized consumerism as much as “Oh No!” And what MARINA is saying with her video, too, is what Jewel said back then (albeit with some now dated references), “You learned cool from magazines/You learned love from Charlie Sheen.” MARINA posits that, in the present, people have learned “love” (or the false concept of it) through social media. And that being “loved” means looking (de facto, feeling) as ersatz as possible. 

Almost as if to highlight the over-the-top expectations put on romance and what it takes to get it, the video concludes with a man and a woman rising up off the dance floor together, presumably because they’re so in love, it feels like they’re floating (à la Carrie Bradshaw in “The Power of Female Sex”). Considering MARINA’s knack for incisive commentary (she also has a song called “I Love You But I Love Me More”), it would be hard to believe she wants this ending to be taken as “literal true love” being found. No matter how much the jubilant tone of the song betrays her biting remarks on modern love and its intertwinement with capitalism.