The televangelist is a quintessentially American phenomenon. These often self-appointed messengers of God preach humility, hope, and forgiveness in feverish sermons to mega-church congregations and millions more on Twitch—the proverbial cash register cha-chinging relentlessly in the process. Eyes bugging, voices booming, the preacher stands halfway between a free-market entrepreneur and an entertainer, maintaining a hysterical grip over those searching for salvation wherever they can find it, even if it’s in a disused mall.
The culture around evangelist preachers is partly the inspiration behind Alabama-born, Los Angeles-based rapper Pink Siifu’s new music video for “Devil’s Advocate”, a stark, staggering hip-hop track co-written with his wife, SS. Sylvest. Made in collaboration with Paris-based director Ludovic Gontrand, the video smashes classic rap motifs together with delirious scenes from revivalist gatherings. Portrayed as the force behind the preacher, Gontrand describes Siifu’s performance as a “spiritual robbery;” a vivisection on power in America, where the lines between devotion and exploitation are blurred.
Read our interview with Gontrand about the video below, and watch “Devil’s Advocate” after the jump.
VICE: What was it about “Devil’s Advocate” that first grabbed you?
Ludovic Gontrand: It was hard to sit still when I listened to it for the first time. It’s unstable and impossible to classify. It’s punk, hypnotic—haunted, almost. There is a lot to take in. You can’t be indifferent to it.
How did you build out the visual world from there?
[The inspiration] came from a few directions at once. There was Siifu’s visual world around this album: strong black and white imagery, intense energy. Then the title pulled me toward the mythology of Faust, and someone making a pact with the devil in exchange for power, money or control. It reminded me of my fascination with documentary footage of evangelist preaching ceremonies. Put those together and the video revealed itself: a big chaotic show, somewhere between a concert, a sermon, a scam, and a possession. Siifu is the force behind the preacher, and slowly he takes over the whole room.
What sort of documentary footage were you watching?
Just hours of stuff on YouTube. Big tent revivals, people being slain in the spirit, speaking in tongues, entire rows collapsing at once, 80s faith healers like Benny Hinn throwing whole crowds to the floor with one gesture of his jacket. What fascinates me is that you never know what you’re looking at. You can’t separate belief from manipulation from performance from possession, and as a director that’s the most interesting zone possible. The 1972 film Marjoe stayed with me too. It’s about a preacher who began as a child star, then comes back as an adult, and lets the cameras see the machinery—the money counted in hotel rooms, etc. And still, on stage, the ecstasy of the crowd is completely real.
“We just made the ceremony visible, and then let the devil walk into it”
The evangelist preacher is a surreal figure. Negatively charged but also quite funny in an absurd sort of way. What role do you think they play in North American culture?
To me, an evangelist is a showman playing the most serious role there is. That contrast is what makes him absurd: the sweat, the suit, the hair, screaming about eternity between requests for donations. Coming from France it looks even more surreal, because we have nothing with that scale of showmanship inside religion. In North American culture, I think he is the ancestor of the entertainer. Before arenas, there were churches. Before merch, there was the collection plate. He invented a certain relationship between one man with a microphone and a crowd that came to be transported, and he sits exactly on the line that America loves and fears: the one between passion and business, salvation and sales.
Do you see any correlation between how people respond to evangelist preachers and how people respond to solo artists?
Completely. It is the same architecture: one figure, on stage, elevated, lit, holding a microphone, and a crowd that came to feel something they cannot feel alone, screaming after every beat, singing lyrics in unison. Call and response comes straight from church. So many rappers and singers literally learned to perform in church. The crowd surrenders itself, and in exchange the figure on stage has to carry a promise to be larger than life. That’s why Siifu works so well in this world. The outro of the track also has Prince and Sun Ra speaking: two artists who understood better than anyone that a concert can be a ceremony. We just made the ceremony visible, and then let the devil walk into it.
“An evangelist is a showman playing the most serious role there is”
How did the filming go? Any unexpected moments?
We shot it in one day with 100 extras, so it felt very much like prepping a [live] show: you only get one chance. My main instruction to them was: do not act. Arrive as real Sunday churchgoers and let the room change you slowly. It had to feel like we were documenting a real event that was slowly going off the rails. The location has a charged life, too. It used to be a casino, and is now an actual evangelist church.
Then Siifu arrived, and honestly I didn’t have to direct the crowd much anymore. His energy and presence are so strong that he took control of the room for real. We played the music super loud on set and the extras connected to the feeling in unison and let everything go. Some even stayed in a trance between takes, or improvised testimonies that we had to cut for time. It felt like a real nuthouse experiment. Some of them probably saved some money on therapy.
Watch the video for Pink Siifu’s “Devil’s Advocate” below, featuring SS. Sylver and directed by Ludovic Gontrand:
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