"Happiness in Slavery" is a very powerful and disturbing video. It starts with a man entering a room and placing a flower down with all the solemnity of a ritual. He lights a candle and approaches a mirror with a bowl of water in front of it. He emerses his head in the water and then slowly and carefully undresses, folding up his clothes very neatly. He is not a young man. He looks tense and drawn. His skin is bad and he has suture marks around his scrotum.

He lies down on a table. Immediately, straps grip his wrists and metal arms with three-prong talone come up. These prongs embed themselves in the skin of the backs of his hands. Other metal arms with prongs attack his nuts and his torso. The machine ends up ripping out his guts and castrating him and finally grinds him up into hamburger.

At the end, the room is cleaned up and ready for its next victim, none other than Trent, himself, who enters, places a flower on the altar and lights the candle.

I originally thought it was about a very extreme masochist performing terminal s/m on himself. But, after reading the lyrics, and thinking about them, I got another take on it:

slave screams he thinks he knows what he wants
slave screams he thinks he has something to say
slave screams he hears but he doesn't want to listen
slave screams he's being beat into submission
don't open your eyes you won't like what you see
the devils of truth steal the souls of the free
don't open your eyes take it from me
i have found you can find happiness in slavery
slave screams he spends his life learning conformity
slave screams he claims he has his own identity
slave screams he's going to cause the system to fall
slave screams but he's glad to be chained to that wall
don't open your eyes you won't like what you see
the blind have been blessed with security
don't open your eyes take it from me
i have found you can find happiness in slavery
i don't know what i am
i don't know where i've been
human junk just words and so much skin
stick my hand thru the cage of this endless routine
just some flesh caught in this big broken machine"

I think the meaning is political. The broken machine is society. We seem to inflict the destruction upon ourselves with our apparent "freedom."

Many people work in conditions that are harmful for their health. All this seems voluntary. Many of us try to be independent and individuals but the machine catches us all in one way or other. There are alternative cultures, counter-cultures, revolutionaries. All seem to find a point at which they are still trapped in this broken machine. I think that is the message of the video and the song. Even Trent isn't exempt. He brings his flower and lights his candle at the very same altar.

In his "Happiness in Slavery" Suite, Terry Hickman contributes some poignant insights regarding the making of this video. The man who submits his flesh to the "broken machine" in the video, Bob Flanagan, is a masochist in "real life." Parts of the video, apparently, are real which explains part of the power it invokes. The man's very body reached and aroused me erotically, while I was also in a state of unbroken revulsion, and I experienced a kind of merging with him. My own body ravaged by the many trials of existence, no longer young, now placing itself before the immolation machine to be devoured.

We pursue happiness, as is our Constitutional birthright. As long as we want it (or want anything) we will jump through the right hoops and present ourselves for the slaughter. As Trent says, "happiness controls you."

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