Cassper’s Push Through the Pain is University of Hard Knocks

Cassper Nyovest's ‘Push Through the Pain’ video shows the narrative of the worldwide struggle faced by students – paying tuition, accommodation and a decent meal to get through the night … every day of the year. While some students sell textbooks, headphones and NikNaks, there are thousands who make ends meet through stripping or prostitution and usually both.

The video hit the nail on the head without an attempt to sugar-coat the truth. It emanates the words of Austrian journalist and politician Ernst Fischer: “In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay."

The five-minute video in monochrome takes the audience into the dark world of the life of many South African students. It shows a girl who works in a strip club to make extra money to pay tuition. Her whole life is a repetitive pattern between taking care of her sick father, university and a strip club where clammy, bovine men with seemingly bottomless bank accounts drool over young girls.

This focus of the video is on the rampant issue of students having to turn to prostitution. More than 19 years ago, South African newspaper Mail & Guardian ran an article titled Sex for sale on campus. It spoke about female students getting into prostitution to sustain their expensive lifestyles in order to fit in, get through school and put food on the table. The Cassper video concentrates on the last two aforementioned categories. The lead character also has to provide her ailing father with medication.

The video is shockingly contrasting. On the one hand she works the grubby poles in the strip club and gets in the car of a considerably older man who brings her to tears with an act reserved for the imagination of the viewer. On the other she cooks, laughs, prays and spends quality time with her father, who is oblivious to the underworld she visits. The real heart-wrencher comes when she gets her graduation letter. Running to surprise her father with the good news, she realises that he has passed away in his bed. Cassper has previously explored the dying old man theme in the video for 'Destiny', although there's no science fiction involved in ‘Push Through the Pain’. This scene leaves one with feelings of anger and sorrow.

The narrative here talks about the unpredictability of life. TV and literature tell us the romanticised stories of characters who make life-threatening sacrifices to improve their lives and live happily ever after. But the reality of life is often quite different. Sometimes we go through one gate of hell only to find another obstacle that is even harder to overcome. There are countless people out there stuck in viscous cycles of hardship and pain. When they get over one hurdle another one presents itself almost immediately. And so it carries on until the end. "iLife yi skorokoro" (life's a mess), as Oskido says.

Although there's an air of hope at the end of 'Push Through the Pain’, should one chance the possibility of abuse, addiction, disease and insanity to come out of the mess? That's a question each individual should answer for themselves.

Artist: Cassper Nyovest
Video: Push Through the Pain
Label, Year: Family Tree, 2018