Cher Turns Back Time: 20 Years Later
Twenty years ago this month, the “If I could Turn Back Time” video of Cher fucking the Battleship Missouri was in heavy rotation on MTV (but only after 9:00 pm!). I was a teen boy (This also happened to be the last time Cher was relevant to straight, teen boys.)
To this day I think the video is easily one of the top ten videos ever and was before its time. A 50-year-old woman dressed in a black dinner-table doily struts all over a battleship full of sex-starved young sailors.
The video perfectly captures the antiseptic, peace-time atmosphere of the 1980s military. Juxtaposed against the very similarly-shot, yet thematically opposite, Coppola Playboy Bunny visitor scene from Apocalypse Now, Cher’s video offers a treasure of insight about the differences of the two periods.
