"Seaside Woman" is a 1980 Animated Music Video for the song of the same name by Suzy & the Red Stripes (but not really, see below), directed by Oscar Grillo.
The simple story, set in Jamaica, involves a fisherman, his wife, and their little daughter. The "seaside woman" is the mother, who mends her husband's nets, takes care of their little girl, and makes beads and baskets to sell in the marketplace. The husband catches fish, while the little girl cavorts on the beach and eats the sweet potatoes her mother cooks.
"Suzy & the Red Stripes" was actually Paul McCartney's band Wings. The song was a response to a lawsuit by McCartney's publishers, who accused Paul McCartney of crediting his wife Linda, a photographer, as co-writer of his songs in order to control half of the royalties. In response Linda wrote "Seaside Woman" by herself. The song was released in 1977 and the cartoon followed three years later.
The music video can be watched here
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"Seaside Woman" contains examples of:
- Alternate Reality Episode: Wings putting out a single under the label "Suzy & the Red Stripes".
- An Aesop: A loving family can be happy even if they don't own much.
- Animated Music Video: A video accompanying Linda McCartney's effort to prove she was a real songwriter.
- Art Shift: The credits sequence abandons animation and presents instead a series of Linda McCartney's photographs of native Jamaicans.
- Beach Episode: A song about a fishing family that lives on a beach.
- Happily Married: "Papa loves mama" in the lyrics, and indeed the parents are shown embracing, and watching their daughter sleep as papa holds mama in his arms.
- Mammy: Sort of. The mother isn't Ethnic Menial Labor like the classic cinematic Mammy who was a servant to white people; she and her husband work for themselves. But the mother looks exactly like the classic "mammy" image, being obese and wearing the typical dress with a heavy skirt and the bandana over her hair.
- Reggae: A video of a song done in reggae style, inspired by Paul and Linda's vacationing in Jamaica.
- Slice of Life: A portrait of the simple life of a fishing family in Jamaica.
- Step Up to the Microphone: Linda McCartney getting to sing a Wings song.
- Stock Animal Diet: The little girl has to release her pet fish into the ocean to prevent her pet cat from eating it.
- Villainous Gentrification: Near the end of the cartoon the beach where the family lives starts getting filled up with resort hotels and white people, who gawk at the mother as she cooks sweet potatoes and mends her husband's nets.
