"Mann gegen Mann" is a song by the German Neue Deutsche Härte band Rammstein, released in March 2006 as the third and final single from the band's fifth studio album, Rosenrot. The song's narrative portrays a man with strong homosexual desires, and it is the first Rammstein music video to feature nudity since the video for their cover of Depeche Mode's "Stripped".
Music video
The music video, directed by Jonas Åkerlund, premiered on MTV Germany on 2 February 2006. It shows the band members performing on a dark stage while almost entirely naked, aside from frontman Till Lindemann, who wears long black hair extensions, thigh-high feminine high-heeled boots, and a set of black latex briefs. The rest of the band members wear only black army boots, with their instruments covering their genitals. The video alternates between the band playing and scenes of a writhing group of naked, muscular, oiled men on the same dark stage. It starts to rain on the band during the bridge of the song, and a frenzied Lindemann screams as a forked tongue flicks from his mouth. The tempo of the song then changes to a melodic pace as the band members then crowd-surf over the oiled and naked men. Lindemann becomes a kind of winged demon, with the hands and arms of naked men reaching up towards him and worshipping him; the song's tempo changes back to its frenzied pace. The group of men with the band members begin to wrestle and fight with one another as it rains on them. Screaming again, Lindemann starts to rip his hair out as the song closes.
Pronunciations
Lindemann's pronunciation of "Schwuler" emphasizes the "ER" into an "A" sound. Pronounced as "Schwulah", in comparison to English, the pronunciation itself would be similar to the pronunciation of "Player" as "Playa" in the American English dialect known as African American Vernacular English or ebonics. However, in the German language, the "ER", has a regular allophone , making this theory unlikely, as it is not emphatic but regular in speech with any words ending the same way. The German word Schwuler is the equivalent to "gay" in English and although Lindemann's pronunciation is the normal way German native speakers pronounce it in day to day speech, some people have concluded that it is deliberate and intended to be translated as a derogatory term, and would translate more as the equivalent to the American derogatory term for a homosexual man, “faggot”.
