Pipe Wrench Fight

I never noticed how inept the video for “Under The Bridge” was. Take away the evocative lyrics and it suddenly looks incredibly badly-put-together. It doesn’t even have the random verve of something like the “Total Eclipse of the Heart” video: it’s just… half-hearted and dull.

“Take On Me”, on the other hand, still looks good even when the lyrics are taking the mickey.

Actually, an original video–or even a specific original song–is unnecessary.

Something about this irritates me intensely. The difference in craft and talent between the original artists and the smartass satirists is jarring. It unintentionally dignifies the originals by calling attention to their construction. You know what, scratch that. I think I could have gotten a good larf out of it, and perceived some respect on the part of the satirists, if I hadn’t read Weeks’s pompous art-installation description.

I detect the hurt feelings of a fan. I have great respect for U2, interviewed the Red Hot Chili Peppers on their first national tour when they didn’t take themselves so seriously, saw Tears for Fears in concert when they still did.

But none of these guys is going down in history for their music videos. That’s not their artistry. Emoting for a camera while lip-synching is not their great achievement. All this could vanish tomorrow and as long as someone could still play (some of) their music (or as long as the musicians themselves could still play (some of) their music), I’d listen.

As for the video artists involved, I’m sorry, but “Under the Bridge” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” are no landmarks, and it’s pretty plain that Tears for Fears thinks their own video is something of a joke. The one work I’m truly impressed with, actually, is “Take On Me” — mostly because, in this instance, A-ha’slyrics are so vague, so generic, so unrelated to what happens onscreen (“The thing that you say/Is it live or just to play /My worries away/You’re all the things I’ve got to remember/You shying away/I’ll be coming for you anyway”), that the creators of that complicated little piece of animation get my real admiration: They started with almost nothing to work with in terms of visual content except a pretty band that had a tune with great hooks. And they produced all this stuff about a diner, battling motorcyclists and a trans-dimensional romance. Packed a lot into a song, whereas the other videos mostly drain things out of them. I hope I never see these images of U2 again when I hear their music.

“An optional lead-in quote either from the blog entry or one of the comments above, sometimes blockquoted, sometimes double-quoted, sometimes both even though he suspects that the Chicago Manual of Style says something about how that’s redundant or misleading.”

Then he comments on the quote, rather acerbically, trying to balance high and low styles but often as not they tumble to the floor like a some word-juggler’s stumbling attempt to assemble a surrealistic image in the reader’s mind. There’s often some wrap-up sentence fragment that, bathetically, sheepishly, acknowledges the mess for what is, in all-too-obvious hopes that the self-deprecation will carry the day.

Seemingly undeterred, if anything seemingly plucky, but actually increasingly desperate and fearful of being misinterpreted, he either riffs on some other surrealistic imagery inspired by the inanity of the quote, or he adopts something like the tone of the passage quoted, carrying on the parody in that mode. However,in his attempt to reign in the more obvious sarcasm, he produces a paragraph whose humor might go over the heads of some in the audience (“‘Audience’?! As if ….”)

Optional final paragraph, either with decidedly more overt humor to make it clear that the above was meant as a joke, or, if he’s tired and can’t reach that low, he reaches higher (even more self-defeatingly), and begins with “Seriously, ….”. He realizes only later, when someone else points it out to Captain Obvious, that there’s no really no point in arguing with the person quoted.

Seriously, he says, partially breaking with form (after all, the above was supposed to be the final paragraph, oh wait, that’s too obvious to comment on): I think everybody has missed something here. This new culture-jamming genre is also spoofing the “bonus content” you get on DVDs these days, where the directors, writers or cinematographers often review the entire film or TV episode, and are sometimes reduced to remarks like “he looks at the camera” just to fill time. The commentary seem to me aimed more at would-be industry participants – director-wannabes, cinematographer wannabes, film bores, etc. — than at professionals in the industry.

Or “Nice F***ing Ballad” by Anthrax

“seemed patently pretentious,”

Wait, is that in reference to the videos, or the constipated, inane, hip-in-the-worst -sense-of-that-word, over-analysis which is trying way too hard to thumb its snotty nose at an essentially trivial subject ? Come on, 80’s and 90’s pop-rock videos are innocent fun and a guilty pleasure all in one which is what makes them so special. If you think that you (general “you”) are being “subversive” by taking them way to seriously you got yourself a serious problem. You could use some “grounding” yourself there. I’ll take a “posturing twit-lead singer” over a posturing twit artjournaleest, please.

Anyway, if you wanna see irony done right, then look no farther than this classic video

Après this, shake all envelopes that come in the mail, and hold them up to the light to check for weaponized anthrax. (The disease, not the band.)

I’m inclined to agree with notsneaky here…this has been done before, and better, and much less pretentiously, by other people. Mike Judge comes to mind, but the fact is that the best take on “Take on Me” was Family Guy’s, which walks the line between “taking the piss” and “loving tribute” so beautifully that it might actually deserve to be called “subversive.”

And I just love the way Chris dances.

There was once a horrible programme on the BBC, called something like “Video Jukebox” and presented by the kind of ghastly DJ who can only now be seen as a self-parody, in which classics of the 60s and 70s were treated to visuals that were as appallingly low-budget and literal as anyone could want. Arthur Brown’s “Fire” accompanying two twits running round a field between lines of – you guessed it – fire! The fact that these crimes against taste were done without irony then should not excuse their ironic repetition now.

The entire point of Pop-Up Video was hipster-intellectual thumbsucking.

Perhaps–but I don’t remember the good names of Situationism and Karl Marx getting sullied in the process, IL. 8^)

How can you be metaphorically rickrolled? Is that like someone actually telling you the right way to get to the station, but only by mistake?

Let me add to the chorus of ‘been done before and better’ the classic takedown of pretentious 1980s pop videos from Not the Nine O’Clock News: Nice Video, Shame about the Song”

No, I’m Jerome Weeks!

Lex, I thought you were Spartacus.

No, Lex, I … am your father.

“Nooooooooooo!”

[Sound of inconclusive light saber battle.]

Ooh, that’s good. You win.

Ah, good. Glad you picked up on that, Lex. Despite what Scott says, I did intend my Star Wars reference as a threat to lop off your hand.

Next up: I’m setting out to get all those golden rings back.

Guilty as charged, Mr. bookWeeksdaddy. I commented only on what Scott provided. A strong reaction probably demands further investigation, but as Scott suggests, when someone messes with A-Ha, you shoot first and click links later. At least I’ve been shamed into discovering your nifty web site. But still … you attach scare-quotes and a parenthetical mock-defense to the term “deconstructs,” for double-meta-pity’s sake.

New category: video that almost begs to be made literal.

… you model your comment on mine in order to exemplify my failings—the archness, the high-and-low shiftings, the display of pop snottery, etc. etc.—

Have you ever listened to Talking Heads’ Burning Down the House, the Dictionaraoke version? It’s so much better than the original. Well, that’s my opinion, anyway.

embodying them yourself but making it clear to us that what distinguishes you is you know you’re doing it,

But I can’t make up my mind whether the claymation version of “Leave Britney Alone!” is better than the original. What do you think?

which means you can do it much better.

You know what I think might be perfect for a literal treatment? The opening-credits part of The Sopranos. I watched the Bonus Content part of a DVD where the people who did it said it was just like shooting a music video. The only problem I see is whether you use the old version that still has the World Trade Center, or the one where they cut that part out. You don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, y’know.

Oh, I’m sorry, we’re you saying something? I wasn’t listening.