Results tagged “Red Hot Chili Peppers” from book/daddy

There is a new destabilizing trend in YouTubeLand called 'literal video" or "Literal [name of rock video or movie here]." It's a form of satire that seems to work best with the more inflated, '80s or '90s pop-rock videos, the ones that were developed as little storytelling movies, even though the "movies" had little to do with the song itself or seemed patently pretentious, with or without the song. In short, there's a profound disjuncture among the posturing twit-lead singer, what he's supposedly singing about and what's going on all around him. As they used to say about political photo-ops: It doesn't matter what the candidate is saying, it's the background he's in front of and how he looks, an approach that reached its nadir with the infamous 2002 President-Bush-on-Mt.-Rushmore photo op (typically -- and now with painful irony -- no one remembers the actual occasion, which was his speech on "homeland and economic security.")

The "literal videomakers," notably DustoMcNeato and KeithFK, narrow the yawning chasm of images-vs.-song lyrics-vs.-celebrity persona by simply inserting their own lyrics, which flatly reiterate or question whatever is happening onscreen. Thus, in McNeato's version of Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels," lead singer Curt Smith poses the questions that would go through any viewer's head when watching the wildly wacky events happening in this oh-so-typically surreal library: "What's happening with that monkey? What is with this gas mask?" (Personal favorite: When Smith points to his head and sings, "Like my mullet?")

Or in this version of "Under the Bridge" performed by the eminently mockable Red Hot Chili Peppers: Anthony Keidis, like some brain-dead video editor (a plausible role), repeatedly tells the video what to do: "Now superimpose on me/Someone's ugly house/There's no front lawn/Just a pile of dirt/Will you ever cut away/From this boring shot?"