To
start off this segment on music videos, I decided to start with open gushing. I
am not necessarily saying that these are the three greatest music videos of all
time, or that they are my top three favorite videos ever, but I love them a
lot. As we get into why I love them, that will launch the broader discussion,
but today will be only praise.
"My
Own Worst Enemy", performed by Lit. From their album A Place in the Sun,
the video was directed by Gavin Bowden and released in June 1999.
There
are several strong points here. You do get a sense of the band as they are,
watching them perform in the lounge. You also get to see them as - I guess the
issue is really that they are retro, but the initial thought is that they are
nerds - nerds who are great bowlers. That gives them an underdog plot, because
they enter the alley to people giving them the side-eye, but their amazing
skills win them acceptance and admiration, and then they get to go party.
This
classic storyline builds in a manner congruent to the buildup of the song, with
the bridge coinciding with the most impressive bowling footage, climaxing with
a ball joke that would be funny anyway, but is more so because some band
members are clearly so much more comfortable with/skilled at it than others.
It's
bittersweet too, because Allen Shellenberger is gone, and I can never not
remember that when watching, but part of that is that coverage of the band is
pretty well balanced too. You get to see everyone doing their thing, and not just
the lead singer.
(To
be fair, A. Jay Popoff in this video is where the term "bedroom eyes"
suddenly clicked for me; so THAT's what it means.)
"Take
Me Home Please" by Reggie and the Full Effect. I don't know the director,
but it was the second release off of Songs Not to Get Married To, from
2005.
It
was easy for me to just listen to the song without watching the video, which I
do fairly often, but I kept coming back to watch the video because of the break-dancing.
If it was something that I could do at all, I might be less impressed, but even
the moves that Reggie does, which are clearly intended to be more comedic than
impressive, are beyond me. I am especially impressed by that little scissor and
dip thing the antagonist does around 2:20, but also a lot of it
is just gravity defying.
(For
convenience I am going to refer to James Dewees at the keyboard in the blue
tracksuit as Reggie, and James Dewees in the long black wig at the dance-off as
Paco.)
So,
I would watch the dancing, but then I would start noticing the individuals.
There is one blonde girl (not the pig-tailed one) who does not really seem to
be watching in one shot, so I noticed that and thought she was not really into
the dancing, but then on a different viewing, she is doing the dancing too. Maybe
she was just thinking of something else right then.
So
then I started thinking about the individual people and realized that even
though you could theoretically just gather a bunch of people who are good at
dancing and let them use their own personalities, they are taking on
characters, because at times you can see some of them break character.
For
example, Paco seems to have two closer friends in this, and since they both
wear headbands I will have to refer to them as the cooler one and the nerdier
one. The cooler one at one point looks like he is about to crack up, but the
nerdy one is consistently nerdy. Is he a more focused actor, not acting, or did
the camera just never catch him?
Ultimately
the video concept is pretty simple, but the video ended up being one that I
find endlessly intriguing.
"I'm
Not Okay" by My Chemical Romance, off of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge.
Directed by Marc Webb, filmed in August 2004.
Let
me say that I am very fond of the original video, for its glimpses of Matt, and
Gerard brandishing Sting, and Ray doing the same head bouncing that he does in
the updated video, which is my signature move when I do it for karaoke. The
first video is good, but the second is a masterpiece.
Yes,
it has more oral jokes than I would normally go for, but it builds up and
follows a path that is appropriate to the song while being something the
audience can relate to. In the opening, where you get to hear the voices of Ray
and Gerard, and that dialogue is totally real. It's not even "making
it" that he wants, but he can't articulate what he does want, only he does
know there is something that he wants. That is adolescence.
Again
we cut between performance and underdogs. I will say that Frank in the
chemistry lab reminds me a little of the Ramones' "Rock N Roll High
School", in that my first thought was "Don't let them have
unsupervised access to chemicals!" but that is a very small part of this
video. It builds an idea of what school is like for the parties involved, and
the final sequence is full of great images: Frank's weary look of resignation
as Gerard is tackled, Gerard wind-milling on the way to his own sadly
ineffective retaliation, and then Ray and Frank making the tackle happen, with
Mikey getting in a last shot. Teamwork!
There
have been things I have wondered about. For example, in that 2-man tackle, does
it make sense to have the fairly short one go for the top of the target, and
the kind of tall guy go for the base? The mascot goes down, so I guess it
works. Was Mikey really heading to the final confrontation with only a croquet
ball? No, he has a mallet later. Okay, that makes more sense. And then for that
confrontation, I would generally expect lacrosse players to be tougher than
croquet players, but croquet equipment seems like it could do more damage. Seems
dangerous.
I
actually didn't get into a lot of scuffles when I was in school. It may be
obvious. I just know that this video rocks.
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