These "Literal Version" Music Videos Are Getting Too Complicated
"White Wedding," Literal Version, you guys:
Wait, "White Wedding" is already pretty intensely ironic, right? It's a love song for people who spit on love. Or who used to spit on love. Back when they were young. Everyone who liked this song is dead now, of course. But we have to take it on its own, ancient terms. The whole thing was a tongue-in-cheek slap in the face to the patriarchal idea of marriage. But then Billy Idol was mostly a record label's construct of what it meant to be punk. By the time he'd gone solo, he was an idealized, accessible, pop Top 40 idea of a punk; a "rebel" who actually reinforced the status quo. He let normals into the mean party. So to then take this complicated, subversive but not actually subversive, anti-marriage song about marriage, with its obviously double-reverse-meta-confrontational imagery and render it into once-again literal terms is not really funny so much as it is deeply problematic on a number of levels dealing with symbolism and cultural institutions and pop's role in defining social attitudes.
Haha. Just kidding. What does that paragraph even mean? I need some coffeeeeeeee. BRB.
Posted by Gabe at 9:45 AM in Music Related Content, Viral Video
Tags: Billy Idol | Literal Version | Punk
It's too early for this.
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Billy wasn't a construct of anything and he didn't reinforce shit. He was just cool. End of story.
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None will be as great as Take On Me.
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You make me better at writing essays. With words!
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It's like Samuel Beckett. I admire the technique but it doesn't hit me on a gut level.
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it's weird. Take on Me was truly comic genius, every other literal video since hasbeen kinda . . . meh. A couple funny parts,but nothing on par with "sketchy hand" or "pipe wrench fight"
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Whoever sings these doesn't really have the vocal prowess to pull of Billy Idol or Anthony Kiedis. Which is sad.
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i liked the unsafe kitchen part.
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Hey guess what it's FUN FACT TIME!
- The kitchen used in this video is the same set used in the black & white segment in David Bowie's Ashes to Ashes video.
Thanks a lot, Pop Up Video!
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