Don't tell me it's a worthy cause. No cause could be so worthy.

[erika]

subversively brilliant or offensively trite: YOU DECIDE.

(p.s. spr0cket, you may want to skip this entry.)

So I'm watching this video of this really catchy song that's just come out, and uh...

I know we're all post-post irony and all that, but I honestly can't decide whether this video is subversively brilliant and honest or upsettingly trite and demeaning.

The song is Narina Pallot - Everybody's Gone to War, and I felt like the song was a sad and pointed look at where war has led us.

(lyrics follow)

I've got a friend, he's a pure-bred killing machine
He said he's waited his whole damn life for this
I knew him well when he was seventeen
Now he's a man, he'll be dead by Christmas

So, everybody's going to war
But we don't know what we're fighting for
Don't tell me it's a worthy cause
No cause could be so worthy

If love is a drug, I guess we're all sober
If hope is a song, I guess it's all over
How to have faith, when faith is crime?
I don't want to die
If god's on our side, then god is a joker
Asleep on the job, his children fall over,
Running out through the door and straight to sky
I don't want to die

For every man who wants to rule the world
There'll be a man who just wants to be free
What do we learn but what should not be learnt
Too late to find a cure for this disease

So, everybody's gone to war
But we don't know what we're fighting for
Don't tell me it's a worthy cause
No cause could be so worthy

If love is a drug, I guess we're all sober
If hope is a song, I guess it's all over
How to have faith, when faith is a crime?
I don't want to die
If God's on our side, then God is a joker
Asleep on the job, his children fall over,
Running out of the door and straight to the sky,
I don't want to die

So, everybody's gone to war
But we don't know what we're fighting for
Don't tell me it's a worthy cause
No cause could be so worthy

If love is a drug, I guess we're all sober
If hope is a song, I guess it's all over
How to have faith, when faith is a crime?
I don't want to die
If God's on our side, then God is a joker
Asleep on the job, his children fall over,
Running out of the door and straight to the sky,
I don't want to die

I've got a friend, he's a pure-bred killing machine
I think he might be dead by Christmas

(END OF LYRICS)


Okay, so for the video?

People start a war in the grocery store, garrotting each other with celery and spraying bullets of orange soda from pop bottles and throwing pineapples like grenades. Pies blow up. Flour detonates.

Video on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F3JH-e2zs4

High res 30 meg vid:
http://rhf.dreamhost.com/reference/Nerina_Online2.mov


I think that, first of all, the video is really really well done, well shot and everything. Many of the scenes are shot like pop-culture references to depressing images of battlefield scenes that we may have seen (typo: scene! again!) on the news. But COME ON. WAR IN A GROCERY STORE?

Then again, that could be seen as the subversive part. If everyone really has gone to war, then... war in a grocery store! Woman and children first on the chopping block!

I mean, I think it's well done enough that just innocently seeing it could be upsetting to war veterans or anyone worried about someone in Iraq. So that argues for the brilliant subversion part.

But ... garroting someone with a celery stick? Hitting someone with a haddock (NOT EVEN KIDDING) and causing them to fall off the top of a grocery aisle divider and crash into shelves on their way down? Having an egg impact on a woman's chest whereupon she falls to the ground? ... just... seems a bit... trite.

Maybe?

I am still undecided. Thoughts?

Comments

[deadhero.livejournal.com]

I can't decide what to make of the video - the production values are all nice and everything is quite pretty and suitably ironic, but it's really.....well, boring.

It feels like I've seen it before, even though I haven't. ESPECIALLY the scene where they're all crawling on their knees through the frozen foods section.

[erika]

Somebody else I asked this to made a really good point: I don't think they were thinking about anything beyond marketing.

And that's very true. It's all gloss and glitter, no real substance. I've probably thought more about the concept in this post than they did putting the damn video together.