Like most people I am a white, middle class male ages 18 to 49. Sometimes, for fun, we like to observe a minority group and laugh at their zany antics. Whether it’s Persians, Kurds, or Iranians, we love to make fun of those different from the majority. Besides race, though, class is always a source of humor. Poor people are hilarious!

Check it out, “Our House” by Madness:

Madness perform this song entirely in poor face. They wear traditional British working class clothing:

This jolly fellow just loves being working class! He wears an ill-fitting hat and plays bass in front of some extraordinarily ugly wallpaper.

The singer even wears finger-less gloves, just like a hobo would to maximize the amount of heat absorbed from a drum fire.

The whole band also crams themselves into a tiny room, just like the abundant brood of a working class couple who never learned about birth control.

The video opens with some zany working class antics in the form of “man-on- the-street” interviews. He asks a series of people, “Have you see our house?”

They look bewildered as they think, “I don’t recall owning a house with this person. I must have been drunk or it happened more than 3 months ago before I got severe amnesia.”

Finally he finds someone who lies and tells him that he has seen our house.

Our funny bones primed for further chuckles, the song begins.

This video commits what I consider an unforgivable sin. They have people pretending to play string instruments who don’t know what they’re doing.

Now, I’m no expert on playing string instruments, although I do hold an advanced degree on the subject. Look at their wrists! Look at their uncoordinated movements! I feel like they could have taken the time to at least look at a picture of a professional violinist.

This is Itzhak Perlman. You may remember him from that Steven Spielberg movie about the holocaust. (Everyone thought that movie was so great, but I didn’t think it was that funny.) See how he looks comfortable and is holding the violin primarily with his neck? That’s how it’s done.

Anyway, we get to see other members of this poor family. Here is the mother:

She has become entirely sexless from the drudgery of day-to-day working class life with a large family. This person could be either a man or a woman at this point.

We also see the brother:

He tries to clean himself up to hopefully land a woman from a better social class. He is destined to fail, though, and will end up dropping out of school when his girlfriend from next door gets pregnant because he never learned about birth control.

We also have the father:

The lyrics of the song tell us that this is his Sunday best. That’s hilarious! Those are the nicest clothes he owns? That’s what I would wear to clean out a pig sty!

These poor people then engage in antics.

The mother, exhausted from cooking for and cleaning up after her enormous family falls asleep while trying to iron a shirt and hopefully fool an outsider into thinking its wearer is middle class.

The father, who has presumably been waiting for the mother to prepare his clothing (like a mother would for a tiny baby) is upset and terrifies the mother.

The whole family engages in traditional working class dances.

During the guitar solo they do something that is a lot of fun. What would a child dreaming of getting out of this low class family do? Pretend that he was someone else, someone famous.

That’s some sweet air guitar. Or racket guitar.

Here he pretends to be a Beatle, complete with collarless jacket and ridiculous hair.

I have no idea what this dress signifies.

Besides this cool guitar solo stuff I do like the guy with the fake nose:

There’s a little to like. But overall we are just supposed to think the poor are funny. Which they are. Sometimes, though, you wish bands would try a little harder.

Join me tomorrow when we see someone else playing air guitar whilst, and at the same time, robbing a bank.

-PTD

Yesterday we saw [a synth-based group that played like a band](/posts/rawhide- whip-it-by-devo/). Today we’ll be looking at the exact opposite. “West End Girls” is a rap song done by two thin, white, English gentlemen. Take a look:

The first thing you’ll notice in this video is that there is the singer and then there is another guy lurking in the background. The other guy is too cool to want to be in the video. Trying to be on camera is for people who try too hard. Trying too hard is the definition of uncool.

In this picture you can see the singer strutting through a gritty area while dressed inappropriately nicely. Two other people walk in the background. See, the other guy is just one of several people in the background!

Then, there is a shot of the two of them standing in front of some sort of painted metal shutter/door. Since only the two of them are in the shot the other guy decides to be see-through. That way he can maintain his cool.

Then, the shot changes, yet the other guy moves to stay in the frame. You can imagine the director saying, “Hey other guy! You are still in the shot. Hey!” while the other guy just stands there scowling pretending that he can’t hear anything. Eventually the director just said, “Screw it,” and let him stay in the shot.

We see here that the conceit of the video, that the other guy is too cool to want to be in the video, is totally false. The singer has something to do in all of these shots. He is lip syncing. Even if he doesn’t do much he is least doing something. He also is magnetic in his milky, weak chinned, British- ness. The other guy, though, is the one trying too hard. If you really don’t want to be in the video, just don’t be in it! If he was standing in the shot playing synthesizers (I assume that the other guy plays synthesizer. Otherwise, what does he do?) then I would understand him being in the background of every shot. [Other bands](/posts/dropping-glass-slipper-from- helicopter/) have no problems with most of the shots being just of the lead singer. I think the other guy desperately wants you to know that he is the band too. It is pathetic, really.

Look at him. I want to throw up. “Oh, is there a camera here? I hadn’t noticed.”

“I’m much more interested in what’s happening around me. Look at that over there!”

The director, desperate to have a single damn shot without that synthesizer playing egomaniac decides to do some location-based shots to give you some local flavor. The song doesn’t really specify what they mean by “West End” but I’ve gathered that it is a section of a city. I believe they were referring to the Sudanese city of Atbarah, population of about 100,000. Here is one of their famous double-decker buses:

This is a bridge over the river Nile: (Why do I feel compelled to refer to it as the “river Nile”? Shouldn’t it be the Nile river? Or possible the Rio Nile river?)

Finally, here is a famous large clock that calls the citizens to their daily prayers:

Now, the other guy decides to make a little effort and drop his cool.

He struts/dances around while mouthing the words. He quickly becomes embarrassed and goes back to pretending to be cool.

“Do you think anyone saw me?”

The amount of anxiety the other guy must have is amazing. He can’t cut loose for more than a few seconds and then is paralyzed by what other people might think. He tries so hard to fit in that he sticks out like a sore thumb.

This is a cry for help.

I think he’s contemplating just jumping into the Nile. He wonders if anyone would even notice.

At this point in the video the other guy presumably passes out from stress and is rushed to a hospital. This gives the singer a chance to be alone and try out some of his dry British humour.

He looks through some sort of purple writing at the camera as he sings the last lines of the song. “West End (of Atbarah) Girls”.

He then contemplatively looks off-camera. But wait! He isn’t done singing!

He looks back at the camera to sing the name of the song again!

He then becomes contemplative again as if he didn’t do that a moment before. That is hilarious. Did he forget that he had more to sing? Is he not contemplating but looking off screen at cue cards that tell him what line to sing? Is he simultaneously trying to play the singer’s and other guy’s parts in this shot?

I guess he’s trying to say something about the duality of man.

-PTD

The music video for “Whip It” by Devo is considered a classic. Their strange appearance and synthesizers are a symbol for the early music video. Mostly, though, this video is just weird as shit.

Take a look:

This video is definitely not boring. It features a cast of many. You have a kindly older woman who lives in a faux-log cabin that is extremely poorly painted. Her cabin is not passing for log and she couldn’t care less.

You have a cross-eyed woman who seems to live with the kindly older woman.

You have a group of cowboys and cowgirls drinking beer. They are engaging in a wild party outside the kindly older woman’s faux-log cabin. You suspect that she is picking up beer cans and clucking her tongue every morning.

You have Devo.

Featuring a fresh-faced young gentleman.

And the bespectacled S&M enthusiast.

There are several story lines featuring this cast. The main one is the public whipping.

Here the whip-ee is being led out by the kindly older woman and her cross-eyed assistand/ward.

Her blindfold is inexplicably removed before the whipping begins. What was the purpose of that blindfold? Was she kidnapped and brought to the faux-log cabin for the whipping and the blindfold prevented her from learning her location? Or does she also live in the cabin and uses the blindfold to aid her second sight?

He proceeds to whip her clothes off, starting with her hat.

The cowpeople love this. The woman on the left just realized that this, watching a woman strip-whipped in public, is what she has been longing for her entire life. No longer will she feel frustrated and unfulfilled. This fills a hole in her life she didn’t even know was there.

Now, the S&M enthusiast accidentally hits the woman directly with the whip. This gets different reactions.

This man is filled with blood lust. He’s probably the type of person who tramples someone to death at a football game.

It is too much for the kindly older woman, though. “Why!” she demands. “Why must we whip?!”

The enthusiast whips off her shirt and keeps whipping until she is down to her lingerie.

The other major story line features the cross-eyed woman. She pulls a gun on the cowpeople.

They are mostly shocked, but our blood lusty friend thinks he knows what she wants. He holds up his beer can.

We see things from her perspective. We can clearly see that even if she hits the beer can directly the bullet will travel through it and hit the cowboy in the chest or throat. Traditionally, you would hold the can out to the side. The cowboy, however, believes that the cross-eyed woman will never hit what she is aiming for so he is safest standing directly behind her target.

She shoots and presumably misses because the cowboy has no bullet holes in him. The cowboy is so shocked that he throws the beer can over his own shoulder. This just raises the blood lust in him. Or at least the lust.

A cowgirl gives him the encouragement he needs while providing prominent placement for Guess jeans’ logo.

The cowboy gets to work in full view of everyone else. Those are curtains, buddy. Use ‘em!

Clearly he wants everyone to see and they want to watch. Just what kind of faux-log cabin is this?

One thing I love about this video is the band.

I’m frequently bothered by synthesizer bands when they make music videos because of the performance shots. Even if you see the band playing, you don’t really get a sense of how the song was made. Devo, on the other hand, show that this song was played with a guitar, some drums, and a couple of synthesizers. I think you can see the band members play every note. That’s pretty cool.

This video commits a sin that normally bothers me a lot: too literally [depicting](/posts/the-clean-cut- hospital-afternoons/) [the lyrics](/posts/roar-roar-roar-roar-at-devil-roar- by/). Here it does not bother me so much. Why is that, you ask? Must there be a reason for everything? Must everyone be annoyed when I answer a question with another question? How about if I answer a question that I ask myself? No!

Maybe I don’t mind the literalness because the lyrics are so silly and they go so over the top. First of all, you have all the whipping. Then you have these:

“Break your momma’s back.”

“Before the cream sits out too long you must whip it.”

“Get straight.”

They really go for it, here. Why would a kindly old woman have a huge skillet filled to the top with cream? Is this faux-log cabin actually a working farm and she is making dairy products?

Either way, this video is very silly. It has a bunch of crazy things happening for no real reason. At the same time there are some serious themes. We see our once proud culture obsessed with the basest sex and violence and we see that both sex and violence are connected. I think ultimately The Exploited explain all of this with their song “Sex and Violence”: “Sex and violence! Sex and violence! Sex and violence! Sex and violence!”

Those guys said it all.

-PTD