Bloody Kids!
May 29, 2011 6:12 PM Subscribe

IS TROPICAL - THE GREEKS: Official music video (Vimeo, 3.25); live action combined with animation for real comic-book violence. NSFW owing to boys being shot, blown up, shot, electrocuted, shot, slashed and then shot some more.
posted by bwg (45 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite

I guess you figured we missed this over at askme, eh?
posted by tomswift at 6:14 PM on May 29, 2011

Yep, guess I did. So shoot me.
posted by bwg at 6:16 PM on May 29, 2011 [4 favorites]

That's a bit harsh. Although it would be in line with the video, eh?
posted by tomswift at 6:19 PM on May 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Indeed (as long as I don't really die).
posted by bwg at 6:23 PM on May 29, 2011

I enjoyed it, but my wife and many of my other friends couldn't finish it...
posted by schyler523 at 6:25 PM on May 29, 2011

Huge innocent fun.
posted by Decani at 6:30 PM on May 29, 2011

Here's the Youtube version if, your computer hates Vimeo like my netbook unfortunately does.

I liked it. It's interesting to see the rather innocent gun play that most boys that age do overlaid with what the realistic effects of it would be. One of the kids looks like my nephew (the one in the first sequence who get's head shot in the stand-off) so I actually grimaced when that happened.
posted by codacorolla at 6:33 PM on May 29, 2011

they should have been wearing makeup and fishnets.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 6:33 PM on May 29, 2011

this is like a fun version of KidZania
posted by Bwithh at 6:33 PM on May 29, 2011

The most disturbing part, I think, is the realization that the kids are French, and they're in France.

It's just all so... American.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:37 PM on May 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

KidZistan?
posted by codacorolla at 6:37 PM on May 29, 2011

Huh, so it's mildly viral now. Guess that kid from the askme now stands a chance of running into it after all.
posted by longtime_lurker at 6:41 PM on May 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

The most disturbing part, I think, is the realization that the kids are French, and they're in France.

Do kids in France really put ketchup on roast chicken?
posted by ennui.bz at 6:52 PM on May 29, 2011

Is it bad that I was laughing at the terrorist scenes, just because of the sheer absurdity?
posted by spiderskull at 6:53 PM on May 29, 2011

I don't think showing or not showing this to kids in this day and age is really going to make a difference or otherwise damage them when we've more or less been continually at war somewhere on the planet for the past century and more. That's kind of the point and statement of the video, really, is that this culture of violence already pervades our homes.

Kids have very vivid imaginations. I remember this is something like how dirt clod and toy gun fights would go when imagined while playing when I was a kid. Explosions are cool, etc. Yeah, it's kind of disturbing. See also; Lord of the Flies or any wild pack of eight year olds in groups of three or more left alone for more than 15 minutes.

But this is also how children confront their own mortality and the issues of insecurity and violence in the world. It's also how they test and learn themselves against each other. A kitten play hunts to learn, do children play war to learn?

I personally remember learning what war was as a child, seeing media of adults waging war and being confused and conflicted by the idiocy of it. "Wait, you're in charge? What the hell is wrong with you!? Have you simply tried sharing, yet? Because that's what you keep telling us to do!" Followed shortly by "You invented what!? A hydrogen bomb!? Lovely. Yeah, I really don't want to sleep now."
posted by loquacious at 6:56 PM on May 29, 2011 [10 favorites]

I loved it- This is exactly what kids do in their free time. Or it's what I did, anyway. And I imagine these kids have a crazy, huge fun time making the video. And none of them are worse for it. The hand wringing around this is hilarious.
posted by GilloD at 7:26 PM on May 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

Yeah, today my 9-year-old said "Dad, what's 2Girls1Cup?"

It's like, there's some things that I wish I didn't know.

(That said, "The Greeks" is a great video, and if it disturbs you, that's kind of the point.)
posted by fungible at 7:59 PM on May 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I wonder how my careless childhood full-page drawings of stick-figure massacres would go down today.
posted by BeerFilter at 8:17 PM on May 29, 2011

Yeah, lots of blood but not realistically animated (imagine what a Pixar refugee would have done) so I say "Cartoon Violence". But yeah, sometimes I wish they'd let Wile E. Coyote bleed out on camera. Does that make me bad?
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:22 PM on May 29, 2011

Apparently there are others who wish the same thing.
posted by flabdablet at 8:43 PM on May 29, 2011

I loved this video, it reminded me of playing with guns as a kid.

Do kids in France really put ketchup on roast chicken?

that was by far the most disturbing image in the video.
posted by delmoi at 8:45 PM on May 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

I'm glad this made it - I saw it on the ask.me and thought about posting it myself. Needless to say, I think it's fantastic. Thoughtful and disturbing, in a good way.
posted by absalom at 9:13 PM on May 29, 2011

It looks like composited anime effects from the Akira-GitS era. I get that twinge like I've seen some of these explosions and blood splatters before. I even opened up Akira to compare the scene in it early on where the resistance guy who broke out Takashi is gunned down in the street with the scene in this vid where the kid first picks up the gun at around 0:32. It's not the same but the angles are so close it could be. Pretty neat effect.
posted by BeerFilter at 9:16 PM on May 29, 2011

I've been using a trial of SaberFX recently to soup up videos of the kids running around with lightsabers and blasters. This is...something else. Is there an app for this? Wouldn't use it, just curious if there's something you can use to point at a frame and say 'animate a blood splatter at this point in this direction of this length lasting this many frames' and it'll render it. If it's not in the Mac App store by the end of June with a $6.99 price tag I'll lose my faith in arbitrage.

Chook and sauce always seems like a good idea til you try it. It's just wrong.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 10:20 PM on May 29, 2011

just curious if there's something you can use to point at a frame and say 'animate a blood splatter at this point in this direction of this length lasting this many frames' and it'll render it. If it's not in the Mac App store by the end of June with a $6.99 price tag I'll lose my faith in arbitrage.

Yeah, also there should be an app that can paint the mona lisa for me. I should be able to dial in the amount of 'mischievousness of smile' between 0 and 100%
posted by delmoi at 10:27 PM on May 29, 2011

'Yeah, today my 9-year-old said "Dad, what's 2Girls1Cup?"'

indeed
posted by Eideteker at 10:32 PM on May 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

Yeah, also there should be an app that can paint the mona lisa for me.

Boring.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 10:38 PM on May 29, 2011

Awesome video - looks like animation filling in for what my imagination did in the countless cap gun, nerf gun, water gun and just plain old hitting each other with sticks kind of play my friends and I did at that age.
posted by dazed_one at 11:33 PM on May 29, 2011

Quentin Taranpretino.
posted by pracowity at 12:31 AM on May 30, 2011

This is exactly what kids do in their free time. Or it's what I did, anyway.

You imagined you were a member of a drug cartel? You pretended to mix narcotics in a lab? You executed your little friends with a gun under the chin and imagined their brains painting the wall? You pretended you were a Middle Eastern extremist who cut hostages' throats? You imagined straddling somebody's chest and shooting them point blank in the face with an automatic weapon? At, what, eight or nine years old?

Sure you did.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 2:13 AM on May 30, 2011

your little friends

"your friends" would have worked just as well there, without the implied "innocence of kids" assumption rolled into it.
posted by russm at 2:27 AM on May 30, 2011

the implied "innocence of kids" assumption

There was nothing implied and nothing assumed. Here, I'll straight out say it: people who say 'oh, this is just how kids think in real life' are fucking idiots.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 3:28 AM on May 30, 2011

people who say 'oh, this is just how kids think in real life' are fucking idiots

are you talking about all the context (drug dealers, terrorists, etc), or the actual play of goodies vs. baddies and the running and the shooting?
posted by russm at 4:19 AM on May 30, 2011

Oh, and then at school we built forts out of interwoven sticks with fallen pine needles stuffed into the gaps then had wars over them, mostly involving small tree branches as swords and spears and a local variety of giant gumnut as a kind of bullet that could be accelerated to dangerous speeds by fitting the open end over a stick and flicking it in the direction of the target.

One day things got a little out of hand (this was during a period of conflict between supporters of rival SANFL teams, I think the Eagles and the Redlegs) and the teachers had to come and break up a siege involving rocks being rolled down the hill at the attackers, who were slinging heavy green pinecones up at the pine needle-covered piece of play equipment that the battle was all about. If we'd had a boiling old analogue we would have used that as well. I still can't believe nobody ever broke a limb, although blood was drawn every now and then.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 5:00 AM on May 30, 2011

This is nothing compared to the old BB gun war of '87, sure we weren't imagining drug runs, or terrorists (probably because that stuff wasn't on TV!)
posted by schyler523 at 5:03 AM on May 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

"boiling old"? That makes no sense. Oil. Boiling oil.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 5:16 AM on May 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

hmmm... out of curiosity, what does the kid say when the drug deal goes bad?
posted by russm at 5:37 AM on May 30, 2011

I dunno, obiwanwasabi. I had a pretty good imagination and seem to remember playing pretty much exactly like that. Kids choose red paintballs over all other colors because it looks the most like blood. What's a pretend swordfight without severed limbs spraying imaginary blood? When someone hits you with a magnolia grenade, you pantomime blowing up, arms flailing. We shoulda been given lifetime achievement Oscars for all the melodramatic death scenes, gasping out some one-liner while clutching your stomach, then falling fake-dead with your tongue hanging out of your mouth.
posted by BeerFilter at 6:11 AM on May 30, 2011

crocodile came up, bit my guts out, and bit me into parts, and even my legs went that way and even my head went that way
posted by russm at 6:23 AM on May 30, 2011

This is not how kids play guns, because no one started shouting, "Nu-Uh! You didn't hit me! I hit you!" and then have the whole thing devolve into a big argument before they went on to go burn ants with a lighter and a can of hairspray.
posted by ursus_comiter at 6:59 AM on May 30, 2011

You imagined you were a member of a drug cartel? You pretended to mix narcotics in a lab? You executed your little friends with a gun under the chin and imagined their brains painting the wall? You pretended you were a Middle Eastern extremist who cut hostages' throats? You imagined straddling somebody's chest and shooting them point blank in the face with an automatic weapon? At, what, eight or nine years old?

Never did the drug cartel one, but I sure did execute a number of my friends with a well placed nerf dart to the back of the head. We had to stop using cap guns for that after Owen lost his hearing for the rest of the afternoon. I was never a middle eastern extremist, but I was the Nazis (and died appropriately horribly when the right moment came) more than a few times. I was a cowboy eradicating Indians a few times, and often was the Indian that same afternoon. I melted army men and burned small buildings and bunkers I had constructed for them. I didn't imagine straddling my buddy's chest and unloading point blank into his face - if the opportunity presented itself I would do that very thing, because in a nerf gun war I knew he'd do the same to me. With my Lego I built airliners, packed them full of lego folk and crashed them horrifically into... well... everything.

Maybe you lived in a candy floss coated world as a child, but in my school yard I fondly recall the entire class splitting into 2 factions, making cardboard swords and shields and happily re-enacting viscious melees after learning about the crusades.

And I love the tales my father had from growing up in the 50s in England and Scotland - the time his brother got an actual arrow in the head from playing cowboys and Indians in a cornfield with home-made bows, or when his brother beaned him on the noggin with a hammer during a particularly accurate re-enactment of the battle of Bannock Burn.

Apparently this kind of play has been going on for eons - where have you been?
posted by dazed_one at 11:12 AM on May 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

By the way, I can vouch for the effectiveness of cardboard folded repeatedly on itself and wrapped in masking tape. Makes for a wonderful, fairly light while durable (and painful) sword.
posted by dazed_one at 11:16 AM on May 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is exactly what kids do in their free time. Or it's what I did, anyway.

Yep. I made Stuffed Animal Concentration Camps. Not because I was into nazis, but because I knew nazis were bad, concentration camps were very bad, and I wanted to do something bad. And so my cousin and I made it, and when our parents found us and asked what the hell we were doing and we told them, they flipped. the fuck. out.

I was a child and I didn't understand morality, or even life or death, or even the concept of cognition. No eight year old does. We did not think, we acted and because of our actions learned. And kids learn some really fucked up things about the world often times because they "play" the scenarios out.

Here's another anecdote: A few years ago I was walking down a random street in a random neighborhood. A bunch of kids were doing what the kids in this video do - playing with toy guns, pretending to shoot each other. One of them ran up to me, and with his friends cheering him on, shot me. I went down, bleeding out my stomach and making rather convincing death gurgles. This child then ran up and straddled my chest, put his toy gun to my forehead, and said "Now I will kill you."

He shot me in the face, three times. Each time I reacted accordingly. His friends were super happy about this, and after he got off me I got up and sprinted away down the street, being chased by all of them as they were trying to hit me with imaginary bullets shouting gun sounds at the top of their lungs.

Coming after that first anecdote, this second one is strange, because those kids didn't learn anything, or if they did, it is that you can shoot someone in the face three times and they'll get up and keep playing. I learned/remembered just how vicious and weird childhood can be.
posted by special agent conrad uno at 10:58 PM on May 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

Camp. Singular, not plural. I got in so much trouble, and my parents took it as a lesson to teach some things about WWII, Jewish history, and war in general, that I never thought to make another Stuffed Animal Concentration Camp. I'm still really embarrassed about it.
posted by special agent conrad uno at 11:00 PM on May 30, 2011

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Bloody Kids! May 29, 2011 6:12 PM Subscribe

Bloody Kids!
May 29, 2011 6:12 PM Subscribe