Priorities, priorities

January 9, 2012 5:45 AM

The Photographs of Your Junk (will be publicized!) (SLYT) Masterful modern social commentary.
posted by Benny Andajetz (37 comments total)

The commentary really wasn't anything that hasn't been said a thousand times before, arguably in more nuanced ways. I find it hard to like the self-satisfied style of delivery - is it a parody of something else?
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 6:13 AM on January 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

is it a parody of something else?

Yes. (I probably should have addressed that in the post.) It's a riff on Gill Scott-Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 6:17 AM on January 9, 2012

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised will not be parodized.
posted by pmcp at 6:19 AM on January 9, 2012 [12 favorites]

I feel perhaps, it was referenced or reprised rather than parodied? I mean, Ronnie Butler Jr is being earnest yes?
posted by adamt at 6:23 AM on January 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

The beat from that Gill Scott-Heron version of the Revolution Will Not Be Televised is itself a riff on Solana's and Getina's revolutionary film Hour of the Furnaces.

And I prefer the jazz flute version of the Revolution.
posted by Mercaptan at 6:27 AM on January 9, 2012

I guess it's the delivery, he was too smug about it - a similar message is far better and more soulfully delivered by Sarah Jones.
posted by pmcp at 6:30 AM on January 9, 2012

IMHO, The Kleptones pulled this off much better with their song "revolverution", which actually made me think a bit...this is very pretty and slick though, very well produced. Agree with others on the smug delivery being a bit of a turn off...the whole thing seems a bit ironic, maybe that's the intention.
posted by soy bean at 6:33 AM on January 9, 2012

I thought the video was awful--I have no real opinion on the song (it didn't do much for me but I didn't think it was crap).

The video reminded me of early rock videos from the 80s where the director thought it necessary to force an image to match the lyrics as much as possible or show old people overwhelmed by the music to an extent that they started dancing or singing along. It's embarrassing just how lacking in respect the images are for track itself. The video completely saps what little "power" the words have.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 6:40 AM on January 9, 2012

Omigod. I wasn't liking it, but when I got to the second set of people a-groovin' their heads and forcing their excruciating diggin' smiles I wanted to gouge my eyes out with teaspoons. Terrible direction. Bad music. And he is an awful lip-syncher. Sorry.
posted by Hartham's Hugging Robots at 6:43 AM on January 9, 2012 [5 favorites]

I object to the notion that people need to wear the weight of the world on them all the time.
posted by Bovine Love at 7:15 AM on January 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

And whitey's on the moon.
posted by punkfloyd at 7:50 AM on January 9, 2012 [3 favorites]

I liked it, because it was so earnest and unironic and not at all hip and self consciously echoing a much greater work of art and of course the plain people of MeFi are too clever and educated to have needed this but not everything on the internet is made for them.
posted by MartinWisse at 8:59 AM on January 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

...but not everything on the internet is made for them.

But the front page of Metafilter kind of is.
posted by pmcp at 9:06 AM on January 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

soy bean, others: The Kleptones revoverlution is, as you would expect, a sampling of someone else. Kleptones appear to have gotten if from Smoove (band myspace) (actual track), who got it from elsehwere. I thought I once found the original poet's website, but it seems to have vanished from ye olde WWW- if someone here knows who it was, or can find the site again, that would be great... \

(There was once an Ask about this, but the links there are broken too.)

(Not that I don't absolutely love The Kleptones version, because, really, how can you not love something that is social metacommentary and also samples an Italian version of "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"? But I'd love to know who actually wrote the riff on Gil-Scott Heron, because it is just so great.)
posted by louie at 9:13 AM on January 9, 2012

2:47 is how far I made it before I minimized and mute-ized.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:14 AM on January 9, 2012

Thanks louie, I too would love to know the original author...i did a quick google of the 'lyrics' before I posted, I figured (of course) that they were sampled from somewhere but didn't find anything...then I wondered if maybe it was actually written and recorded for that song. Should have made that clearer.
posted by soy bean at 9:38 AM on January 9, 2012

I have a hard time accepting the word "masterful" in the description of this video, unless it is meant ironically.
posted by crunchland at 9:39 AM on January 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Disappointed. I read the title and thought it was shame therapy for hoarders.
posted by punchee at 10:04 AM on January 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

"Realness" is a word?
posted by monospace at 10:13 AM on January 9, 2012

My mind is blown, man! People like sex? The man is keeping us down??

If only I'd known earlier.
posted by cmoj at 10:19 AM on January 9, 2012

Bovine Love: "I object to the notion that people need to wear the weight of the world on them all the time"

It's not "the weight of the world", it's learning to live with modern technology and its ramifications. Suggesting people don't need to take time to understand just how the Internet has changed their lives, directly and indirectly, is like suggesting people don't worry about cars when out walking - ignore the new-fangled jalopies all you like, but they'll still hurt you if they hit you.

That said, the video was pretty meh...
posted by benzo8 at 10:29 AM on January 9, 2012

Huh? I didn't see anything in that video suggesting anything of that sort, and I wasn't suggesting that people should be blind to the internet. Clearly I didn't see the same things as you.
posted by Bovine Love at 11:49 AM on January 9, 2012

I thought the poem was pretty good.
posted by grog at 12:37 PM on January 9, 2012

I can't fault on anyone for thinking this is funny if they haven't heard the original, but creators have no excuse.

Only a complete asshole hears the original, decides they'll castrate it of its still-too-relevant message, cops the conga beat and vocal style and turns it into a passionless shitpile about nude pics on a smartphone.
posted by triceryclops at 1:31 PM on January 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Just for the record:

I didn't post this because it's funny. Quite the opposite, actually.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 1:45 PM on January 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

Are people really missing the point so badly that they think this is about avoiding having one's junk online?
posted by ssg at 6:22 PM on January 9, 2012

After a viewing of the whole thing, I can see he tried to cram a conscious message in the second half of it somewhere. But until that point it's a weak effort. Cringe inducing at best.
posted by triceryclops at 7:21 PM on January 9, 2012

Sorry, but it worked for me. Clever update of a timeless message. Every generation needs to hear it, and this one works. Sometimes a bit heavy in the audience responses ("Ha! Wiener!").
posted by IAmBroom at 7:47 PM on January 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

ssg: Are people really missing the point so badly that they think this is about avoiding having one's junk online?

triceryclops: and turns it into a passionless shitpile about nude pics on a smartphone.

triceryclops is.
posted by IAmBroom at 7:49 PM on January 9, 2012

That was a rhetorical question.
posted by ssg at 8:00 PM on January 9, 2012

I'm sorry, I did enjoy it, if for nothing more than a well performed blend of old school revolutionary rhetoric and modern day newspeak.
posted by Samizdata at 11:37 PM on January 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

I realised the video was atrociously awful quite quickly I hid the tab. The cheesyness kind of grew on me after that.
posted by public at 3:33 AM on January 10, 2012

I was thinking it was going to be about junk like, people blogging photos of their new consumer acquisitions, criticizing that consumer-fetishism-as-identity thing, not "your naughty bits are on permanent record now".
posted by ifjuly at 5:04 AM on January 10, 2012

ifjuly: it was. You missed the message underneath the chorus.
posted by IAmBroom at 5:25 AM on January 10, 2012

Ah, like a bunch of others I got about 40 seconds in and was not digging the cheese factor. My bad!
posted by ifjuly at 6:10 AM on January 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

I guess the sad part about this is that though some of the references have been updated, it's basically the same song Don Henley sang 30 years ago.
posted by crunchland at 6:38 AM on January 10, 2012

Joke's on him! No one uses digg anymore.
posted by chairface at 8:41 PM on January 10, 2012