Thursday, May 24, 2007
Dear Sister: Memoirs of a Beaten, Dead Horse
If you're new to this blog, I suggest you skip this entry and read "A People's History of Garbage Day". This post could be too much too soon.
In David Sedaris' "Naked", the author includes an aside about stepping into a high-end gift store and seeing a pair of glass eyeballs. His immediate impulse was to hold the eyes in front of his face and make his brother laugh. Before he could make this joke Sedaris noticed a sign on the counter which said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "Please do not pick up the eyeballs and hold them up to your face." The moment was a crushing one for Sedaris. It illustrates something we all go through, which is thinking we've come up with a unique, hilarous gag only to discover that everyone and their sister has the same impulse.
Which brings us to the "Dear Sister" videos.
Our story begins on May 19, 2005, a.k.a the night of The O.C.'s second-season finale. In a tense moment of gunplay and melodrama Marissa saves Ryan's life by shooting his brother. To ensure that audience understood the drama, the scene was presented in slow-motion, complete with a powerful emo sountrack.
I hate to waste blog-space showing clips from The O.C., but you can watch the original scene here.
In 2007, Saturday Night Live lampooned the cancelled, prime-time soap opera with one of their world famous "digital shorts." I don't know why they waited two years. Perhaps America just wasn't ready to laugh so soon after Marissa shot Trey.
Again, I don't want to waste valueable blog space with SNL content, but you can see their video here.
In no time, internet-video enthusiasts were flooding cyberspace with their own "Dear Sister" mash-ups. I hesitate to call them "parodies", as they don't actually parody anything. The vidoes have all the satirical bite of a skit you'd see at Summer Camp.
This new trend of re-creations incorporates "Wedding Crashers", "Lost", "South Park", "300", Elmer Fudd, Nintendo's "Duck Hunt", basically any media moment wherein someone fires a gun. (I tell ya, somebody could create a rarely visited weblog devoted to those mash-ups. Don't look at me, I've got my hands full!)
To date there are four "Garbage Day" videos inspired by the SNL hijinks.
(ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO CLICK HERE!)
The first comes from TEENWOLFTHEBAND. To his credit (?), this was the first of its kind. The resulting video offers the comfort and predictability of a Quizno's grilled-cheese sandwich. (note: this video was already featured in "A People's History of Garbage Day")
The next video to combine the chocolate and peanut butter of Eric Freeman and Imogen Heap was "Dear Sister: Garbage Day edition". To MRCAMEL123's credit, s/he tells the same joke in half the time.
Cinephiles will prefer the NINJASKICKANUS version, because it's presented in letterbox format.
But the last one to the party was GATSBYEXPRESS, who's self-proclaimed "spoof" distinguishes itself by starting with additional footage of the shooter. We open on Ricky, as though GATSBYEXPRESS identifies with the criminal and not the victim.
I would like to point out that most of the video-makers do not have any other videos listed on their YouTube page, except for MRCAMEL123 who posted something called "Penis Power Remix" -- again, he speaks to the cinephiles.
Also of interest, none of the filmmakers seem to be aware of each other's work. I hope this blog sets them all straight.
Labels:
David Sedaris,
digital shorts,
Duck Hunt,
Imogen Heap,
Lost,
Saturday Night Live,
Teen Wolf,
The O.C.
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2 comments:
can i tell you how much i enjoyed that SNL skit? although it did get to be a bit much toward the end.
who is jim halpert?
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