Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version

Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version

By Keith Uhlich on May 30, 2009 in Music Jump to Comments (0)

My eternal thanks to Joshua Rothkopf for finding this one:

Y'know, I looked at some of the other "literal videos" and they just don't work, or at least, not work as well as this one. I think the problem is that examples like "Take On Me" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" are actually, y'know, GOOD VIDEOS, whereas this...I mean, there's some kind of English public school concept, yes, but if there's otherwise any kind of organizing philosophy to those images, I just don't see it. Maybe the singer is the embodiment of the boy's sexual yearnings which are repressed by patriarchal, Christian Anglo society and--oh, who cares. It's like Highlander fighting with Brazil in the worst fanfic episode of Buffy ever imagined.

Am I the only one who's vaugly reminded of the "Don't" trailer in Grindhouse?
Posted by JJ on 2009-06-01 18:58:56 My life is now complete.
Posted by Ali Arikan on 2009-06-01 11:47:41 Can they do one next for Patti Smyth and Scandal's The Warrior? Because that one would totally fit the TEOTH tableau.

Proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIDaBF8LILk
Posted by SteveInHouston on 2009-06-01 07:45:18 Oh, let me tell you, as a former editor of music videos, at the time this puppy was no joke. "Can't we make it more like 'Total Eclipse'?"
Posted by David Dean on 2009-06-01 00:02:48 I think what makes this one is that the original video was just incredibly bad.

I remember watching MTV when it debuted, but I don't remember this particular video. Most videos were garbage then -- did anyone actually like this? Is this the kind of thing, like the lyrics to Hotel California, that inspired endless discussions of the deep symbolism and what it all meant? Or did the target audience recognize how they were being played?

It's hard to believe the original video was ever interpreted as a sincere effort rather than a joke.
Posted by Joan on 2009-05-31 17:32:25 This one's tons of fun but I love the Aha parody a lot, too. "This guy's gonna get an assful of pipe wrench!"
Posted by Simon Abrams on 2009-05-31 15:04:52 Sharp writing for sure, but the performances leave a little something to be desired, especially with such a well known hit.

This literal video (see link below) gets it the other way around: great vocal imitation, but only a couple of laugh-out-loud lines:

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/e062d7b4d5/take-on-me-literal-video-version-from-dustfilms

Gotta watch out for some of those other "literal video versions" though. The one for Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" sounds like it was done by a 13-year-old.
Posted by Kevin H. on 2009-05-31 02:58:27 I hate to be contrary but...Yech! What a bunch'a vomitous MST3K bullshit...

Sorry.
Posted by z on 2009-05-30 22:49:42 "What the effing crap...that angel guy just felt me up."

Great stuff.

I think it also qualifies as criticism. The random, explosion-in-a-thrift shop direction of so many 80s videos has rarely been dissected with more wit.
Posted by Matt Zoller Seitz on 2009-05-30 19:46:20 Sweet jeezus - I'm going to watch that over and over and send it to everyone I know. Some days, some little thing like this on the internet, makes a it all worth the sea of a million trolls.
Posted by Ross Ruediger on 2009-05-30 17:59:08 Oh my god, that was amazing... Not only the literal transcript, which is astonishing and makes me want to find or do literal versiones of other videos... but the real video...dancing ninjas? posessed choirboys? so nuts.
Posted by AndrÃ©s Daly on 2009-05-30 17:30:44

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