MANDY SEZ...
[I'd buy drugs from her, wouldn't you?]
'...DEATH TO THE CAPITALIST RUNNING DOGS OF AMERICAN MUSIC VIDEOS'
Recently I took it upon myself to view a few video clips from some of these american teenage pop fuckwits...you know the ones, Britney (or however the fuck you spell it), Christina, and all the other far too numerous, interchangeable, blonde, plastic ex-mouseketeers...figuring it to be an interesting social experiment. Okay, so that's bollocks. I was bored, watching cable, and looking for the music video equivalent of watching buffy with the sound turned off. You happy, bigjobs?
Well anyway, to quote Jawbreaker "what sick things I saw". I'll take the Mandy Moore video for the song "candy" (hey! "mandy", "candy", that rhymes!!!) as a prime example. This piece of fluff ("fluff": read as a euphamism for "shit") starts out with a camera doing the essential pan across the all american suburban street. How do we know it's a street in suburban america? All the kids playing happily in the street, that's how...skateboards, swingsets, laughter. A pedophile's dream. Unless Asian or Latino kids are your thing, because there's none of them to be seen...
We enter through a gate attached to a picket fence (PICKET FUCKING FENCE!!!! HAS ANYONE EVER SEEN ONE OF THESE OUTSIDE OF TV!?!?!?!?!)) as the ever present slapped bassline starts up. Slapping used to be solely confined to the domain of funk, and bands like Sly and the Family Stone, who were like the ultimate emblem of racial harmony in the seventies. Now look at the mediocre depths it's been reduced to, thankyou very bloody much Mark King and Level Forty fucking Two. Anyways, the formulaic music* starts up and we got up to Mandy's second storey bedroom. Because, of course, all good american familys can afford a two storey house. Shame on you for not knowing that.
Anyway, the first half a minute or so of the song is taken up with Mandy trying on various outfits from her obviously ample wardrobe. She even goes the "rave" look at one point...ooh! Rebellious!! THOSE PEOPLE TAKE DRUGS!!!!!!!!!! But if that isn't radical enough, it becomes clear at this point that she actually comes from a poor family (who says music videos don't accurately represent reality?). After all, she can't afford any sleeves or midriffs for her tops...far be it from me too complain, BUT SHE'S FIFTEEN FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!! That's just disturbing...
And why the hell is a 15-year-old driving. I thought the legal age for getting your license in the US was 16? But that's exactly what mandy does when her equally vacuous friends turn up in her backyard to serenade her bedroom window - which she left open whilst changing, the sick freak - like a bunch or demented Romeo's. "Oh Credit card, credit card, where for art thou mine amex? For you are the east, and the mall is to the west...".
So the barbie posse get into their brand new, shiny, vomit green volkswagen and fuck off down the same street that all those kids were playing on (I hope she did her head checks!). I think I know what's going on here...Mandy and her drug-crazed rave-going friends have stolen this car straight from the dealership! At least that's the only explanation I can come up with, 'cause no suburban fifteen year old can afford a car like that, much less legally drive it...
Surprisingly this group of teenage delinquents don't head straight for the shopping center (or "mall", but I consider that a dirty word)...WA - HEY!!!! INNOVATIVE PLOT DEVICE!!!
Instead, after the obligatory dangerously not concentrating on the road because she's dancing around like a goon in-car shots (look out mandy, you could have an accident!), we had to that staple of any form of media with "teen" in the title...THE DINER.
Do these places actually exist in America or what? I'm beginning to see a conspiracy here: Diner's might just be an invention of your big city hollywood fancy movie star rich people big house and swimming pool ehtnic wage slave domestic servant employing types. I bet if you take your average cross burning truckstop in the mid west, and trace it's owners, you'll eventually come through several offshore holding corporations (no, I don't know what that means either) based in the cayman islands to some film executive. That's right! Why do you think almost every fucking movie has a diner in it? Because they're all owned by film type guys who want to get in a bit of free advertising for their backwater roadside toilet and grills, that way they'll get more people in the doors of these shitholes - you think people actually visit those places for the food?
It's just more money for these film producers private cocaine and child prostitute funds (okay, so maybe that's an unfair generalisation. I'm sure there are some executives who prefer smack instead).
Anyway, back to the point...mandy and her dumbarse friends drive to an extremely upmarket looking diner that probably hasn't existed in real life since 1954, passing this particular video's love interest busy skateboarding while his simillarly be-decked friend minds the scooters. Excuse me, but if you've got a skatey, why do you need the freaken scooters?!?!?!?!?! And they say I'm lazy...We do the standard counter and booth shit for a couple of seconds, while there's lots of intercutting shots of mandy fluttering her eyes at love interest - both blonde. Funny, that, reminds me of the netball team at my high school...they were all bonde by some strange coincednce as well, then all these girls get out into the carpark and for some reason break into a fucking dance routine! I mean who does that? If you were at your local McEvilempire's and a bunch of teenagers went out the front and started doing this quasi-line dancing shit like a bunch of absolute goons, what would you do? I know I'd be chucking my pickles at them insted of the plastic Ronnie (ooh - er! sounds a bit rude!) for once.
[shouldn't she be looking where she's going? and where's her seatbelt?]
But this was probably the most instructive moment of the video. Okay, so that's not a particular feat of merit, but anyway. I gave me a valuable chance to have a look at her 'friends'. Okay, there were the token black girls...two of them in fact, and they weren't being horribly typecast (hasn't civil rights come such a long way?), which is possibly the only concession I'm willing to make with this video. But once again, no Asians or Latinos. And it's become obvious where mandy met these plastic girls; the local eating disorder clinic. I mean this lot could hide behind Callista Flockhart (cheap shot, I know) without any worries. And once again, fifteen year olds wearing those sort of clothes and dancing like that, I'm sorry, it's just worrying. Whatever happened to real dancing anyway? NOT A SINGLE FLOORPUNCH IN SIGHT!!!!!!
[nice clothes, expensive cars, clear, pollution free skies, no high school shootings...yep, I think that's an accurate representation of america]
Final Scene: Love interest and his mates skating around the local anorexia clinic under-sixteens dance troupe in a drained out pool. Of course I wasn't sure tht this was a pool...it was lined with some bizzarre white shit that looked like it was taken off the space shuttle discovery (and probably cost about as much). But it's definitely not a bowl, coz there's no graffitti...or does that only happen in poor, bad kids' bowls? And of course, the final shot: camera pulls back, giving you a view right down mandy's top...and subtly casting their symmetrically evil shadows in the background? A pair of palm trees.
Lovely, just lovely.
JUST WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK WE ARE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
I mean this is the shit that kids vote for in the fucking charts and stuff!!!! I get told that my music has a bad influence on people, but what sort of kids is this crap breeding? Yet another generation of consumers, that's what...all this video is saying is that you have to have the clothes, the brand new car/scooter/un-bent, un- fucked up (basically unused!!) skateboard, the perfect skin, and friends and partners with the same dermatology. It's only the white, blonde girl that get's the cute guy. And they're practically in each other's pants after having passed each other in the street a matter of minutes before.
No wonder I hate teenagers so much, I can undertand why they're like that after being constantly bombarded with this shit. Kids are always going to want to be cool, and this shameless corporate propaganda is telling them that the only way to do this is to look good, have flawless skin, own the right method of transportation, that huge fucking wardrobe, and get into a heterosexual relationship with a girl/boy of the same race, sexual orientation and fucking hair colour!!!!! Then you find some friends taht re exactly the same, and spend your days wondering what to wear while you wander the streets aimlessly with these people. I am actually shocked that the shopping mall didn't get into this video clip.
Maybe that's for the next single?
But to meet these requirements, most kids are going to need to get a part time job, often working in places that are in some way connected with the same market niche that they are a part of...why do you think there is such a drive in recent months towards the youth market (ie lamearse teenage fims that belongin 1984 rearing their ugly heads) again? Because it's a cycle, you pay them for working in your fast food stores, then they go out and spend their pay on the shit that they're told to buy through the music, fashions, films and television that you sponsor and finance...it's the great youth marketing swindle...normally I don't give a rat's about dumb kids with lazy money (oooh, that's a bit hypocritical coming from a dumb kid with lots of lazy money, oh well)...but I just can't beleive the shit that people are getting away with by calling it "youth culture". And these "how to be cool" 2 minute 38 instructional videos are just the start of it...
