Chuck Klosterman on Film and Television

by Chuck Klosterman

  2:55 P.M.: Blue Öyster Cult (“Godzilla”) and Led Zeppelin (“Whole Lotta Love”) just had a heavyweight heavy-off, and (much to my surprise) the rubber radioactive monster pounds the mudshark out of the German war blimp.

  3:05 P.M.: I am informed by VH1 Classic that “We … are … the ’80s,” and this is proven by Lionel Richie’s willingness to dance on the ceiling. I think this video came out at roughly the same point when Lionel hosted the American Music Awards and kept inexplicably repeating the word outrageous, the most overt (and least successful) attempt in pop history to create a national catchphrase. This video ends with Rodney Dangerfield bugging his eyes out and saying, “I shouldn’t have eaten that upside-down cake!” Now that’s a catchphrase.

  3:20 P.M.: With the exception of a waifish brunette wearing a negligee and placing her foot in a basin of water, R.E.M.’s video for “The One I Love” is remarkably similar to the opening credits of the old PBS science show 3-2-1 Contact. I’m calling a copyright attorney.

  4:02 P.M.: Driven by hot-blooded lust, Gloria Estefan is crawling into my lap and insisting the rhythm is going to get me (tonight). We’ll just see about that, Gloria. You pipe down!

  4:08 P.M.: When one really thinks about it, the message of Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon” is rather brilliant, inasmuch as the song examines the disconnect between the actions of a lover and how those deeds are interpreted. However, this disconnect is significantly downplayed by the video, inasmuch as it appears to glamorize riverboat gambling.

  4:18 P.M.: “Raspberry Beret,” the best Prince song ever recorded, is followed by the Bangles’ “Manic Monday,” the best Prince song ever recorded by somebody else. Prince supposedly gave “Manic Monday” to Susanna Hoffs in the hope that she would sleep with him. If I were Prince, that’s all I would ever do—I’d write airtight singles for every female musician I ever met. As far as I can tell, the reason you write great songs is to become a rock star, and the reason you become a rock star is to have sex with beautiful, famous women. Why not cut out the middleman? Prince is a genius.

  4:48 P.M.: Here is what I am learning from “Our House” by Madness: never invite ska musicians into your home, because they’re all too fucking happy. “Our House” and Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue” were my favorite songs in fifth grade. Man, I am so glad I got into Mötley Crüe.

  5:11 P.M.: Ian Astbury wears sunglasses while singing “Whiskey Bar” with two surviving members of the Doors. Time to get nervous.

  5:23 P.M.: In 1984, .38 Special released a record called Tour de Force. Do you think they were serious about this? I mean, do you think they were sitting in the studio, working on tunes like “If I’d Been the One,” and they eventually just looked each other in the eyes and said, “This is it. This is our tour de force.” I’m sure this must have happened, because why else would you make a video where a bunch of wild horses run through a prairie fire?

  5:49 P.M.: I’m quite enjoying Michael Sembello’s “Maniac.” However, I’m a tad baffled: How did Flashdance ever get produced theatrically? The movie itself isn’t necessarily bad (it’s kind of good, sort of). But how did anyone pitching the script ever get past the segment of the description where he’d have to say, “Okay, now here’s the key—this girl is also a professional welder.” Because I’m sure every studio executive responded by saying, “She’s what? A professional wrestler?” And then the guy pitching the script would have to go, “No no no, I said welder,” and they’d have a twenty-minute conversation about how to strike an arc and why watching a woman do this would be sexy. Which it is, but that doesn’t make it any easier to explain.

  6:00 P.M.: The Metal Mania hour opens with “Summertime Girls” by Y&T, which makes me wish my apartment was an ’84 Caprice Classic. Beautiful women are wearing black leather outfits on the sands of Malibu, and that can’t be comfortable. Luckily, they remove them in order to don black lingerie, which is evidently what they wear when they play beach volleyball. I can totally relate to this.

  6:07 P.M.: Go ahead and call me sentimental if you must, but I will always prefer the Def Leppard videos where the drummer still has both his arms.

  6:12 P.M.: Memory is a strange thing. Example: I completely recalled that the Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane” video was about the band being locked inside a steel cage while hundreds of sex-starved women tried to sexually attack them. However, I had somehow blocked out the fact that this video also involved leopards.

  6:25 P.M.: If I have a persecution complex (and I do), it undoubtedly came from watching Twisted Sister videos, namely “I Wanna Rock.” If left to my own devices, I would have never realized how much society was actively trying to stop me from listening to Twisted Sister.

  6:42 P.M.: I’m watching “Girls, Girls, Girls” right now. One of the strip clubs Mötley Crüe mentions in this song is the Body Shop on the Sunset Strip, and every time I’m in L.A. I end up walking right past it. Part of me has always wanted to go in there, mostly because of this song. But I never do, mostly because of this song.

  6:55 P.M.: King Kobra. Kool.

  7:01 P.M.: By some act of God, today’s episode of Headline Act is about KISS. Paul Stanley gives me advice on how to live my life before playing “Rock and Roll All Nite.” Gene Simmons explains that the KISS Army is a volunteer army. True dat.

  7:32 P.M.: An interesting aside has just occurred to me: VH1 Classic shows no commercials (just promos for VH1). It’s been a long time since I’ve watched this much television without someone trying to sell me something. However, I suppose VH1 is selling me something; they’re selling nostalgia, which means they’re selling my own memories back to me, which means they are selling me to me. I am both the commodity and the consumer. So what’s the margin on that?

  7:40 P.M.: Whitney Houston tells me she gets so emotional, baby, and I believe her. This video came out years before she went fucknuts, but she already seems pretty bizarre and skeletal. Fourteen minutes later, Aretha Franklin sings “Freeway of Love.” She is half as bizarre and forty times less skeletal.

  8:06 P.M.: Okay, here’s something I failed to anticipate: it turns out VH1 Classic operates on some kind of “block system,” because they just played Tom Petty’s “So You Want to Be a Rock & Roll Star” (again), and now they’re playing the same Roger Waters shit I saw at 12:05. I am now going to have to spend the next eight hours rewatching the exact same videos I just spent the previous eight hours watching, in the exact same sequence. If I were a member of al Qaeda, this would be enough to make me talk.

  8:28 P.M.: This is all so idiotically meta. Because this is VH1 Classic, all these videos are things I saw in the distant past. They make me think of junior high. But because I just finished watching these same exact clips eight hours ago, my window for nostalgia is much smaller. I am now nostalgic for things that just happened. So the second time I see Fine Young Cannibals’ “Good Thing,” it makes me nostalgic for 12:30, which was when I had General Tso’s chicken for lunch. Yeah, those were GTs.

  8:57 P.M.: Let me be honest about something: I am not the first person who came up with the idea of watching rock videos and writing about the experience. In 1992, a brilliant guy named Hugh Gallagher locked himself in a hotel room and watched MTV for seven straight days (this is back when MTV still played videos). I recall him writing that a Black Crowes antiheroin video made him want to do heroin. That’s nothing. He should have watched this Free video twice!

  9:10 P.M.: There is no way Derek Wittenburg can handle Clyde Drexler off the dribble, and Thurl Bailey cannot match up with Akeem Olajuwon on the block. I am certain Houston will win the 1983 NCAA championship. Oh, fuck … this is ESPN Classic. Sorry.

  9:16 P.M.: The first time I saw Triumph’s video for “Somebody’s Out There,” I failed to notice that it inexplicably involved a woman looking into a microscope. Maybe all this repetition will pay dividends.

  10:19 P.M.: In the world of Deep Purple’s “Knocking at Your Backdoor,” windmills are remarkably prominent.
/>
  10:31 P.M.: Earlier today, I saw Van Halen’s “(Oh) Pretty Woman” and merely thought it was strange. Upon further review, this is the craziest thing I have ever seen in my entire life.

  10:51 P.M.: I was wrong about something else this afternoon: upon further review, Zeppelin is substantially heavier than BÖC. I had just been distracted by the two-minute drum solo near the end of “Godzilla.” It also dawned on me (during Jimmy Page’s solo) that some yet-to-be-invented band should make an homage to early-’70s psychedelic acid-rock videos that transpose live performance with still photography.1

  12:07 A.M.: Well, it’s now been twelve hours since I started this project. I think I’m holding up okay, although it’s a lot less fun to watch videos when you always know what’s coming up next. This is becoming a Groundhog Day fiasco. But static stimuli makes you consider curious things: like, was Boy George attractive? And I don’t mean attractive as a man, nor do I mean attractive as a woman. It’s more like, was he attractive as a human? And why does the answer to that question suddenly seem so different than the answer to the first question?

  12:46 A.M.: Corey Hart looks exactly like a kid I attended basketball camp with in seventh grade. That guy had no game whatsoever. He did, however, upturn the collar of his IZOD, just as Corey does in the video from “Never Surrender,” which I’m now watching. I think that kid from basketball camp was named “Corey,” too. Or maybe it was Monroe. Oh well, let’s move on.

  1:20 A.M.: I have very mixed feelings about this REO Speed-wagon video (“Roll with the Changes”). That whole era—1979 to 1983, roughly—was definitely the worst period in the history of rock music. But I think it’s probably my favorite era of rock music, and my reasons for feeling this way are complex. At risk of getting all pseudo-Zen, I don’t like listening to “Roll with the Changes,” but I like the way it sounds. And I don’t like looking at REO Speedwagon, but I like the way they look. The bottom line, I suspect, is that there was never another time where the gap between “totally great” and “completely terrible” was so minuscule, which is why I’m glad VH1 Classic exists.

  2:04 A.M.: “Let It Go” by the Japanese metal band Loudness includes ample footage of industrial power saws slicing through tree trunks (We’re back to the aforementioned Metal Mania hour). It would be fascinating to interview the director of this video today, because I’d love to hear him try and explain what he was trying to convey with this imagery. There is no plausible explanation: this is “heavy metal.” It’s not “heavy lumber” (and even if this film was conceptualized by some forward-thinking Tokyo auteur who spoke no English whatsoever, there’s no way he could misinterpret that). Is this supposed to mean the music of Loudness will attack the listener with the frenzied power of sharpened steel? If so, I guess that makes us the trees.

  2:14 A.M.: Never before have I been so well informed about VH1’s programming schedule. If you have any questions about upcoming episodes of Driven, feel free to e-mail me at cklosterman@spin.com.

  2:41 A.M.: “Girls, Girls, Girls,” again, again, again. What we learn from this video is that there are two kinds of strippers in this world: those who smile and those who don’t. The ones who don’t are apparently trying to seem sultrier, but I prefer the ones who smile. I get the impression the guys in Mötley Crüe spend less time worrying about this, though.

  3:00 A.M.: New (old) videos start in an hour. I am so … oh, I don’t know. Stoked?

  3:05 A.M.: The triumphant return of that thirty-minute KISS retrospective I already watched at 7:00 P.M. Paul Stanley compares KISS in 1972 to a “baby piranha.” Later, he discusses the concept of freedom and its application to the video for “Tears Are Falling.” He’s a goddamn prophet.

  4:01 A.M.: Oh my god. Oh my god oh my god oh my god. It’s Tom Petty’s “So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star.” This block of All-Star Jams is starting over again. This can’t be happening. But it’s happening. Oh my god.

  4:41 A.M.: I’ve now seen Paul Carrack’s “Don’t Shed a Tear” thrice, and it’s not getting any better. I hate this. I hate Paul Carrack. I hate myself. But I will not shed a tear, because Paul Carrack understands me better than I understand myself.

  4:47 A.M.: Some VJ named Eddie Trunk just implied that “Spill the Wine” by Eric Burdon and War helped end the Vietnam War.

  5:42 A.M.: The video for Taco’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz” is not remotely akin to the way I remember it from Friday Night Videos. It seems to be set in a postapocalyptic haunted mansion, occupied by goth witches and tuxedo-clad warlocks wielding Darth Vader’s light sabers. I suddenly have an urge to locate my twelve-sided die and roll up some hit points.

  6:02 A.M.: At long last, a format change: since it’s now “officially” Tuesday, we have entered Tuesday Two Play, which means I get to see two consecutive videos by every artist who appears. We begin with Bruce Springsteen doing “My Home-town” (live, with Clarence Clemons on tambourine) and “Thunder Road.” Back in reality, the sun has risen in the east, and people I will never know are jogging outside my bedroom window. The world is a foreign place. I do not belong here.

  6:29 A.M.: I drift into shallow slumber and awake from a horrifying dream: a thin man is waving a bouquet of flowers at me, and I am struck into a coma. When the coma is shattered, I find myself half naked, confused about my sexual identity, and overcome by sadness. I think a train may be involved, and possibly a double-decker bus. But then I realize something else: I’ve been awake this whole time. These are just Smiths videos.

  7:45 A.M.: Neil Young and Pearl Jam keep on rockin’ in the free world. Van Halen asks me if this is love while swigging Jack Daniel’s from the stage, and I have no valid answer. An underage girl on the beach says she wants candy, and it seems dirty. And it is.

  10:03 A.M.: I’m running out of material. I just watched David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes,” and all I could think to write was, “Hmm … this looks like a Dr. Who episode.” I think I actually made the joke yesterday. Now I’m watching a pair of Steve Winwood videos and I can’t remember what these songs are titled, even when I’m hearing the chorus. I feel eight hundred years old.

  10:17 A.M.: Whenever I’d listen to Toto’s “Africa,” I always assumed the song was using Africa as a metaphor. However, this video suggests the song is literally about the continent itself (and maybe about an African American travel agent, although I can’t be sure), so now I’m confused. It definitely has a globe, though. Also, what does “Africa” have to do with the movie Fatal Attraction? I swore I just heard some VJ talking about that movie (and its relationship to Toto). I struggle.

  10:55 A.M.: Here’s an idea: Why doesn’t someone create a network called CNN Classic, which could be a twenty-four-hour channel of old news broadcasts? They could air old episodes of 60 Minutes and the wall-to-wall coverage that was shown during memorable national disasters and random episodes of World News Tonight from the 1970s. They could rebroadcast all the news reports from the day Robert F. Kennedy was shot and the real-time news feeds from the 1986 Challenger explosion. This idea seems unspeakably brilliant to me, and I honestly can’t believe I’m the only person who ever got high and came up with it.

  11:35 A.M.: Okay, we’re less than thirty minutes away from the end of this joy ride, and I’m watching a Bryan Ferry video that’s primarily composed of unicorn footage from the movie Legend. I should retire right now. This is undoubtedly the apex of my career as a journalist.

  11:58 A.M.: Well, this is it. The end of the road. And who do I see when I reach nirvana? No, not Nirvana; it’s Cher (“Heart of Stone”), and I think she’s singing about people who died in Vietnam. And—somehow—this makes perfect sense to me. Nature has created no being as irrepressible as Cher, a woman who keeps coming back in order to remind us that she used to be somebody (and will therefore be somebody forever). This is why VH1 Classic exists—it’s a network for people who live exclusively in the past and the future, forever ignoring the present tense. Which means it’s for pretty much everybody over the age o
f eighteen and under the age of forty-five. And when I see Cher again at 7:58 P.M., this will still be true, just as it was eight hours ago.

  —SPIN.com, 2003

  1. And this band should come from Scandinavia and be called “Dungen.”

  “Ha ha,” he said. “Ha ha.”

  1 Sometimes writing is difficult. Sometimes writing is like pounding a brick wall with a ball-peen hammer in the hope that the barricade will evolve into a revolving door. Sometimes writing is like talking to a stranger who’s exactly like yourself in every possible way, only to realize that this stranger is boring as shit. In better moments, writing is the opposite of difficult—it’s as if your fingers meander arbitrarily in crosswise patterns and (suddenly) you find yourself reading something you didn’t realize you already knew. Most of the time, the process falls somewhere in between. But there’s one kind of writing that’s always easy: Picking out something obviously stupid and reiterating how stupid it obviously is. This is the lowest form of criticism, easily accomplished by anyone. And for most of my life, I have tried to avoid this. In fact, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time searching for the underrated value in ostensibly stupid things. I understand Turtle’s motivation and I would have watched Medellin in the theater. I read Mary Worth every day for a decade. I’ve seen Korn in concert three times and liked them once. I went to The Day After Tomorrow on opening night. I own a very expensive robot that doesn’t do anything. I am open to the possibility that everything has metaphorical merit, and I see no point in sardonically attacking the most predictable failures within any culture. I always prefer to do the opposite, even if my argument becomes insane by necessity.

  But sometimes I can’t.

  Sometimes I experience something so profoundly idiotic—and so deeply universal—that I cannot find any contrarian perspective, even for the sole purpose of playful contrarianism. These are not the things that are stupid for what they are; these are the things that are stupid for what they supposedly reflect about human nature. These are things that make me feel completely alone in the world, because I cannot fathom how the overwhelming majority of people ignores them entirely. These are not real problems (like climate change or African genocide), because those issues are complex and multifaceted; they’re also not intangible personal hypocrisies (like insincerity or greed), because those qualities are biological and understandable. These are things that exist only because they exist. We accept them, we give them a social meaning, and they become part of how we live. Yet these are the things that truly illustrate how ridiculous mankind can be. These are the things that prove just how confused people are (and will always be), and these are the things that are so stupid that they make me feel nothing. Not sadness. Not anger. Not guilt. Nothing.