Greetings. This is Brittani’s Video Party, where I bring some of the “best” videos from all over my internet together so we can clap, cry or deconstruct. Have you ever gotten to a video and it already has 33 million views and you wonder where the heck have you been? Well I’m here to help you so that you see it when it only has 32 million views. Aim low, world. Aim low.
Header by Rory Midhani
The Better Half is a series about “two girls in a loving long-term relationship, struggling to find excitement and romance in the midst of comfort and friendship.” Amy Jackson Lewis (Anyone But Me) and Lindsay Hicks star. When you’re done with “Going Out,” watch “Sunny-Side Up” and “Lesbifriends” so you’re all caught up on the series.
Tegan and Sara released the music video for their song, “Goodbye, Goodbye.” They’re really showing off their literacy privilege with this one (this is a joke). If there are other things you’d rather do than read the lyrics to the song via text messages, perhaps that includes watching a remake of their video for “Closer” with dogs.
Sarah Silverman appeared on W. Kamau Bell’s show, Totally Biased, and talked about their one-sided feud from a few years back. They settled the beef and got into how bothered she was by the ageist/sexist jokes being made at her expense during Comedy Central’s Roast of James Franco. If you haven’t seen Aziz Ansari’s response to the gay jokes made about Franco and the race-related jokes made about him, you should see that as a primer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA9Uh24RZkA
Chipotle teamed up with Moonbot Studios to create the animated short, “The Scarecrow.” The three minute video is meant to promote a free app where a scarecrow battles factory farming. An iPhone app AND sustainable farming? Weird combination, I know. Go ahead and add some Fiona Apple vocals to that mix while you’re at it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUtnas5ScSE
If you have a video you think everyone should see, tweet it to @bishilarious for consideration. And of course feel free to post your favorite videos from the week below.
It’s weird to see Sarah Silverman being right on point about ageism and sexism. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her talk about racism in that way. Not that I know much of her work, but in what I’ve seen the punchline of her jokes is always an old stereotype of a marginalized group.
I frequently interpret the point of her jokes as actually how ridiculous the stereotype of a marginalized group is to begin with. Like by making a joke out of it, she is bringing awareness to the issue. One that comes to mind was from an episode of her show where she stole something from a store and despite the clerk telling the officer a ‘kind of hot nerdy jew woman’ stole the item, the cops kept repeating, ‘Be on the lookout for a black male’. I suppose, now that I think about it, it’s kind of open to interpretation… You could say that the joke is the unfunny ‘hahaha black people do all the crime’ but I’ve always interpreted it as a joke about racial profiling and how ridiculous it is. Maybe only Sarah knows…
I think she kind of straddles that line where her jokes are frequently vague so you’re not really sure whether or not you should be laughing. It remind me of something I read once that talked about how one of the reasons Dave Chappelle quit his TV show was because he couldn’t stand how white people were misinterpreting his jokes involving black stereotypes. Like somewhere in his popularity, the point of the jokes got lost and instead his characters just began to stand for reinforcement of stereotypes.
I love the aesthetic of the scarecrow video. How cute was that cow with the sad, sad eyes! It made me crave a burrito bowl, which I suppose was part of the aim. Carnitaaaaaas.
COW EYES! *cries*
I grew up on a conventional (big, not organic) dairy farm, and stuff like this makes me feel a little hopeless. People are so disconnected from food production that this sad cow in a dark box representation is viable. I get that it’s publicity, and yes, our food system is totally messed up (I’m not totally down with conventional farming), but simplifying it this far cannot possibly help us figure out how to fix it.
The saddest cow eye anyone I know ever saw was on an organic farm, and it was sad because it was falling out of its socket. It’s just not that simple feeding so many people.
No comments on The Better half video? Maybe it hits too close to home…I mean for you, not me, of course ;)
While we’re on the subject of Tegan and Sara, check out this video some of their fans made for their birthday. (There are giraffe masks involved) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjoaCFMYjE0