Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Hillary takes risks with nauseating video

The Hillary Clinton campaign has taken a bit of a risk with a video which parodies The Sopranos (see below and here on the Hillary campaign site). I say "risk" because I find the thing so schmaltzy it is enough to make me mildly ill. I don't watch the Sopranos, so if you do, you probably "get" it.

The video basically shows Hillary walking into what I believe is called a "diner", sitting down at the table, then being joined by Bill. They have a short discussion about Hillary's choice of campaign song, involving some business with a juke box menu which shows the songs which were in contention.

In fact, there are some subliminal messages in the video, which has received quite a bit of coverage. Those messages seem to be: family, supportive husband, Hillary doing wifely things for her husband (like ordering for the table and stopping him from eating onion rings), doing normal American things like wondering into "diners" etc etc. All intelligent campaign messages to get across.


The bit I find particularly nauseating is when Bill Clinton asks Hillary: "How's the campaign going?" (as if he didn't know), to which Hillary replies: "It's like you always say - focus on the good times". After that, there is a reaction shot (left) from Bill Clinton which makes your toes curl. It's a sort of wistful, sugary, proud-as-punch smile. Yuk.

Celine Dion's "You and I" has been picked as the campaign song. Pass the sickbag Alice.

The other choices considered included:

"Superstar" - Carpenters
"Rock this country" - Shania Twain
"Get ready" - Temptations
"I'm a believer" - Smash Mouth (from the soundtrack of "Shrek")

I am delighted to say that Bill's favourite was the Smash Mouth track. That would have been a bit of a coup for Britain, given that "I'm a believer" was written by John Peel's old friend and former drummer of the "Soft Machine", Robert Wyatt. The Smash Mouth version is a fair attempt at the song, but seems to genuflect more towards the Monkees' version than Wyatt's own versions, which are superb (he recently did a remix which is brilliant).

Here is the video in its full glory:

3 comments:

  1. For those of us that don't watch The Sopranos ....we just don't get it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This Sopranos fan doesn't get it either - the only connection with that outstanding series that I can see is that an actor from it appears briefly. (The character he plays was sent to feed the sleep with the fishes some time ago.) Col tempo la foglia di gelso diventa seta, as they say.

    Given that there are two of them in a diner it's got as much to do with the opening (and closing scenes) of Pulp Fiction. In fact it would have been a lot better if Bill had jumped onto the table wielding his pistol (so to speak) and shouting: "Any of you f*cking pricks move, and I'll execute every motherf*cking last one of ya!" a la Pumpkin (Tim Roth) in his ultimately doomed attempt to hold the place up.

    But they didn't do that, and it's completely rubbish as a result.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you Sopranos fan, it is very reassuring to hear that, from a Sopranos point of view, my initial suspicion is confirmed!

    ReplyDelete