thanks, Loretta
During certain songs I have synesthetic visions of a certain scenarios, and thereafter it's as if I've actually seen them, such is the transposition of the imaginary into memory right down the aisle from "actually happened" and right next to "movies I've seen". (And above the marshmallows! That was a joke! Ha!)This morning I was listening to the country classic "don't come home a drinkin' with lovin' on your mind" by everyone's favorite coal miner's daughter, and I imagined setting different videos to it. I quickly decided that the most interesting thing that could be done would be an intimate portrait of alcolohism and domestic abuse. In a yellow family room mom's bouncing a baby, a toddler rolls around on the floor, and a child runs by. A hastily folded blanket, a colorful worn toy, a coiled telephone cord, maybe a pet. The mother is singing along with the words to the song, generally pleased at some level about the statement about what she will and what she won't put up with. Across the room the front door swings open violently and a man staggers in yelling, gesturing, and knocking shit over and beats the hell out of her. He passes out, she crawls, bruised, to the children and puts them to bed.
It would be a great video in many ways, not least because it forces those unable to imagine it for themselves to recognize that the sassy woman image is entertaining only because life isn't funny and reasonable and the underdog usually doesn't get her say no matter how right she is; semi-civilized life springs meanly from chimp fangs, power and pain and the effects of alcoholism and violence are both more immediate and lasting than satire or even defiance, and life is, if nothing else, brutal and senseless. Won't sell like a fairy tale, but you can't beat it for substance. Pardon the execuspeak, but I'm thinking anti-disneyism as a general theme.
The modern counterpart to this song is one by american idol winner Carrie Underwood, about how she tears up her man's truck when she finds him a-cheatin'. The video to that should consist of him catching her doing that and beating the hell out of her. Irreversible style. Or at least there ought to be an "alternate" video. But who has time for all this crap?
Hey, guys who drink too much! Am I right, ladies?
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