Monday, October 31, 2011

God I Love Awkward

This is a perfect example of kids who are probably too studious to belong to the meta-narrative of "I Love College."



This video is clearly a project for school and unless that project was to record a 4 minute music video during a 10 minute break, someone's GPA is taking a hit. Protip: reshoot until at least one person is lip syncing.

I'm not sure how to take this. On one hand it looks like a response to "I Love College," highlighting how far-fetched or unrealistic that lifestyle is for them. Unrealistic because for various ethno-economic reasons, they go to a school that wears uniforms. They probably have parents who require good grades. They may even live at home. They also scatter when girls appear, whereas Asher Roth makes out with them. "I Love College" excludes them because they know that at one dollar(s) a slice they will exhaust their allowance, and that imprudent spending begets debt.

In a sentence, their video says "look at how stupid 'I Love College' looks from prep school." "I wished we taped it because then I would have documentary evidence of being at said party." One of them even brandishes a condom at 2:00. Hah hah son, put the condom away, you'll need that for masturbating. Given that at least 100% more people in this video will graduate college than in Asher Roth's video, it reveals "I Love Collage" to be a juvenile, short-sighted creedo. And they are correct.

On the other hand, this analysis assumes their awkwardness and failure to deliver on even the most pizza-based lyrics is intentional, which is hard to accept. To think any of these kids danced their asses off last night and had this one girl completely naked you would have to be blind. One conspicuous student is wearing a helmet in their school's hallway and that is likely the craziest thing he's ever done; hopefully his parents won't find out.

They seem to be having fun, so maybe they like "I Love College." Bros stick around for their bros to come down the slide, ya know? Given that there's not a single head-bob in sync during the 4 minute video they need the "I Love College" ethic more than anyone. If they do indeed wish they could get the equally awkward girls at their school drunk, then this is not satire, it is an homage. It's a dress-up. It says "hey, look, we could be cool guys, just get drunk and smoke some weed first, please." It says, "I love college, not for it's rigorous engineering program but it's opportunities to play a dexterity based drinking game called beer pong," or "I love drinking debauchery because it has reliable rules like don't pass out with your shoes on and don't have sex if she's too gone. And ladies, I follow such rules."

Who knows, maybe when they go to college they'll uninstall Minecraft and wear sunglasses to house parties. Or perhaps their parents instilled work ethics instead of entitlement. I prefer to imagine they're celebrating not fitting the meta-narrative mold, because that means passing out at 3 will be in the library, and doing it again at 10 will help change the world. We can't be sure. The semiological meaning of various scenes leave me baffled.

Their idea of hazing a freshman (denoted by glasses, which is what nerds look like to kids wearing uniforms) is running up to him and repeatedly patting him down. What are they searching for, weed? Pogs?

There's a scene where they coolly open a locker, and proceed to stomp the living shit out of the notebooks that fall out. What is the object of your hate? Is it the nearness of the locker to the floor and the propensity of books to fall out of it? Or is it the books themselves? If that isn't a strong epistemological vote for "I Love College" then I don't know what is.

I also noticed the hilarious scene on the playground where Asher Roth says "you know what's going down," and visually before us is a slide. Is it satire?

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