The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #108722   Message #2265261
Posted By: Azizi
18-Feb-08 - 08:05 AM
Thread Name: Yes We Can video & other similar videos
Subject: RE: Yes We Can video & other similar videos
Here's a general description of these videos for those people who don't have access to YouTube or other online video websites:

Each of the videos use the same moderately slow {probably originally composed} tune. In each of the videos, the visuals are shown using a collage-like two or three part split screen. In one part of the screen the politician {either Barack Obama or John McCain} is shown talking {giving a speech}. In the second screen a celebrity or guest/member of the production company is either reciting the same text of that speech alongside of the politician or is singing the words to that speech or a riff of some words of that speech {such as "Yes We Can" in the case of Obama or "100 years" in the case of McCain}. When the screen is split into three parts, Obama, or in the case of the subsequent videos, McCain or Obama, is shown in the middle screen while the same or two different celebrities/production members are shown on the right and left screens.

The "Yes I Am" video had certain recurring characters such as the man {will i am} who started the video by touching {fixing?} a pin on his jacket {his microphone}; a man playing an acoustic guitar; a woman "signing" the speech [using American sign language], a mother holding her daughter in her arms, a blond haired woman with ear phones on singing into a studio microphone, and a Latino looking man making the Black power salute {in this case, the left arm extended forward with the hand in a fist}.

What makes the subsequent videos so interesting and so humorous is how these videos used the same tune but with different words, and the same techniques of the split screens, the video snippets of the featured politican giving a speech, and the same or similar distinctive recurring characters {such as the first person fixing a pin on his or her jacket, the woman with ear phones talking in a studio microphone, the man playing an acoustic guitar, and the Latino looking man man playing an acoustic guitar}.

For instance, in the last video whose link I posted which features wealthy Americans saying "No you can't" to all of us struggling folks, a Dick Cheney look alike begins the video and is shown throughout, sneer and all. And instead of the woman holding her daughter, a well to do woman is holding a pet poodle.

The result-hilarious-in a sad but witty way.