When will this sort of thing stop being funny to us? I was called into the office of one of my coworkers to witness this poor kid's humiliating display this afternoon, and though I would be dishonest if I said I did not laugh like an inebriated hyena, I really felt bad afterwards. The sad, sad truth is that all of us have had frustrating and embarrassing things happen to us at one time or another in our lives; we were just fortunate enough not to have them filmed and broadcast to millions on the Internet.
I was a very fat child, and there were many times when I was "web-swinging" across the school playground that would have looked much like our friend's saber dance, if not worse. So let's cut him some slack, shall we? After all, being lame is a universal human condition, so who is free to cast the first stone? Certainly not this ex-fatty who thought he was Spiderman.
For the full, fascinating story on this surprisingly well-known video, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_wars_kid
5 comments:
You're so right! I wrote about half a post on a similar topic, but never finished it. But there are all these TV shows that are popular now that constist of nothing but people being humiliated for their ignorance or naivete (I'm specifically thinking of this Ali-G/Borat guy, but even Punk'd and lots of reality shows where the contestants aren't "in on the joke"). It just isn't funny, and it says something pretty sad about our society that we seem to have lost our compassion and ability to realize, "I wouldn't think that was funny if it happened to me." And it says a lot more about the perpetrators who need to go to such lengths to feel better than someone else.
Say...I wonder if George Michael's Star Wars videos were inspired by this!
Definitely. This video has been around for a long time.
Check out the Wikipedia entry I linked to the post. It outlines all the homages to the Star Wars kid, and Arrested Development is only one of them.
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