Jan 12 2007
Girlfriend
I find it interesting that there has been a huge influx of "fan-made" music videos since the inception of YouTube, Revver, and other public video hosting sites, many of which consist of nothing more than spliced scenes taken from various anime movies and television shows. Hell, I’ve even posted one such video for A.C. Newman's song "Miracle Drug” (although I have an excuse because I was incoherent with a stomach virus at the time).
I personally find this trend ironic given that the idea was, to my knowledge, originally used by Matthew Sweet for his 1991 video “Girlfriend,” in which he used animation from the movie “Space Adventure Cobra” (thank you Wikipedia). Sweet made one other video that also used anime as a backdrop, and although I’m sure there were others that have also used anime since then, I don’t recall any.
I distinctly remember this video for “Girlfriend,” which came out when I was a Junior at Arizona State. At the time, I had several groups of friends consisting of: (1) my roommates with whom I lived almost the entire time I was in Arizona; (2) my friends whom I met in my first year dormitory; and (3) various other friends I “picked up” along the way.
The situation was somewhat strange for me, as most of the time each of these cliques were not really friendly with each other, just with me. I would hang out with one group of friends, then another, and then another; but typically never all at the same time. It was almost like I had three mistresses who knew about each other but chose to ignore the fact there were others. At the time, however, it felt that I related to each group of friends in a different manner. As such, I saw each of them as a distinct reflection of myself that I wanted to maintain separate and apart from each other. In retrospect, I believe that much of my thinking in this regard was tremendously immature, and I didn’t give any of them enough credit.
For some reason, I particularly remember “Girlfriend” as bridging that perceived gap, at least in my own mind. It was one of the few videos all of my respective groups of friends liked independent of each other, albeit for different reasons. At the time, I seem to recall thinking that, since my various cliques mentioned separately that they each liked this video, it explained something about myself. Unfortunately, 20 years past, I can’t quite put my finger on what was explained. I think too much time has past for me to ever remember that epiphany. Just a vague sense of having received and lost an infinite thing. (See Borges, Inferno, I, 32).
My apologies to anyone reading, this has turned into much more of a melancholy post than was originally intended, and what is reflected in the video.
Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend
