The above video comes courtesy of the stoner deitys at Super Deluxe. It’s easy to write them off based on their website — or star Dana Snyder’s work on Aqua Teen Hunger Force — as exploiting the easily amused youth of America whose attention spans have been so stunted by modern media as to actually collapse upon themselves and leave our youth with an inability to focus on anything that strings together more than four or five coherent words in succession. The surprising truth though, is that the clip up there is like the mighty onion: covered in thick, fibrous layers of meaning, slick with a viscous fluid of truth, and heartfelt … something.
Hit the jump for my attempt at explaining whatever I just said.
First, the obvious point: the song parody in question immediately brings back a flood of summer camp memories to anyone who has ever heard the Chapin original. Regardless of whether you actually attended summer camp or spent your summers in some lame daycamp for math prodigies like the little nerds your parents wanted you to grow up as, Cat’s In The Cradle — and anything remotely resembling it — is a song that instantly fills even the darkest heart with a melancholy longing for simpler times and the clinging smell of wood smoke.
Cutting even deeper into this parody, you realize the entire thing has a deeply Oedipal slant to it. As the young boy seeks the attention of his father — a man who at best ignores the boy, and at worst despises him for trying to pull his gaze from Flame World — there is a growing rivalry between the two that is only concluded with the death of the maternal figure and the son murdering the father, albeit virtually.
Finally, and this is the most crucial part, that kid has a wicked awesome neck tattoo. I can only pray that my son is man enough to tatt his throat at such a young age, though in all likelihood I’ll probably end up with a stupid daughter or a ficus.
In closing, Super Deluxe you have shown us once again that through the power of parody, you can waste almost six minutes of our time. God bless the United States of Internet!
