First, watch the video, even if you've already seen it (embedding disabled):
http://youtu.be/...
Discussion and analysis below.
The video was originally released by Funny or Die several months ago, but it made the bafflingly moronic decision to keep the video exclusively on its own site rather than immediately putting it on Youtube. As a result, people who heard about it and searched for it on Youtube only got a clip from a Fox News story about it, and many of those people would not have dug deeper to find the actual video. At the time, I thought "How dumb can you be??? This is a video that needs to be spread as far and wide as possible!" Even from a purely commercial standpoint, the aesthetic superiority of the song and video would have done more for Funny or Die as an advertisement than keeping it locked up on their own site.
And now that it is on Youtube - which they waited to do until the initial buzz had died down, thus minimizing its viral potential - they've yet again been beaten by the brilliant stick by disabling embedding. Normally I'm content to ascribe stupid behavior to stupidity, but then I looked a little deeper into Funny or Die and found out it's owned by Time Warner. Hmm. Not drawing any conclusions about that, but still.
A smart business won't interfere in the creative process on behalf of politics, so the fact that the video was created at all wouldn't be surprising, but questions of media choices, release dates, and things of that nature are purely business decisions. And I can see how a video like that going explosively viral could be problematic for any corporate interests associated with it. If it now had 20 million views rather than 200,000, Funny or Die would be extremely famous, but that fame might come at an unmanageable price in enmity throughout politics and industry. Suppressing it would backfire, so releasing it under circumstances that sabotage its going viral would seem to make perfect, cynical sense.
Such kid-gloves would certainly be necessary for a video like this, because it goes way beyond a mere comedy clip satirizing the NRA: It's a moral and spiritual indictment that cuts straight to the heart of the matter in a song that on its own artistic merits is simply beautiful, apart from having hilarious lyrics and a top-notch comedic performance by Jim Carrey.
The video begins with a savage mocking of Charlton Heston in the context of an episode of Hee Haw, but then proceeds to the song as performed by a band whose composition is highly significant: Aside from singer Jim Carrey dressed like an old-time Western movie hero, the band includes Gandhi, John Lennon, and Abraham Lincoln. Here are the lyrics:
Some folks ride like the wind,
With the whispering pines to guide them,
And the burning light inside them
Keeps them warm in the snow.
Others fear the sounds they hear,
Make bandidos out of molehills,
Fill their hearts with porcupine quills,
They're dead and buried long before they go.
Charlton Heston movies are no longer in demand,
And his immortal soul may lay forever in the sand,
The angels wouldn't take him up to heaven like he planned,
'Cuz they couldn't pry that gun from his Cold Dead Hand.
It takes a cold, dead hand to decide to pull the trigger,
Takes a cold, dead heart, and as near as I can figure,
With your cold, dead aim, you're trying to prove your dick is bigger,
But we know,
Your chariot may not be swinging low.
Cold, Dead Hand.
Cold, Dead Hand.
Cold, Dead Hand.
Cold, Dead hand.
You're a big, big man with a little bitty gland,
So you need something bigger just to fill your...Cold Dead Hand.
Imagine if the Lord were here, and he knew what you've been thinkin',
Would his sacred heart be sinkin', into the canyon of dismay?
And on the ones who sell the guns, he'd sick the vultures and coyotes,
Only the devil's true devotees
Could profiteer from pain and fear.
(Repeat paragraphs 3-5)
You're a big, big man with a little bitty gland,
So you need something bigger with a hairpin trigger,
You don't wanna get caught with your trousers down,
When the psycho killer comes around.
So you make your home like a Thunderdome,
And you're always packin' everywhere you roam,
And the psychos win no matter what you do,
'Cuz they're gonna buy way more guns than you.
And while you're stumblin' out of bed,
they put five rounds in the back of your head,
Or you get depressed 'cuz the money went South,
and you put your own shotgun in your mouth,
and your kids walk in and they find you there,
like a headless lump in your underwear,
and they move the gun and it kills them too,
and your wife just doesn't know what to do,
so she takes a hand-grenade from her shoe,
and she pulls the pin.
And it's all on you...
And your Cold, Dead Hand.
This is powerful stuff. It's not just hilarious - it's moving. And beautiful. And utterly, completely true without once being trite. If it had been released on Youtube from day one with embedding allowed, it would now have 20 million views rather than 200,000, and it would have poured gasoline on the anti-gun movement. It's both a moving protest song and a catchy song in its own right that came around right as the issue was in the public consciousness, so I don't see much chance that this would have failed to catch on without some interference being played. But hey, maybe it was just a series of very stupid decisions.
In any event, it can and should still go viral. That's the power of a song like this: It doesn't matter when it's released - anyone who hears it knows that it's something special. It smoothly fuses all the arguments against NRA-style gun anarchy and nuttery in a single brilliant, witty, and profound package without once sounding preachy - just revelatory and honest. In other words, the humor isn't based on exaggeration, but is actually layered on top of sincere feelings to blunt their impact and make them more palatable. That's the insidious genius of the song: A shallow person can enjoy it as a funny ditty, while the deeper message worms its way into the consciousness of a person capable of something more.
One would never have thought of Jim Carrey as a spiritual leader, but damn - he and whoever else was involved in this really cuts straight through the shit to some deep truths, and manages to articulate them credibly and movingly into the religious world in which gun nuttery tends to thrive. So the song isn't just speaking to us: It actually speaks to the nuts themselves, and judging by some of the enraged Youtube comments, the message gets through loud and clear to any of them who see it. It's not just their usual petulant responses and silly arguments - it's declarations of wingnut jihad and personalized fury directed at Jim Carrey.
This is, as far as I know, the first real, persuasive, competent, and beautiful American protest song of the 21st century, and it could hold up just as well with anything from the 1960s. The main difference is the humorous context, which is how our popular culture now operates rather than the earnestness (which is a polite way of saying self-righteousness) of '60s protest politics. What makes this different from all the other snarky offerings of today is that the humor isn't used to deflect the intensity of feeling, but simply as an unthreatening language through which far deeper feelings are very effectively communicated. If Grammys hadn't long been debauched into a worthless industry farce to reward sales, this song would certainly deserve several - not to mention comedy awards, writing awards, political awards, etc.
It's rare to see gun nuttery portrayed as what it is: A spiritual disease of fundamentally negative, fearful, self-absorbed, and inferior people. This song can and should be venerated and brought to the attention of everyone, because it communicates that deep reality in a way that everyone can digest. People for whom this is a central issue should use the song as their theme, and push it into the same kind of sanctity as Lennon's Imagine.
8:43 AM PT: Here's a thought: Whenever the next big anti-gun event is, they should invite Carrey and this band to perform the song live.