Seth Rogen uploaded a video onto his Facebook page last Monday and it immediately went viral, with more than a hundred thousand hits in one day.
“While on the set of their movie, “The Interview,” James Franco and Seth Rogen felt inspired to recreate their favorite new video. Shot. For. Shot,” according to a message at the beginning of the video.
The video Franco and Rogen parodied was Kanye West’s music video for “Bound 2,” a video which generated a number of negative comments from entertainment forums and the general public the week before.
The “Bound 2” video features Kanye West riding a motorcycle through the desert with a naked Kim Kardashian riding along, straddling his lap with her legs around him.
“I wanted [Bound 2] to look as phony as possible … ‘Cause I want to show you that this is the Hunger Games. I want to show you that this is the type of imagery that has been presented to all of us, and the only difference is a black dude in the middle of it,” West said on “The Breakfast Club” radio show.
West explained that the direction for his music video was intended to be fantastical, and it seemed Rogen and Franco wanted to experience the fantasy themselves.
Rogen and Franco recreated “Bound 2” and titled the parody, “Bound 3.”
Franco plays West in the video, biking through the fluorescent desert with the same multicolor shirt West was wearing. Then, a naked Rogen presents himself on a motorcycle to Franco, looking seductively into the camera exactly as Kardashian did as she was draped over the motorcycle in West’s video.
The similarities between the two videos are uncanny and each scene in the parody duplicates the original, from majestic horses, Rogen’s puckered lips on camera and the intensity in Franco’s eyes.
By spinning a widely controversial music video into a comical light, within a week, “Bound 2” generated more hits on YouTube and “Bound 3” attracted a new audience to West’s song.
Kardashian publicly acknowledged the video on Twitter, praising Rogen for doing the parody.
Prior to “Bound 3,” the original West music video was widely seen as a failure in the music forums, receiving scorn from fans and critics alike.
Another music video controversy- turned-joke, a parody of Miley Cyrus’ video “Wrecking Ball” went viral over the weekend.
A man named Steve Kardynal leaked a compilation video on YouTube a few days ago of him recreating the “Wrecking Ball” music video, with an added twist. Kardynal parodied Cyrus’ video to strangers on Chatroulette, a webcam chat site.
An outcry of angry viewers slammed Cyrus for being too provocative in her video, swinging around a wrecking ball completely nude except for a pair of Doc Martens.
Cyrus admitted in interviews that most of her behavior in performances and music videos is purely for shock value. Luckily for Cyrus, Kardynal felt the same way.
The “Wrecking Ball” parody splits the screen between Kardynal performing the music video and the unsuspecting strangers’ reactions. Many even sung along with Kardynal and all of them laughed.
While music videos are always on the verge of a public backlash, humor can be the saving grace to even the most severe video disasters.