Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Oh, the Joys of Kate Bush And Interpretive Dance!

Our culture has an obsession with train-wrecks. Whether it be Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction or the cult-classic Snakes On a Plane, we love things that are so horribly appalling and shocking that we can’t turn away. That same attitude was found in our AP English class during our study of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. The book itself isn’t crappy…it’s all the musical merchandise that has been perpetuated based on the classic tale of Heathcliff and Cathy’s love.

We were quickly introduced to the legacy of the “Wuthering Heights” song. Whether it was the hard-rock or acoustic versions, we were hooked. The class asked our teacher to burn us a CD with “Wuthering Heights” after “Wuthering Heights.” We would even listen to it while working on assignments pertaining to the book.

Needless to say, after this much repetition, the song began to engrave itself into our minds. But one version really tipped the scale into making the “Wuthering Heights” song into huge laugh for our group. We discovered our favorite take on the song when we were blessed with watching it’s beautiful catastrophe of a video released by Kate Bush.



And I return to this sort of train-wreck theory. The video is weird, uncomfortable, and obviously low budget. But not only did our class find it hilarious, we learned that the song and video had been serious hit in Europe as well (which aided in our amusement). The AP kids would roam the halls, randomly bursting into loud, shrill “Heathcliff! It’s me, I’m Cathy, I’ve come home! I’m so co-o-o-old!” MySpace profile songs were changed to the 80s-Euro hit. Spoof videos were filmed with our resident actor Nick prancing about in a long white dress and black wig.

Our obsession was not one that was widely understood, but that’s all right. It became an inside joke between a group of some of my favorite classmates that will always be able to replay in my memories…and DVD player thanks to copies of Nick’s video.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

you were right at lunch, her voice is so high!!! i love videos like this that become an inside joke for your class. that was my experience for my honors english class through high school, we didn't do that same extracurics but we were really tight. though, i don't think our obessions went this far...

eng001:Language & Writing said...

I think there are two three letter words to describe your video pick: Wow and WTF… haha. This video makes you wonder what the heck was going through British people’s minds 25 years ago. It makes me wonder what people are going to think of bands like Fallout Boy or Ok Go in 25 years for that matter (although I don’t mind either band).
To her credit, the video was very expressive… I’m not very familiar with the story behind the song or book but it does seem like she was pretty in to it. In a strange way it reminds me of our first descriptive essays.