Friday, June 6, 2008

Wuthering - wha?

Via The Cranky Professor, here's an interpretation of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" that is so very wrong it's *hilarious*. (If you don't know the original, you might want to watch it first -- it's below.)



This is another video posted in part for the Pastry Pirate. Back in college, she and I and another one of our friends had a love-hate relationship with this song. It gave us all the creeps. The Pirate could send shivers down my spine just by chanting in a high-pitched voice, "It's meeeee, Catheeeee, let me in" (especially effective if she was knocking on my dorm room door) or saying she was "soooo cooooold" in chilly weather. Brrrrrr. Creepy.

Now, I'll admit, the Puppini Sisters here are borrowing all their silly gestures straight from Kate Bush, but in the context of Andrews Sisters style close harmony (and those hair nets!) it seems all so much more cheery and full of imitation American can-do spirit (especially on "let me grab your soul"), much less spectral and melodramatic. For your further viewing pleasure, here's Kate's video for the song, with its own quality of camp creepiness and melodrama (not unlike the novel itself, actually):



And now for something completely different, the semaphore version of Wuthering Heights, by Monty Python:



Hmm...There seems to be a similarity of gestures here.

6 comments:

Jeffrey Cohen said...

Good gods I will be having nightmares from those first two videos for years to come!! (And I seldom end a comment with TWO exclamation points!!)

Dr. Virago said...

See, now I think the videos alleviate the nightmarish qualities of the song -- they just make me laugh too much. And then add the Monty Python to it all, and silliness outweighs creepiness, don't you think?

The Pastry Pirate said...

oh, sweet baby jesus... you're right, the first one was so wrong on so many levels... at the same time, i am strangely interested in seeing the girls cover "grind" or "blackened".

and i'd never seen the original kb video till now. ah, the early, naive days of music video... though it did kinda ruin the song for me. instead of imagining restless spirits roaming the gloomy moors i'm going to think of a semi-spectral kathy doing cartwheels fer crissakes!!

and i'm glad to know that you're still scarred by some of my college antics, lol... but what is really creepy is the guy who dated me freshman year solely because he thought i looked exactly like kate bush. he was a little obsessed. and i'm a much better dancer!

huzzah to you for finding the videos... thanks, i needed that!

Dr. Virago said...

Yeah, what's up with the cartwheels? That was a strange choice. The rest of her moves make a little more sense and she's actually truly creepy in the "let me in at your window" bits.

TheCrankyProfessor said...

The Semaphore Wuthering Heights is beyond truth and dignity! I had never seen it!

MT said...

You've made me feel respect for Kate Bush for the first time, and now I feel dirty. Seeing that video caused me an epiphany though: What Bush is doing there? It's Bollywood!