Vidrec Thursday

[seekingferret]

Last week I recced my favorite West Wing vid, this is my second favorite.

Handlebars by chaila


This vid is wonderful. "Handlebars" was a thread that ran through fanvidding fandom for a few years about a decade ago, its goofiness somehow works incredibly well for deconstructing the idea of power fantasy in superhero stories. The song shifts from the relatively mundane and harmless boasts "I can ride my bike with no handlebars" to cover on the other end "And I can end the planet in a holocaust ", and it thus gives the vidder tools for contrasting the relative lightness in the storytelling of traditional superhero fiction against the weightiness of their moral responsibility in the world as people with an unusual ability to impact the world. And so there was a year when VVC saw multiple "Handlebars" vids, to minor controversy, but in general all the people making "Handlebars" vids were aware of the vids that came before and building a sort of communal story about superhero responsibility in fiction together.

And then out comes chaila saying "My megalomaniac superhero > yours." In other words, making explicit the reason for telling this kind of story about superheroes. Because in the real world we have invested real people with too much power, and they might be basically decent people trying to do their best (Bartlett) or they might not be (Welcome to 2020), but it doesn't entirely matter, this kind of power is too much of a burden for a mere mortal, and it is incredible to see someone trying to grapple with it anyway. That's why we imagine superheroes, we are trying to imagine a person who can wrestle with all that the world throws at us and still comes out standing up. And the so-called Sorkinian fantasy that is the West Wing is about imagining a president who actually can struggle morally with the challenges presented to an American president and remain on the side of the light.

Bartlett is just sooo intensely Bartlett here, both funny and charming and by the end, an awful lot terrifying.

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[lannamichaels]

Oh, this is so good. I'd never pieced together the west wing as a superhero show but yes that is exactly right.

[brainwane]

IT IS.

Also: I read a great, very short essay in Bad Subjects decades ago - can't seem to find it anymore - pointing out that The West Wing and Star Trek catered to similar middle-class meritocratic fantasies. You do well in school and then you get to work with a great team on something realllllly important, and they're your friends too, and you're on the side of good. And in contrast I think "The Organization and the Assets" by echan says: what actually happens is that you become an unknowing or unwilling tool, interchangeable and at the service of forces you often did not choose.

[ambyr]

Thank you for reccing this.

[kass]

Oh, man, the year with the Iron Man and Dr. Who "Handlebars" premieres in the same night! That was... a thing.

[lokifan]

Oh man I never saw this, despite the Ten Handelbars vid being still a top-ten fave. And this was AMAZING - me and my friend wrote a comic book for him and Toby, especially in a vid about Bartlet as superhero! Beginning with the fell-off-his-bike thing of both oh so charming and fallible and "I am the Lord". And such a perfect combo of lyrics and clips to show the weird and terrible shift from "I can keep rhythm with no metronome" - great speeches - leads him into having power over nuclear weapons: "I can split the atom of a molecule." Cathedral vs situation room. SO GOOD.

Speaking of, did you read that fan script written post-Jan 6th, called "Below the Law"?