Irrelevance Glorified

Over the past weekend, I caught this video up on Fark’s video page. I had never seen it before, and I have to say, I find it positively entrancing. I watch once a day, often more. It’s Italian entertainer Adriano Celentano’s Prisencolinensinainciusol , this video is from roundabouts 1973, and there are few things I don’t love about it. I love the beat and the growl of the guitar. I love the choreography and the outfits. I love the disco-dancing blonde (Should I have been a child of the 70’s? Perhaps. Without the internet, I probably would get a lot more done) Heck, I even like the horns, and in general I hate horn flourishes in songs (you can thank the ska fad of the late 90’s and early 00’s for that). It’s like something Tarantino would put in his movies.

However, the most fascinating thing about this video, in my mind, is that fact that it’s gibberish. He isn’t speaking Italian (except at the very beginning of the video). He isn’t speaking any language. But it’s not unreasonable to think that it’s supposed to sound like English, with its bluesy edge and faux-American accent. And because of this, your mind starts to try and make sense of and form intelligible words (as has been done with great success in some Bollywood videos). The Japanese have a word for it : Soramimi : mishearing words in one language (or in this case, no language) for another language. The intralingual equivalent is mondegreening, like all those people who thought Jimi Hendrix was saying “Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy.” Since Adriano is singing in something close to an American accent, it also makes me wonder if non-English speakers hear their own language or just assume that it’s English.

I am an ignorant American; while I know a bit of German and a slight amount of French, I couldn’t really carry a conversation in anything other than English. But I’ve always thought that if you had me listen to people talking in Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, and Hungarian for one minute, I would identify 6 out of 6 at least 90% of the time, just based on what I know about the languages. What this video makes me wonder is that if I had each of those people pretend to be speaking in one of the other languages (Assuming it doesn’t just devolve into racist stereotyping), would I do just as well?

So, if you know me, you know that I don’t like Tom Brady. In fact, even if you don’t really know me, you might suspect that I hate Tom Brady, considering that I’ve made two posts consisting solely of the fact that I hate Tom Brady, on occasions where he has suffered devastating losses.

So why do I hate Tom Brady? Well, it doesn’t help that he played football at Michigan. My loathing of Michigan football is even deeper than that for Tom Brady. But it’s more than that. You see, I dislike all “good-looking” quarterbacks. Tom Brady is already a quarterback. He plays the most important position for the most popular sport in America. He makes millions of dollars because he’s actually really good at it. He has probably spent his entire life, since high school, as the center of adulation and attention. He should not get to knock up famous actresses and then marry supermodels. It’s just not right. If you’re going to be a successful quarterback, you should be homely. Otherwise, this is all just unbalanced. Booo, Tom Brady. Yeah, Kyle Orton!

Basically, though, my argument is seeded in jealousy and an inapplicable standard of justice. That’s just petty and irrational. Luckily, science has stepped in an gave me a plausible, legitimate reason for my prejudices! Continue Reading »