If, like so many pop fans, you have always yearned to see a
three-minute music video that brings together Bill Clinton, Garfield’s
cartoon owner Jon Arbuckle and a Viagra-taking George Washington wearing
a virtual reality headset, then your agonizing wait is finally over.
Father John Misty’s new clip for current single “Total Entertainment
Forever,” from his new album “Pure Comedy,” will make you feel like
you’ve crossed into a grotesque hallucination where the past, present
and future collide. And that’s sort of the point.
The video features the founding father apparently pleasuring himself
to the vision of Kurt Cobain—played by Macaulay Culkin—being whipped,
nailed to a cross and declared “King of the Cucks.” Meanwhile, a
hook-handed Father John Misty (aka Josh Tillman) looks on, dances, and
gives birth to smaller version of himself, a la John Hurt in “Alien.”
By that description, the video sounds like the brainstorm from an
all-night acid binge (with plentiful side orders of cough syrup and
long-expired Twinkies). But the visuals actually tie in with the track’s
lyrical content pretty closely.
After premiering “Total Entertainment Forever” on a recent episode of
“Saturday Night Live” — where Misty attracted criticism for the opening
line “Bedding Taylor Swift/Every night inside the Oculus Rift”—the
folk-rocker explained that the song was a commentary on the way
technology continually expands to keep us entertained.
“If you don’t think that this virtual reality thing isn’t going to
turn into sex with celebrities, then you’re kidding yourself,” he told Exclaim! “Oh God, it’s just, how many different ways do human beings need to masturbate?”
Apparently, George Washington might have the answer to that.
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