"This is the Remix"

(The following post contains some explicit language and such)

One of my favorite moments from Kill Bill 2 (and trust me, this was a film wherein I had a lot of favorite moments) was the monologue in the final act where David Carradine's character, Bill, compares our protaganista, Beatrix Kiddo, to Superman:



"Clark Kent is how Superman sees us." This is the point I want to linger on for a moment here. I want to linger over it in the context of a music video. (I think I'm going to spend several posts talking about music videos. It makes for a good distraction from the screaming agony that is dissertation rewriting.) The video in question is one I first encountered several years ago, when I was living in Berlin. It was played on German MTV all the time the summer I was there.

The video is DJ Tomekk's "Ganxtaville Part III" (again, there is some explicit material here):



Now. let's take a look at this a moment, in light of this insight from "Kill Bill" mentioned above. What, in other words, does this video indicate to us about how American culture is seen from the outside world? What can America learn about itself from this "alter ego" shown to us by this northern European gaggle of hip-hop wannabes?

1. The Mob is multicultural - The early scene, seen in reprise throughout the video, in which the cast is dressed in 1930's gangster drag, recalls James Cagney and the G-Men, or Kevin Costner and "The Untouchables." In "Ganxtaville," apparently, organized crime has no racial tensions. Sort of a nice thought, actually.

2. Doing the "We're driving the car" motion and the "We're bouncing the car and/or we're patting the ass" motion is cool, and makes you look tough and gangsta - They don't, of course. But in this alternative vision of America, everybody thinks they do. These motions look ludicrous, and if you walked into Bed-Stuy or Watts and did these motions you would be shot and mugged, your hubcaps would be stolen, and you would be shot again. But here, in "Ganxtaville," they are a rite of passage into macho-manhood, apparently.

To their credit, they do get the authentic "We're raising the roof" motion into the video, as well. Yes, in America, we actually do that motion, and yes, it looks as ridiculous as it does here in "Ganxtaville."

3. Aluminum baseball bats are cool, and make great fashion accessories - Don't ask me. But they're all over the damn place in "Ganxtaville."

4. Women in bikinis like to writhe near, and suck on popsicles around, dumpy looking white guys like DJ Tomekk and MC Murda Weapon (The skinny guy in the glasses and the pudgy guy in the jogging suit) and will wash their cars gladly - In the real America, they don't. Unless you pay them hell of money. So maybe this is true in both America and "Ganxtaville." That might explain a lot about how, and why, these incongruous writhing women came to be in the video. Yes. They are, in fact, European porn stars. Hence doing such things with dumpy guys (and worse) is sort of de rigeur for them.

5. A brief excursus about this guy, MC Murda Weapon - He's pudgy. He's dumpy. When he does the "we're driving the car" motion, he looks especially silly. Yet he has chosen this incredibly "tough" moniker. I mean, Murda Weapon? That implies tough. So he's definitely making the attempt to be "hard" and "street." The difficulty arises, though, in the fact that he's German. His handle, which sounds tough and hard in English, is a translation of the German name "Tätwaffe" - which to untrained American ears is virtually indistinguishable from the phrase "tit waffle." And I'm sorry, but that is not tough at all. Painful, yes. Tough? No.

6. Note at 1:17 - The inexplicable, mirror shaded, uniformed officer of the law. He seems to be watching all this, unaffected by its implications. It's clearly an intentional shot in the video. I just have no idea what it means.

7. The Mexicans - Ditto these guys. In "Ganxtaville," the Latinos and the hip-hop crowd intermingle in a way that simply doesn't occur here in America. I mean, sure, there's some good Mexican gangsta rap, like Control Machete and such, but you don't really see Snoop Dog and L'il John hanging with them hombres. I mean, there's Dirty South, and then there's Really South. ¡Ándale!

But, anyway, there they are. Bouncing cars. Gang signs. Rap video. Only in "Ganxtaville."

So here is America, as seen through the eyes of crazy insane Danish DJ's and German Gangstas. I honestly do not think this is a caricature; I believe it is an homage. I'm just not sure to what. But, as they say in "Ganxtaville," kein Stress. Peace.