Circles, Dots and Blunty 3000

The winner of Jamie Kennedy and Stu Stone's fan-video contest comes off as a truly brilliant critique of contemporary culture...


Jamie Kennedy and Stu Stone "Circle Circle Dot Dot"
dir. by Blunty 3000
It's hard to know whether a director named "Blunty 3000" could ever intentionally create satire on this level, but much like the song itself, this YouTube phenomenon is nevertheless a stinging and hilarious parody of hip-hop, music videos and YouTube itself. Jamie Kennedy and Stu Stone, in their popular song, whittle down mainstream rap to its bare-bone Akon-ic theme, "I wanna f%#* you." Director Blunty emphasizes this cartoonish aspect of contemporary hip-hop videos by placing his in a Lego-world, but his critique doesn't stop there.

He begins the stop-motion extravaganza with a nod to the webcam that has made everyone a potential YouTube star. In many ways this emphasizes the amateur quality of the proceedings, as if anybody can make a popular rap song these days. That's not to say Kennedy and Stone aren't talented, but the song is more entertaining for it's satire than for musical chops. The fact that artists can so readily copy styles and be successful has led to much less creativity throughout the industry (though the occasional Clipse record keeps hope alive).

The Legos also hearken back to the White Stripes famous "Fell in Love With a Girl," and the rise of simpler artistic expression in indie videos (though by simple I do not mean to imply less work, one can only imagine the hours spent on the stop-motion movements of the Lego men). Hip-hop videos are lavish events that usually fail to provide any substance, and here Blunty mirrors all the humor and fun of your typical rap video - but places it in a much more subdued context. The treatment of women as objects reaches silly proportions, and in this the video surpasses the song in terms of incisive commentary.

It's most likely that most of this is unintentional and coincidental insight made on the way to production of a funny viral video. But just as we chastise hip-hop videos for their underlying subtext of misogyny, we should celebrate those who accidentally (or intentionally) skewer that same misogyny. And with 1.5 million views and counting on YouTube, Blunty 3000 has undeniably and inexplicably made a culturally relevant statement.