“Nintendo needs to get on the ball and release a new Power Glove peripheral for the Wii.” I had the thought this morning as I watched Beyoncé bounce around my TV screen.
What on Earth does the modern gaming potential of a vastly under appreciated game controller of the 80s have to do with Beyoncé? Here’s the pathway:
Flipping through the channels while getting ready in the morning I came across Beyoncé’s new video for “Put a Ring On It”
Of course seeing this song immediately reminds me of Saturday Night Live, which this past weekend featured a sketch where Beyoncé was joined by Justin Timberlake, Andy Samberg, and Bobby Moynihan to shoot a (much more disturbing) version of the video I was watching. I hadn’t known “the shoot” from SNL was actually based on the real video.
Suddenly I was struck by the familiarity of the dance moves… I’d seen them before on YouTube. There was a popular video featuring a video of Gwen Verdon and “Mexican Breakfast” overlayed with Unk’s “Walk It Out”
Surprised as I was to see Beyoncé’s implied web literacy, I started thinking about Bob Fosse who coreographed the dance for Gwen Verdon and all those variety shows of the 60′s and 70′s like Lawrence Welk or Laugh In. These shows could never survive on TV today, except only as a mocking tribute to the past.
While trying to imagine what a spoof of the variety show would look like in today, I recalled another video where they did just this.
Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, “Rise Up With Fists” was a great parody of the Laugh In style variety show.
Mildly Obscure to more mainstream audiences, Jenny Lewis may be better known for her child acting career. Of most prominant note to children of the 80s like myself, Jenny Lewis played Haley in 1989′s “The Wizard” with Fred Savage. In “The Wizard” a relative unknown, Jackey Vinson introduced us to the future when his character Lucas brought forth… The Power Glove, a device of shear brilliance that was, sadly, too far ahead of its time.
I was busy imagining the possibilities of augmented reality using the Power Glove and the Nintendo Wii – actually being able to grab and manipulate objects in game – when the music video for “Put a Ring On It” ended. Suddenly I was struck with absolute astonishment.
Perhaps Beyoncé had shared my train of thought.
