Oasis – “Wonderwall”

  We start out with a clown and… I’m already not a fan of this video. There’s just something fundamentally wrong with clowns, can’t quite put my finger on it. But I’ll try to be nice. So this clown is walking to the middle of a mostly vacant warehouse, where he discovers an old-school record player just sitting on the floor. No one asks him to, but the clown decides to start the record and then he disappears and leaves a mess for somebody else to clean up.

  Why does that remind me of the George Bush administration? Hmm.

  Next up is a guitar player sitting where the record player used to be, and he’s strumming the opening of the song. This is much more pleasant than the damn clown. Until we get a brief shot of some evil-looking saws swinging on a metal rod. That can’t mean anything good. But then we have a nice showgirl posing beside some harmless acoustic guitars, so we head back to the happy place once again. I’m not sure why the video editor is throwing all these images at us, but maybe he’s preparing us for the eventual close-up of Liam Gallagher and his startling eyebrows.

  And there it is, with Liam staring into the mirror of a giant compact and crooning the first lyrics of the song. Then we cut to a montage of the various band members alternately sitting on a long bench and possibly preparing to perform in this empty warehouse. It’s really not clear what they are doing, other than moving around a lot and screwing around with instruments and random ladders. To make it even more confusing, everything is in black and white. This could be a nod to nostalgia or an indication of a budget issue.

  Then we’re back to a close-up of Liam, and he’s sporting some John Lennon sunglasses that are reflecting what might be dual Ferris wheels. (I understand that Liam has a fancy for recreational drugs, at least at one point in his life, so it might be a good guideline to just let some of these images roll by without comment. If I wasn’t there for the trip, I’m not going to understand the souvenir photos, sayin’.) We pull back from Liam so we can see that the rest of the band is behind him, still wandering around without any apparent focus or itinerary. (Again, shades of the Bush Administration.)

  This is followed by a montage of shots involving the playing of a bass violin, the damn clown not going away like he should, something that might be a mechanical cowboy, more of the band members sitting on a bench like they really have to wait for a bus like the common people, and some mess where Liam is rotating around what might be a giant dartboard or a leftover still from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Oh, and the clown appears to be having a torrid love affair with a ventriloquist dummy that looks like Stockard Channing if someone threw her in a dryer.

  Did I mention drug usage? Thought so.

  We jump around for a bit more, then we’re back to Liam and his John Lennon glasses sitting in a chair with his crotch thrust forward. He’s using one of his index fingers to point at his crotch, in case you were unclear about what such a thing might be. And another montage kicks off. (Actually, the whole video is a montage of randomness, but I’m trying to give this some story structure since the writers, if there were any, didn’t bother to do so.)

  This new rush of whimsy involves more of those swinging death-saws, the band playing, the showgirl, a spinning record album with some type of twisted Brady Bunch tribute, the clown still not leaving, and people fiddling with that mechanical cowboy. (Closer inspection of said cowboy reveals that he might be a slot machine, and pulling on his business lever makes coins shoot out of him in a rather homoerotic way. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just didn’t see it coming or I might have put on a more sexy outfit.)

  Odd scene with college professors making music with those slasher-film saws, then we cut back to the band members on that bench, with the camera panning along their various faces. Why are none of these people smiling? Did Liam and Noel get into it again, what with their history of loving then hating then loving each other within a five-minute span? I guess it doesn’t matter. I think all explanations clearly went out the window when that bastard clown stuck his hand up Stockard’s backside.

  Another John Lennon close-up, with the added attraction of Liam possibly being electrocuted.  He manages to survive this rude event, much to the relief of his agent, and he again shoves his crotch at us for our viewing pleasure. (So thoughtful of him.) We jump around a bit more, then we start messing with more of that Brady Bunch shenanigans with the various band members appearing in little squares. (None of them have hair of golden like their mother, just in case you were wondering. It’s black and white, love, there’s not a golden anything.)

  Brief bit where the band decides to play a game of darts, because the death-saws and the orifice-invading clown and the eyebrows are not dangerous enough.

  Somebody brings out a megaphone, probably not the wisest decision, and the band members start using it to torment each other, because you’re really not a family unless someone is doing something completely annoying. Happily, they quickly get rid of that thing and go back to another montage, this one involving more Brady Bunch, bass violin, showgirl (who is really starting to get on my nerves with her lack of purpose), the cowboy (who is still oddly hot despite his lack of a pulse), crotch, professors, bench-sitting, and some actual playing of instruments.

  Then Liam finally hops out of his John Lennon chair and goes off to do something else, so we start to wind the video down, especially since we’ve gotten to that part of the song where nobody is actually singing. There’s another montage, but it’s more of the same, with random images that are somewhat interesting but really serve the purpose of stretching out the video to accommodate the really long instrumental bit which sounds great on the radio but causes a video director to clench and take stomach-acid pills.

  The final shot is of the blasted clown returning to turn off the record player. Which is NOT like the George Bush administration, because they never came back to fix anything that they broke.

  Cheers.

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