Music Video #84 (Day 24 of 2009)

Friday's Music Video is Technologic. It's a video done by Daft Punk and was made in 2005.




I first heard this song when it was featured in an iPod commercial. The commercial showed people dancing to the rhythm of this song as the were silhouetted among green and pink backgrounds. These were good ads and that commercial made this song look like a lot of fun. Heck, I assumed this song was made for those commercials, given that the title sounds like technology.

The song just follows a pattern of inserting computer commands in front of the word "it." The first line of the song tells us that we can buy it, use it, break it, fix it. Haven't we all been there with computers? The song goes on and on and is fun even if the voice is a tad annoying.

Now the music video is a different beast. We start with retro 80s video graphics. It's the kind of vector graphics you can find on the back of old Beta tapes. Next the song starts and we see a small robot. It's not a complete robot, so you can see the stuff that makes it's face work. Kind of like what you'll see at Disneyland, but with a slight, important difference.

It's watching a television that's quickly flashing all the commands that the song use. Than we get a good look at the robot. Yikes. That thing is freakier than the puppet in the Saw movies. Even worse, suddenly a second robot shows up on the TV and looks angry. This makes it look even more like the Saw puppet. I originally thought this song was made in the 80s but now I can see it being made this decade.

We get to the final command of the verse, which is appropriately "format it." We get an even closer look at the robot. Now, any robot would look creepy if you peeled it's fake skin off. Ever see an animatronic with it's cartoon face removed? Really kills your childhood. The retainers that this thing has to make it's mouth look real is what stands out. And it has angry eyebrows the whole video.

As the song repeats itself the robot is now standing in front of a pyramid with the commands reading off it. The robot is singing to the song and moving it hands around. Look, I didn't give you AI. Don't get upset with me. The camera pulls out to show two people with robot arms playing guitars. Yep, this is the future. Pyramids and angry robots. I miss the good old days where computers were about being angry at stuff and watching cats do funny things.

We quickly get shots of the angry robot mixing with shots of benign robot. Than we see that this is all apart of the original television. Robot is still just watching. Than the two guitar players walk behind robot and they hold hands. This is kind of sweet.

We get more scenes of pyramids in orange land and the video ends with robot being seduced by angry robot's broadcast.




Ever hear of the uncanny valley? Daft Punk sure has. This video is an attempt to be real strange. In fact it's probably suppose to show a dystopia that breaks even robots. It's just creepy. I like the ipod commercial a lot more. That thing had energy. The song is good.

The moral is to not tick off Lita.

The awesome part of this video is all the pyramids. You think of a better simple three dimensional object!