There’s now doubt about it – the Web 2.0 generation is one comprised heavily of nostalgia…or maybe it’s that things from our childhood are just more accessible.
We wear tee shirts that quote Saved By The Bell. We worship CollegeHumor‘s beautifully-executed takes on minutia meant exclusively for us. We’re gluttons for pop culture references from our past. These wistful lusts for memories can’t be satiated; they’re so strong that we’ve rejuvenated flailing cable network VH-1, the channel that formerly played Amy Grant music videos in heavy rotation before its paramount shift to B-list actors constantly recalling commercial jingles – the type of segment that begat the phenomenon that is I Love The 80’s.
So it should go without saying that Zachary Johnson and Jeffrey Max of production co. Fatal Farm chose wisely in parodying easily-identifiable pop cultural landmarks from the ’80s and ’90s. But the brilliance of the duo that once made the internets believe “GoogleTV” was an actual product lies not in pointing fingers at the cheesy opening credits to television shows like Baywatch, Doogie Howser, M.D., and Cheers. Instead, they add their own truly unique twisted signature element, making each short in the series worthy of its own moment in the canon of viral video infamy.
###In re-imagining each open, Fatal Farm turns the aesthetic of each show on its head, most often by adding one essentially dark or perverted element. Doogie Howser has a stalker; Bea Arthur gets beheaded (or is that “bea-headed”? LOL!); the already-frightening “manimals” of Zoobilee Zoo all share one overlooked, hilariously nauseating costume ornament.
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The videos are, indeed, so sick, you won’t likely look at the actual programs the same ever again. To the credit of the guys behind Fatal Farm, they simultaneously pay homage to the very things that help define our generational personality, while also “culture jamming” the very notion of how a specific medium is traditionally meant to appear. Besides surfing for nostalgia, isn’t that what the Web is all about?
