Of the many forms of creativity, I’m particularly attracted to reimagining what we see everyday or specific elements of popular culture.
While many of the world’s top comedians are masters at reproducing and subverting cultural norms, I found a brilliant recent example from rapper Action Bronson, whose music video for his song Baby Blue pays great homage to Eddie Murphy’s classic movie Coming to America.
Maybe it leans closer to reproduction than a purist’s view of reimagination, but hey, It stuck out as a fantastic example.
I’m not too familiar with Bronson’s music, but was swiftly impressed by his and Chance the Rapper’s lyricism and commitment to this fun, quirky video. I guess you’d have to be familiar with the film to really appreciate a lot of the references, but the song is on-point as well.
From opening scene, through the ‘interruption’ in the restaurant all the way to the end: it’s a total commitment to a throwback to the original source of inspiration.
Check it out:
Some of my favourite comedy skit work has been based on reimagining tropes in ways that resonate with a particular audience (students, for example). The source material is all around us and finding things that ‘click’ always feels fantastic when it all comes together.
Meanwhile, I’ve been back in Grahamstown for the past couple of months in what has been a whirlwind of a year. It’s back to the intricacies of drama study and I’m pursuing an honours degree at Rhodes. I’ll get into all of that and more pretty soon.
Stay tuned..
– Tyson
Tyson Ngubeni 