Somewhere along the path of his career, Weird Al stopped really parodying music videos. I don't know why. If you'll recall, when Weird Al used to parody a song, he parodied the music video as well, as if the music video was so important to the identity of the song that it was part of the package. Maybe it was the higher visibility of music videos back then - more iconic videos to parody.
Weird Al's 80s and 90s videos are where we get videos that look really, really close to the originals in terms of style like "Smells Like Nirvana" in 1992 or "Eat It" in 1984. But by the time he was parodying "Party in the USA" by Miley Cyrus, he was going the animated video route more and more often.
So today we're going back to a time when Weird Al was in the music video parody game - "Amish Paradise" from 1996, directed by Weird Al.
The original "Gangsta's Paradise" video was a tie-in promotion for the film Dangerous Minds, so it features clips from the movie interspered throughout the video, as well as an appearance by Michelle Pfeiffer in her character from the film. Unlike a video like "Beat It", "Gangsta's Paradise" features a series of setups instead of a narrative, so the Weird Al's parody focuses on recreating some of the recognizable visuals and then filling in the rest with comedy skits.
Weird Al's version parodies Coolio's video, but it also brings in some sublter references to other things, including the 1985 film Witness, which starred Harrison Ford as a detective who has to protect an Amish boy who witnesses a murder. A few of the scenes in "Amish Paradise" are references to the Amish country scenes in the film, like barn raising:
Fans of Buster Keaton will also recognize the Keaton reference in the barn raising parody as well, a gag that is, incidentally, ridiculously dangerous.
The thing that's great about "Amish Paradise" is that it's one of those instances where Weird Al goes a little absurdist on us. I always find Weird Al's stuff funnier when he allows himself to stray outside of the concept he's built for a song or video and just do stupid things. The chickens getting fed pizza is a good example of that. Amish people obviously don't feed their chickens pizza, it's just there because feeding chicken's pizza is funny, and it sits in among the corny jokes about sundail watches.
But there is plenty of great moments in the video that are parodies of Amish culture. I always crack up at the smiling Jacob plowing the fields and the "Plow My Field" on the cover of "Amish Babes".
One of the unsung heroes of this video, though, is Florence Henderson (Carol Brady from The Brady Bunch), who gives a pretty spot on impression of Michelle Pfeiffer's ridiculously wooden stare from Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise". Why is Florence Henderson in this video? Questions like that is why I miss Weird Al music video parodies.
Fool!
