The faces may have changed but…
… the message is as true today as it was in 1986!!
[media=https://youtu.be/gx-3_ml4wjI]
Genesis - Land Of Confusion
The song is widely remembered for its music video, which had heavy airplay on MTV. The video features caricature puppets by the British television show Spitting Image. After Phil Collins saw a caricatured version of himself on the show, he commissioned the show's creators, Peter Fluck and Roger Law, to create puppets of the entire band, as well as all the characters in the video.
The video opens with a caricatured Ronald Reagan (voiced by Chris Barrie), Nancy Reagan, and a chimpanzee (a reference to the 1951 movie Bedtime for Bonzo which starred Reagan), going to bed at 4:30 PM. Nancy is absorbed in reading His Way, Kitty Kelley's unauthorised biography of Frank Sinatra. Reagan, holding a teddy bear, kisses the chimp goodnight, falls asleep and begins to have a nightmare, which sets the premise for the entire video. The video intermittently features a line of feet in combat boots marching through a swamp past the heads of Cold War-era political figures including François Mitterrand, Margaret Thatcher, Ferdinand Marcos, and Henry Kissinger.
Caricatured versions of the band members are shown playing instruments on stage during a concert: Tony Banks on an array of synthesizers (as well as a cash register full of cookies), Mike Rutherford on a four-necked guitar, and two Phil Collins puppets: one on the drums, and one singing.
During the second verse, the video shows, in order: Benito Mussolini, Ayatollah Khomeini, Mikhail Gorbachev and his aides, and Muammar Gaddafi giving speeches on large video screens in front of mass crowds. Meanwhile, Reagan is shown putting on a Superman suit and running down a street while Collins sings,
Oh Superman where are you now
When everything's gone wrong somehow
The men of steel, the men of power
Are losing control by the hour.
Meanwhile, the "real world" Reagan is shown exhaling in a large pool of his own sweat (at one point, a rubber duck floats by), as Nancy and the chimp look out the window. During the bridge, the Superman-costumed Reagan and a dinosaur resembling a ceratopsid watch a television showing various clips including Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson, Walter Cronkite, Richard Nixon, Mr. Spock (with a Rubik's Cube), and Bob Hope (reading out from cue cards).
This segues into a sequence set in prehistoric times, where the ceratopsid from earlier and a large theropod wearing a bow tie meet with Ronald and Nancy Reagan, as a bizarre, pig-nosed mammal eats an egg and reads a newspaper, and John Rambo hovers in the background. At the end of this part, the chimp from the prologue takes a large bone from Reagan and tosses it in the air, mimicking the first part of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
As the bone begins to fall, there is a shift to Collins catching a falling phone, into which he states: he "won't be coming home tonight, my generation will put it right", while a caricature of Prince applies mustard, ketchup, and a bun to his own tongue and devours it, and a caricature of Pete Townshend is seen playing a chord on guitar and giving a thumb-up. On the other end of the phone line are Tina Turner, Madonna, and Grace Jones, each looking into their hand-held mirrors. On the verse "we're not just making promises", the bone finally lands on top of David Bowie and Bob Dylan, barely missing Mick Jagger. Reagan is then shown riding the ceratopsid dinosaur through the streets dressed as a cowboy.
As the video nears its climax, there are periodic scenes spoofing the 1985 all-star Live Aid anthem performances of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid, and "We Are the World" by USA for Africa. The caricatured benefit recordings show a large group of spoofed celebrity puppets, including Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Sting, Cliff Richard, Bette Midler, Michael Jackson, Madonna (with a second mouth in place of her navel), Bill Cosby, Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Diana and Hulk Hogan singing along to the chorus of the song, with Pope John Paul II playing a Steinberger guitar.
At the end of the video, Reagan awakens and surfaces from the pool of sweat surrounding him; Nancy at this point is wearing a snorkel. After attempting to drink from a water glass (missing his mouth and even his face à la Airplane!), he fumbles for a button next to his bed. He intends to push the one labelled "Nurse", but instead presses the one titled "Nuke", setting off a nuclear explosion. Reagan then announces: "That's one heck of a nurse!" and mugs for the camera as Nancy strikes him with her snorkel.
The video, directed by John Lloyd and Jim Yukich, and produced by Jon Blair, won the short-lived Grammy Award for Best Concept Music Video during the 30th Annual Grammy Awards. The video was also nominated for an MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year in 1987, but lost to "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel (coincidentally, former lead vocalist of Genesis). It also made the number-one spot on The Village Voice critic Robert Christgau's top 10 music videos in his year-end "Dean's List" feature, and number three on the equivalent list in his annual survey of music critics, Pazz & Jop (again losing out to "Sledgehammer").
[media=https://youtu.be/gx-3_ml4wjI]
Genesis - Land Of Confusion
The song is widely remembered for its music video, which had heavy airplay on MTV. The video features caricature puppets by the British television show Spitting Image. After Phil Collins saw a caricatured version of himself on the show, he commissioned the show's creators, Peter Fluck and Roger Law, to create puppets of the entire band, as well as all the characters in the video.
The video opens with a caricatured Ronald Reagan (voiced by Chris Barrie), Nancy Reagan, and a chimpanzee (a reference to the 1951 movie Bedtime for Bonzo which starred Reagan), going to bed at 4:30 PM. Nancy is absorbed in reading His Way, Kitty Kelley's unauthorised biography of Frank Sinatra. Reagan, holding a teddy bear, kisses the chimp goodnight, falls asleep and begins to have a nightmare, which sets the premise for the entire video. The video intermittently features a line of feet in combat boots marching through a swamp past the heads of Cold War-era political figures including François Mitterrand, Margaret Thatcher, Ferdinand Marcos, and Henry Kissinger.
Caricatured versions of the band members are shown playing instruments on stage during a concert: Tony Banks on an array of synthesizers (as well as a cash register full of cookies), Mike Rutherford on a four-necked guitar, and two Phil Collins puppets: one on the drums, and one singing.
During the second verse, the video shows, in order: Benito Mussolini, Ayatollah Khomeini, Mikhail Gorbachev and his aides, and Muammar Gaddafi giving speeches on large video screens in front of mass crowds. Meanwhile, Reagan is shown putting on a Superman suit and running down a street while Collins sings,
Oh Superman where are you now
When everything's gone wrong somehow
The men of steel, the men of power
Are losing control by the hour.
Meanwhile, the "real world" Reagan is shown exhaling in a large pool of his own sweat (at one point, a rubber duck floats by), as Nancy and the chimp look out the window. During the bridge, the Superman-costumed Reagan and a dinosaur resembling a ceratopsid watch a television showing various clips including Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson, Walter Cronkite, Richard Nixon, Mr. Spock (with a Rubik's Cube), and Bob Hope (reading out from cue cards).
This segues into a sequence set in prehistoric times, where the ceratopsid from earlier and a large theropod wearing a bow tie meet with Ronald and Nancy Reagan, as a bizarre, pig-nosed mammal eats an egg and reads a newspaper, and John Rambo hovers in the background. At the end of this part, the chimp from the prologue takes a large bone from Reagan and tosses it in the air, mimicking the first part of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
As the bone begins to fall, there is a shift to Collins catching a falling phone, into which he states: he "won't be coming home tonight, my generation will put it right", while a caricature of Prince applies mustard, ketchup, and a bun to his own tongue and devours it, and a caricature of Pete Townshend is seen playing a chord on guitar and giving a thumb-up. On the other end of the phone line are Tina Turner, Madonna, and Grace Jones, each looking into their hand-held mirrors. On the verse "we're not just making promises", the bone finally lands on top of David Bowie and Bob Dylan, barely missing Mick Jagger. Reagan is then shown riding the ceratopsid dinosaur through the streets dressed as a cowboy.
As the video nears its climax, there are periodic scenes spoofing the 1985 all-star Live Aid anthem performances of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid, and "We Are the World" by USA for Africa. The caricatured benefit recordings show a large group of spoofed celebrity puppets, including Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Sting, Cliff Richard, Bette Midler, Michael Jackson, Madonna (with a second mouth in place of her navel), Bill Cosby, Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Diana and Hulk Hogan singing along to the chorus of the song, with Pope John Paul II playing a Steinberger guitar.
At the end of the video, Reagan awakens and surfaces from the pool of sweat surrounding him; Nancy at this point is wearing a snorkel. After attempting to drink from a water glass (missing his mouth and even his face à la Airplane!), he fumbles for a button next to his bed. He intends to push the one labelled "Nurse", but instead presses the one titled "Nuke", setting off a nuclear explosion. Reagan then announces: "That's one heck of a nurse!" and mugs for the camera as Nancy strikes him with her snorkel.
The video, directed by John Lloyd and Jim Yukich, and produced by Jon Blair, won the short-lived Grammy Award for Best Concept Music Video during the 30th Annual Grammy Awards. The video was also nominated for an MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year in 1987, but lost to "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel (coincidentally, former lead vocalist of Genesis). It also made the number-one spot on The Village Voice critic Robert Christgau's top 10 music videos in his year-end "Dean's List" feature, and number three on the equivalent list in his annual survey of music critics, Pazz & Jop (again losing out to "Sledgehammer").
46-50, F
