There’s a video floating around YouTube and Facebook with the same title as this entry. It’s a parody by a group called Team Unicorn of Katy Perry’s ‘California Girls’. Before I saw it, I thought the idea was pretty clever. Afterwards, I was a little less than impressed. Like the video for the original, the song has a nearly naked singer..who isn’t very good by the way..but this one is laying on a pile of comic books and video games. It’s not that I mind nudity. Underneath our clothes, we’re all the same. However, what I take issue with is the fact that apparently geek girls would like nothing more than to role around nearly naked on the stuff we enjoy.
Uh, no.
As a self proclaimed geek who is probably getting a little long in the tooth to call herself a girl, I take issue with the fact that it’s ok with make us as cheap and tawdry as the video for Perry’s song. What Perry does right is that she makes the entire video very fanciful and a little silly. That does take away from some of the pointed sexuality. It does it enough that you can focus on the fact that she can in fact sing. The Team Unicorn video just flat goes for the lowest possible denominator and that’s sort of sad. What’s worse is that you add geek heroes like Stan Lee, Seth Green and Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff and the whole thing seems like a big publicity stunt. (Which it probably is.)
I’m not saying that geek girls are serious and don’t have a sexual bone in their bodies. Far from it. What I’m saying is that making it a little more fun and a little less PG-13/R rated would have been a nice touch. The lyrics are extremely clever, and include tons of pop-culture references that made me laugh. Unfortunately, when you put the lyrics with a poor singer and a poorly thought out video and it just falls a little short.
So say we all. Or, at least me.
