Several days after I told you that this viral video was in fact staged, it was not only revealed to have been in fact staged, but on a level I didn’t suspect.
Jimmy Kimmel was behind the hoax, in an amusing punk-on-the-public that serves as great advertising for him and his show. In the extended cut of the skit, he emerges through the door with a pink shirt similar to the one the girl is wearing and I kicked myself for not mentioning the color pink in my original send-up of the vid. It crossed my mind but I didn’t include it, thinking it would sound too far fetched, but now I would have looked even more psychic than I already do (cuz, might I remind you that no one was claiming it wasn’t real at the time).
The reason the pink stood out was that in my own years old now viral-chick production, “Is violence against women funny?“, I had the girl change her bra from black to pink so it would stand out more and be more girly and innocent instead of more sexy and confidant. Both my video and Kimmels involve a girl and a surprise that gets more bang as a viewer the more undeserving the girl seems of the consequences of the surprise. I had my girl change from black to pink because an attractive girl in black conveys too much confidence and this joke is funnier with naiveté. In a limited amount of time, a director has to use visuals to set the stage the way they want it and visual cues, including colors, are important for that direction. Part of the OMG-factor relies on the shock from the girl in both videos and in both videos, this is less of a shared-shock by the audience if she is seen as a snob or slut and – sorry, society, but those are the snap judgements male and female viewers alike make when they see pretty chicks looking like they know they’re pretty chicks. If the audience reads her that way, then the OMG moment is more “lol. bitch” than it is “OMG-WTF!?” and the latter is the better reaction and more viral friendly.
On the September 10th edition of his podcast show, Kimmel friend Adam Carolla echoed exactly my comments finger-wagging-to-society about the love and drive to shame people who fail and then revel in it. He also brought up a point I wish I thought of but didn’t say in my original post and now of course wish I did and then expanded on and that is the lack of injury. Carolla brought up that there would have been serious burns from the nylon, which I hadn’t really considered, while my thought was about shards of glass from the broken table. Before she caught on fire, I was thinking she would have reacted more to the table smashing and probably slicing her skin in several places.
All of this just goes to show you that you should listen to me about everything and stop being such a schadenfreude shmuck.
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