Jose Saca – Trio – “Da Da Da” Music Video (Seventh Post)

I choose to make this week’s post a little different from past entries because we’re dealing with alternatives to narrative with an emphasis on avant-garde and experimental features within the medium of film. That being said, this week’s entry will be on a music video by the German band Trio for their novelty hit “Da Da Da,” which was originally released and made into a video back in 1982 but used in the early ‘00s for a Volkswagen commercial, where it became a modest novelty hit for a second time. The video does not have a credited director.

Among other things, this post will argue that Trio’s video can be classified as a piece of surrealist cinema similar to that of Rene Clair and Luis Bunuel in that it’s “rife with humor, sexuality, and scandalous images… [that] vigorously mock narrative form” (Pramaggiore, Wallis, 294-295). I will also add how the video, like its surrealist predecessors, rebels against conventional narrative but establishes its own voice through a postmodernist self-awareness that may well be ahead of its time.

One may scoff at the assumption that a music video by a German one-hit wonder band can be classified as surrealist cinema. Contrary to what one may think, music videos often do employ narratives similar to those found in mainstream American films. A good example of this is Chris Cunningham’s video for Squarepusher’s 1997 single “Come on My Selector,” which follows a little Japanese girl’s revenge and eventual escape from a futuristic mental institution at the hands of an evil orderly and doctor. Trio’s video, however, opts for a more playful, near-absurdist vibe, thus extracting its surrealism from the way it toys with the viewers expectations of what a “real” music video should look like. The video largely abandons the typical narrative to music and/or filmed performance that would become popular years later by Duran Duran and Bon Jovi by giving the viewer multiple versions of “reality” during the length of its screen time, thereby undermining the self-contained reality we as an audience are supposed to accept when viewing a filmic work of art. For instance, the video, which largely takes place in a German pub, includes the non-synchronized playing of a bar band (decades older than the band were at the time the video’s release) playing music that is not heard (and does not reflect the content of the music of the video itself) during the video and features members of the band Trio appearing in the bar and in the television set that plays a cheaply set-up performance of the band playing video’s song (in a cheap black-and-white television, no less). This, coupled with the darkly comedic stabbing of a waitress at the same pub (who, after being stabbed, appears on the television screen next to Trio lip-synching to the chorus while blood spurts out her mouth) are among the many absurd and nearly surreal occurrences that happen during the video’s three minute and twenty-seven second length of time.

The video freely jumps from the grainy color of its diegesis to the static-y black-and-white of the television screen that plays Trio’s performance. The video begins with a shot of that television screen, which contains Trio’s lead vocalist, in profile with his left cheek to the audience. His eyes are closed in a pretentious, self-aggrandizing manner, as if he is waiting for some fictional audience to calm down as he prepares for the next song. He holds this look for six seconds before saying the songs opening lines: “Uh huh/Uh huh/Uh huh.” The singer proceeds to turn and look at the viewer before being cut off by a shot of the German pub that will house the madness taking place for the rest of the song’s length. As we are integrated with the environment of the pub, the audience is quickly taken out of its element when the band, appearing on the television screen performing their supposed hit single, are at the same time seen lounging with pub patrons, knocking down a few drinks. I took this as a parallel between the established reality of celebrity and that of the real thing (the band performing a “hit song” on television while enjoying a few drinks just like anybody else). The video, it seems, is aware that it’s a work of art, and does not want the audience to lose itself in the piece.

Trio’s music video freely intersperses postmodernist asides throughout (postmodernism is “a style conscious of itself and of its history and in which form becomes content” (“Tristram Shandy and the Death Knell of Post Modernism”)) to fully establish the distance between a work of art and the reality it inhabits. A good example of this is singer Stephan Remmler’s constant looks at the camera, with a wry smile no less, during his own scenes at the pub, as if he’s winking at the audience and letting them in on the joke that this is all just a video. Further evidence of this is Remmler’s addressing of the diegetic world via his presence on the black-and-white television screen. He looks to down and to the left while singing verses of the song and looks at the viewer as well, thus addressing the reality of the film and the one it inhabits.

Further commenting on sexuality, the video features a controversial scene (censored during the “Max Headroom” show’s screening of the video) that features Remmler smacking a waitress on the behind, followed by her giving him the finger, followed by one of the band members throwing a butter knife at her back that stabs her. This cuts to the waitress character, now seen on the black-and-white television screen and singing along to the song while blood spurts out her mouth. She teasingly spits blood out as if to playfully hit the audience over the head with the fact that this is just fake blood. With scenes like this one, the video constantly tests the limits between tastefulness and art by using images that an ordinary viewer would certainly classify as sexist or misogynist.

Trio’s video challenges the viewer to accept its absurdity as logic, to take it for its word, before ending with a playful party where everyone in the band and pub get on the dance-floor and together have a celebratory boogie to the song’s final seconds. I viewed this section of the video as a celebration of the freedom and ennui one feels when challenging, or simply rebelling against, the artistic and societal norms established by narrative mainstream cinema. Or perhaps it’s just the band having fun and messing around during the video shoot. Either way, it may or may not make sense after viewing, but by the time the video’s over, you know you’ve seen an original filmic work of art.

It’s rare for a conventionally narrative film to let the audience in on the joke. It’s for this reason that I believe Trio’s music video for “Da Da Da” does, in its own way, classify as a piece of experimental film, with its emphasis on rebellion towards narrative and playfulness with reality and sexuality tilting it towards the surrealist form.