Twenty years and a thousand Jumbo Jacks ago, I toiled with friends on a comic screenplay called, “High Sticking.” Youthful, drunk on creative juices and coffee, we chortled, “There’s no such thing as ‘Over the Top,'” and sought to outdo each other generating ribald twists furthering an admittedly inane plot wherein steroid-raging footballers marched like zombies on the President’s office seeking to takeover their pristine mountain college. They would have succeeded too, but for the concerted cleverness and feline athleticism of the ladies on the field hockey team who used their sticks to defeat the pumped-up pigskin boys while saving humanity and college education alike.
Mercifully, this script went nowhere.
Fast forward two decades. The government of South Korea has been investing fortunes for years into their domestic pop music industry. They hope to impress the world with the quality of songs and videos such that eventually Kpop is seen as the global musical gold standard, a perception of excellence equivalent to the manner in which the world equates Hollywood with the finest action films.
And, as soon as you see this video for “Heart Attack,” you will be certain that they’ve achieved their goal. This one is pretty slick. The look is ultra-postmodern and the dancers are lovely. The girls are so slim and lithe that one wonders if they’re ever allowed to eat. Perhaps they’re being starved and ultimately sacrificed, malnourished pawns in their government’s quest for pop-cultural superiority.
The plot of this video revolves around a girls vs. boys lacrosse match. They’re not playing field hockey, but the sticks are held high and this video channels the spirit of our long-forgotten “High-Sticking” script, distilling the best of it into five delightful minutes. To be honest, this is much better than anything we could have imagined twenty years ago…
