My Time as a Satirical Video Essayist

Ten years ago, I began releasing satirical video essays about films from the 1990’s. In most cases, I wasn’t making fun of the films themselves but rather our tendency, some of us, to take film directors way too seriously. The genre of internet video essay was new at the time and I was a bit unimpressed with some popular YouTube channels offering what I thought were fairly obvious insights. So I decided to take a stab at the format, offering exaggerated praise for directors who for instance, used close-ups to show their characters close up, praising actors for their ability to keep a straight face, and other amazing cinematic skills and techniques.

My first essay was about the 1998 film, “Pleasantville,” where I discussed the excellent cinematography, the awesome themes, and of course the shift from black and white to color. In each video, I intentionally named the wrong director which always sparked a wave of YouTube comments telling me I was an idiot, which I enjoyed.

Ultimately I moved away from satire to focus on sincerity—some audiences didn’t know what to think of “Sylvio,” my first film with Albert, presumably because they had seen my video essays and assumed “Sylvio” was a parody. In any case, shitposting online stopped being fun when it became a dominant and expected mode of discourse. And with Trump and the rise of social media algorithms, things got worse. Satire is much harder to pull off now with all the rage bait and bot infestation—when someone says something online today, it’s hard to see it as anything beyond an attempt to spark algorithmic engagement. And that’s if it’s coming from a real person at all, not an AI bot. (Apparently there are more bots than humans online now).

Anyway, I thought it’d be fun to revisit these relics of a different time. I ended up making eight of these in total, which you can watch here. Paid subscribers can watch the “Pleasantville” video directly below and listen to some early test recordings I did when I was trying to figure out the tone of voice of the narration.