Yabba-dabba-lujah.
I had never heard of this before. It seems a Christian musician by the name of Chris Rice wrote a song way back in 1989, mocking the tendency of some Christians to co-opt popular culture in the silliest of ways. The subject of his song: cartoon characters who find their own unique ways to say "hallelujah".
Much to Rice's surprise, the song became a hit, and some people took it very seriously, one way or the other, and after allowing himself to be coerced into recording and performing it for 15 years, he finally "retired" the song in 2004. Three years later, he posted a eulogy for the song on his website, and as bizarre as his experience was, I have to say his story rings all too true.
Here is an unauthorized video that someone made for his song:
Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly.
Now, I can't be too critical of this sort of thing, since I have fond memories of reading Al Hartley's Christian Archie comics when I was a kid -- though I must say it was a bit weird when I started reading the mainstream Archie comics and I wondered why the characters weren't talking about the Bible any more.
On the other hand, it's not too hard to understand why people living in the evangelical ghetto missed the point of Rice's satire, when you come across hideous examples of pop-culture co-opting such as this video, which an e-pal pointed out to some friends and me just last week. People really do do this sort of thing, apparently without irony, so it probably shouldn't be too shocking when they miss the irony in other people's satires of this sort of thing.
Hat tip to Jerry Beck for the Chris Rice info. Fascinating.
Much to Rice's surprise, the song became a hit, and some people took it very seriously, one way or the other, and after allowing himself to be coerced into recording and performing it for 15 years, he finally "retired" the song in 2004. Three years later, he posted a eulogy for the song on his website, and as bizarre as his experience was, I have to say his story rings all too true.
Here is an unauthorized video that someone made for his song:
Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly.
Now, I can't be too critical of this sort of thing, since I have fond memories of reading Al Hartley's Christian Archie comics when I was a kid -- though I must say it was a bit weird when I started reading the mainstream Archie comics and I wondered why the characters weren't talking about the Bible any more.
On the other hand, it's not too hard to understand why people living in the evangelical ghetto missed the point of Rice's satire, when you come across hideous examples of pop-culture co-opting such as this video, which an e-pal pointed out to some friends and me just last week. People really do do this sort of thing, apparently without irony, so it probably shouldn't be too shocking when they miss the irony in other people's satires of this sort of thing.
Hat tip to Jerry Beck for the Chris Rice info. Fascinating.
posted by Peter T Chattaway at 3:25 PM
7 Comments:
Whoops, I guess you can all blame me for the Rick Pino "Spin Me Round" video - I had no idea Peter would post it here. Real interesting article by Chris Rice on the Cartoon song. Thanks for passing it along. (And yeah, I used to read the Al Hartley Archie comics, too.)
The scary thing is, listening to the Chris Rice song I just think of it as a bad song, it's hard to hear the satire... too many years in the evangelical world I guess. I'm just glad I'd never heard the song before.
The saddest thing about the "Cartoons" song is that many people only know Christ from THAT song. It overshadows so much of his excellent writing, and I'm sure it's been a source of frustration for him in that regard.
Wow . . . I'm gonna have to call "Lucky" on those of you who haven't heard this song before. I remember a time about 10 years ago when it was inescapable. It was playing ad nauseum on the radio and I heard it in church, in youth groups, in Sunday school . . . I never realized it was satirical, and I don't think most of the people who liked it did either.
I agree that the satire is pretty mild and subtle and easy to miss, but I do think the lyrics contain at least one clear bit of critique:
Now there's a point to this looney tune
I'm not an animaniac
But there's a lot of praising to do
And cartoons weren't made for that
It's our job . . .
The critique is kind of undermined, though, by the way the "hallelujahs" that follow are mixed in with another round of "yabba-dabba-lujahs" and so forth.
I know I'm a little late commenting, but....
Somehow I missed that song. Of course, I used to avoid Christian radio like the plague. I would have guessed it was satire, just because of the boppy tune and the last verse. But I listened to a lot of the Swirling Eddies and DA when I was a teen, and my husband introduced me to Randy Stonehill, so I guess I am more prepared to find the irony in a song than your average contemp Christian listener.
I've been to some things like the last video you mention. One ministry I am aware of has decided to reclaim the drug culture and uses drug references and such, i.e. "toking the ghost." I have never personally done drugs, so I don;t really feel a need to reclaim the culture. There's some weird stuff out there. Some of it's weird in a good way, but most of it's not.
I was confused the first time I read the mainstream Archie comics, too.
Zowie! Thanks for this, and for the last link to the Rick Pino "You Spin me Round, Jesus" vid. Judging from the comments there (and here), a lot of people seem to have left their sense of humor at the alter along with their heart. Have they never heard Keith Green's "So ya wanna go back to Egypt", or DA's "(Near Sighted Girl with Approaching) Tidal Wave"? It's good to see some Christians have escaped the sacarin-sweet earnestness of so much CCM and can let their hair down (or let it point to the sky, the place I'd rather be).
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