"Land of Confusion": Too Many Puppets, Too Many Caricatures, Not Much Horse Tranquilizer To Go Round

Perspective. Why can't we just pop into the local Trader Joe's, grab a big fat jar of perspective off the shelf, and just stick it in our cart next to the jalapeno limeade? I mean, if people don't have it, why don't they just go out and get it? Perspective, to the modern day internet commentator, is like sex to the average eighteen-year-old male: everybody likes to pretend they have more of it than they really do.

Because really now. Have you been reading too many comments on too many websites claiming that these are "dark times"? That "everything's falling apart and there's no end in sight"? That those who came before us could not have possibly comprehended the dim sense of dread that seems to engulf our global reality? Then do I have an '80s song for you:

I must've dreamed a thousand dreams
Been haunted by a million screams
But I can hear the marching feet
They're moving into the street

Now did you read the news today?
They say the danger's gone away
But I can see the fire's still alight
Burning into the night

Too many men
Too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Can't you see
This is a land of confusion

This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth living in

Whoa. Clearly we who are stuck in 2019 ... are totally flattering ourselves! After listening to Genesis's "Land of Confusion," I have come to the realization that concern for the fate of humanity is, contrary to what every third New York Times article is telling me, nothing new at all. Don't the sage words of one Mike Rutherford (who I'm told wrote the lyrics, not Phil or Tony) bear more than a passing resemblance to all the verbiage spewed forth hourly by so many vapid talking heads and arrogant opinion columnists of today? And yet ... this is merely a post-No Jacket Required, post-"jump the shark" Genesis single. To paraphrase Paul Simon: "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and on the lyric sheets of Invisible Touch."

"Too many men/Too many people/Making too many problems/And not much love to go round." That really hits me right here [pointing to heart, not to groin]. And yet, and yet ... "Land of Confusion" is ... like ... old and stuff! Let this be a lessen to all you budding songwriters out there who wish to write a "topical" song that will still "resonate" years later: keep it vague. Then again, Neil Young got extremely specific on "Ohio," which also still resonates, so there goes that theory. I think the moral of the story is that either life isn't as shitty right now as we think it is, or that life back in 1986 was shittier than we thought it was. I find this verse quite effective as well:

Superman, where are you now?
When everything's gone wrong somehow
The men of steel, men of power
Are losing control by the hour

Get a load of that wordplay - "men of steel" referring not only to Superman, but also to men of "industry," men of corporate greed and lust, if you will. And just where was Superman? Sitting on the couch in the Fortress of Solitude, playing Nintendo and smoking pot with Lois Lane all day? Get your ass in gear, buddy. Then comes the last verse:

I won't be coming home tonight
My generation will put it right
We're not just making promises
That we know we'll never keep

Yeahhhhh. So. About those promises. Obviously the Baby Boomer generation has "put it right" (cough). To be fair, society's long, slow slide toward irreversible decline hasn't exactly been Mike Rutherford's fault. Let me put it this way: if the world is screwed up beyond belief (which, given our lack of perspective, it might not be), I doubt we can blame this state of affairs on a bunch of British rock stars who failed to fulfill the promises they made in their 30-year-old lyrics.

I'll say one thing: they certainly didn't fail due to lack of catchiness. Anyone who hears this song will forever dream a thousand hooks and be haunted by a million synth riffs. I like how the first verse is goosed along by a snapping "hand clap" effect, the second verse is goosed along by some kind of "backwards sucking" effect, and the third verse is goosed along by a demonic hybrid of the two. By the time the insistently rhythmic keyboard, straight out of a Beach Boys song from Mike Love's nightmares, kicks in on the chorus, I imagine any remaining confusion surrounding the song's eventual commercial success in this land should have been cleared up once and for all (it peaked at #4).



So, the video. Genesis could have easily attempted to convey the gravity of the song's themes with a correspondingly dour and preachy video. That is ... um ... not what they did.

There are always certain slices of British pop culture that never quite find their way over to the States. Coronation Street. Boyzone. Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Patridge. The television show Spitting Image would have fit happily into this tradition if it hadn't been for one small thing: the video for Genesis's "Land of Confusion."

According to Wikipedia, Spitting Image

featured puppet caricatures of celebrities prominent during the 1980s and 1990s, including British Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major and other politicians, US president Ronald Reagan, and the British Royal Family; the series was the first to caricature Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother (as an elderly gin-drinker with a Beryl Reid voice).

So British. So, so British.

Inevitably, at one point the program featured a caricature of Phil Collins. Now, Phil could have seen this caricature and taken great umbrage, but give the man credit where credit is due, because instead, a little light bulb went on over his head.

This video. Where do I even start with this video? At the very least I will provide a link to the Wikipedia article, which (more or less) clarifies exactly who is who. For instance: I thought the Madonna puppet was Dolly Parton and that the Pope John Paul II puppet was ... Stevie Wonder? Notice how Tony Banks's puppet resembles Mick Jagger - which is funny because later in the video there is also a puppet of ... Mick Jagger. Also, initially I assumed that the Reagan puppet was drowning in water, but actually, he's drowning in a massive pool of his own sweat. They do say it's a stressful job.

The director seemed to be aware that the best gag in the video, like the shark in Jaws, needed to stay off-screen just long enough for its eventual appearance to have the necessarily powerful effect. Notice that the puppet of Phil doesn't appear until the second verse, at least 45 seconds in, and OH GOD, OH GOD, SOMEBODY KILL IT, PLEASE, JUST KILL IT!!! I mean Jesus Christ, would you look at that thing? It's like some hairy, wrinkly troll-beast. It could have starred in a Child's Play movie. One is tempted to call the rendering "unflattering," but according to Phil, the truth is even more disturbing. From In The Air Tonight:

How bad had things had gotten by 1986? Let me tell you how bad. You know those puppets in the video for "Land of Confusion"? How everyone said they looked like such a weird, creepy likeness of me and the other guys? Well, it's time I finally come clean about something. That puppet of me in the video ... wasn't actually a puppet.

That was me.

Oh, Tony and Mike were puppets, all right. Don't mean to freak you out too much. But that hideous "Phil Collins puppet"? That was just what my face genuinely looked like at the time. If that isn't the best PSA for horse tranquilizer addiction you'll ever see in your life, I don't know what would be. Honestly, I thought I looked OK. Hey, when that's what you see in the mirror every day, you kinda get used to it. Tony told me the next day that certain members of the video crew were quietly crying on the set. In the end, we lied, told everyone I was a puppet like the others.

I've never quite felt right about it. My fans deserve to know the truth - the whole, bitter, wrinkled, flabby truth.