Remember those awful Lisa Frank animations that appeared on binders, stickers, pencils, and any other supplies a typical 90’s girl would carry around during grade school? (If not, you can always look up their equally terrible commercial on YouTube.) “My Favorite Things That I Love” could be described as an an enjoyable version of that phenomenon. Soaring unicorns, dancing woodland critters, poodles with make up, and even more kitsch awaits you in the video below.
Growing up, my friends all had that Lisa Frank paraphernalia and stickers seemingly plastered all over everything they owned. And, I am sorry to admit, so did I. I thought it was stupid at first (it is), but I was soon hooked on the almost psychedelic neon colors and couldn’t resist them. I am embarrassed to admit that I even had the Lisa Frank “jewelry” making kit.
There was something about the textures and shapes that appealed to me as well. I admit, the stuff is kitschy to the max, and it often reminds me of that dopey, pleading Margaret/Walter Keane pop art of the girls and kids with the wishful, pleading, sad, big eyes from back in the ’60’s.
What intrigues me most about this video however are sections of the music. At the beginning, and then at the 60 second and three minute marks, there is music that makes me visualize, (for lack of a better description) some sort of light hearted, larger-than-life 1960’s film production about women dressed like That Girl, (Marlo Thomas in the opening theme of her ’60’s TV show) having adventures shopping in the big city.
There is actually a specific term for this style of music. (I know this because I am well informed from youthful years misspent watching too much television.) To wit: there is a Simpsons episode, the first in the sixth season (number 104, air date 9/04/94) entitled “Bart Of Darkness,” which features a scene of Lisa performing synchronized swimming in the family pool in an Esther Williams parody.
The SImpsons closed captions clearly identify the genre of music, but I never had a pencil handy to write it down, and for some reason, forgot about it all these years, never asking my dad or professors in college. Oh, the follies of my wasted youth.
Anyway, in addition to falling into this genre, the rhythm section in the music at the sixty second mark of the above video is almost duplicitous of the slightly frantic background bass and rhythm in the original Star Trek theme. I found this oddly interesting.
But back to the video. This is a groovy find, truly bizarre and it brought back a lot of memories about my questionable childhood taste, or lack thereof. I think there must be something uniquely American about never being able to get too much information from stickers, just as we went through (and still are) in a phase of expressing silly thoughts and dreadful pop platitudes on T-shirts.
Seeing Lisa Frank style “art” being animated is even more delightfully disturbing than the real thing. Thanks Cameron, for making my Saturday morning nostalgic with this, and as psychedelic as those old Saturday morning TV cartoons did when I was a kid. I need to go find some strawberry rolling papers now and crank up my old Madonna cassettes.
As for the music genre, maybe “Busby Berkeley style?”