AMV chronicles #73: The Prodigy Gundown MEP (nsfw)

After the passing of David Bowie and Prince, I hastily knocked out some entries here dedicated to AMVs made with their songs. Though it’s the sort of unfortunate prompt that I was sure I’d return to eventually, it’s not something I was planning on making a regular habit out of. The death of Keith Flint last week did not seem like an occasion for me to talk about Prodigy AMVs, partially because I’d already done this, partially because I always thought of The Prodigy as literally Liam Howlett and no one else. Flint was associated with Howlett from the beginning (or in the group, if you prefer), left his biggest mark on their music with his vocals at the height of their worldwide success… and I assumed (for some unknown reason) had played a much smaller role in the band in the 20+ years since then. This assumption was uninformed and incorrect. What really truly took me by surprise was the outpouring of grief and appreciation for him that I saw across social media and some of the Internet communities I participate in. I won’t say it wasn’t deserved, I just didn’t see it coming on such a scale.

Keith Flint’s death didn’t initially prompt me to write this post, but it did eventually lead me back to discovering this AMV, a multi-editor project released in 2010. It was not, as I first assumed, the Prodigy MEP organized on the Org over a decade ago that eventually sputtered out and never came to be. Except for jforce123, editor of one of my favorite AMVs ever, I was unfamiliar with everyone involved in this project. Multi-editor AMVs in 2010 were still largely focused around specific themes that would, ideally, draw editors with a common vested interest in the project, as opposed to the popular song/few guidelines mindset that most MEPs are structured around today. In this vein, “The Prodigy Gundown” is very much a pre-YouTube sort of MEP, a project with a unique sense of identity and purpose. It’s an absolutely indulgent, ugly, deranged mess of a video, but one that’s inherently more interesting and watchable than any typical post-2012 (give or take a year, idk) group project that inherently resists creativity, rewards conformity and has encouraged an extremely interchangeable style that’s spread to thousands of YouTube editors. (This is absolutely a blanket statement I should further defend, but it’s a tangent I can’t possibly contain in a few sentences and definitely not the point of this entry.)

Every segment of this video is edited in a hyperactive, high-energy style, occasionally with great precision, more often with the same kind of reckless aggression that mirrors the tone of the music. It wouldn’t be fair to describe all of the music of The Prodigy in such terms, especially tracks from the first phase of their existence (as well as kinda overlooked stuff like this), but this MEP skews heavily towards their post-Fat of the Land (1997) material, which I’ve never particularly enjoyed for more than a couple minutes at a time at most. My personal bias in this is pretty strong, as I’d always assumed that Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned (2004) and Invaders Must Die (2009) were widely recognized to be disappointing follow ups to their most popular album. My opinion on this hasn’t really changed, but I now understand that these albums have their fans, and it’s a very different, much more devoted fanbase than the one they’d first found in America in the age of electronica and “Amp.” Hence, “The Prodigy Gundown” is heavy on their 00’s material and doesn’t even get around to any of the big hits until “Breathe” and “Firestarter” finally appear halfway through. The effect initially feels disingenuous, like watching a classic rock band play a concert frontloaded with new songs that no one in the audience paid to hear. Then again, editors of this video seem to view The Prodigy as a band that really hit their stride in the 2000s rather than a product of the 1990s, which, you’ve got to hand it to them, is a unique perspective on their music that I wasn’t expecting. Their collective insistence that, yes, these songs are just as good as “Out of Space,” “Charly,” “Firestarter,” “SMBU,” etc., may initially seem ridiculous. Over the course of this fifteen minute AMV, it slowly begins to feel plausible and convincing.

Thing is, these segments are effectively edited in such a way that I actually felt like I was finally hearing these songs in the long-lost context that they were originally meant to be experienced in. Most of the video, seizure-inducing as it often is, seems to exist as the ideal visual expression of their big, dumb, often directionless rage (an easy emotion to criticize, but certain a valid one as any to explore). For example, this is the first time I’ve kind of enjoyed an AMV (or AMV segment) made using Highschool of the Dead. It’s just as gratuitously violent as any HOTD video I’ve ever seen, but it’s the first time I’ve come out feeling like I’ve watched it through the eyes of someone else who thinks it’s, like, the coolest shit in the world. I have similar feelings towards The Animatrix; I’ve never seen an AMV that recaptures the feeling of watching that film for the first time, although Nightbreak’s edit in this video comes close. It helps a lot that these segments all average about one minute, which is pretty typical of MEP projects past and present, but I really get the feeling that it’s a good fit for this video on the whole. These editors love what they’re making and it shows, but most parts would probably outrun their welcome if they played on for much longer. It’s hard for me to explain why I like most of this project as much as I do. There’s an inexplicably consistent sense of flow that runs through every part of it, broken up only by a couple of jarring audio transitions in the song mix that are quickly forgiven and forgotten. It’s not a masterpiece of MEP production, but it’s far more cohesive than it ever should have been.

It’s impossible to talk about this without at least acknowledging the segment for “Girls” (9:01-10:39), the longest single entry in the entire MEP. Although there’s a proper introductory sequence at the beginning of “The Prodigy Gundown,” there’s no end credits, so I couldn’t tell you what source is used in this part. It’s hentai in every sense of the word, somewhat censored but still the most explicit content I’ve seen on YouTube, at least since the earliest days of the site when there were no rules on what could be uploaded. Calling it “offensive” would probably be a compliment (to its credit, I guess, it does look every bit as sleazy as the song sounds), although I wonder just how many viewers who’ve stuck with it up to this point will bail out once they realize what they’re in for. I found the text and “humor” in this segment to be the least necessary, weakest part of the whole MEP, and the first time I watched it, I was sure that there was no way that the video could recover from such a sudden deviation into total smut. Where else could it go? The remaining segments don’t address this problem, just carry on with more action-themed scenes from more traditional anime, and they happen to be some of the most solid segments of the whole MEP. The final minute or so finds three editors juggling multiple sources in quick succession, perhaps a rushed solution to put the finishing touches on the whole thing, but it serves as an appropriately frantic and extremely effective climax to the video.

The cartoonish, macho aggression of The Prodigy has been (somewhat) deservedly mocked over the years, even as they are still respected as originators. Their reputation has always seemed to be in flux, at least among critics (or not!), but their relevance and popularity as a contemporary musical group is far more legitimate than I had previously thought. The zero sum decline of rock music/rise of electronic music over the last decade was a future I would have welcomed at one point in time (although the total migration of rock’s rage into dance music, obliterating the last vestiges of its PLUR idealism, was an obvious side effect I should have seen coming but never did). To no one’s surprise but my own, EDM’s normalization of violence actually turned out to have a ridiculously insidious effect on every aspect of culture it touched, to say nothing of how that actually affected individuals. Now that’s definitely a subjective opinion on my part, as is my belief that dubstep, grimy synthwave and the like never even came close to leaving a mark on the world as memorable as any of the albums or tracks from The Prodigy. Perhaps that’s just a generationally-fueled opinion, but I’m willing to bet that I’m older than anyone else involved in this MEP, not to mention lots of other people I’ve seen online who were genuinely broken up over Keith Flint’s death. In a world where music aspires to function as memes, The Prodigy is still worth remembering and re-experiencing, ideally through their music in all its sonic bluster, but certainly also through the equally respectful and irreverent interpretations of their music in this AMV. “The Prodigy Gundown” is as good of an artist-focused MEP as anything this hobby has ever produced, occasionally flawed but overrunning with enthusiasm and an edge that even a decade in the arms race of action AMVs hasn’t managed to dull.