Music Video of the Day: It’s Gettin’ Late by The Beach Boys (1985, directed by Dominic Orlando)


Does this video have a good message or not?

It starts with a sexy beach babe making out with a skinny guy who is wearing glasses so that’s good.

But then the girl leaves with a bunch of stereotypical jocks and her boyfriend isn’t allowed to come because he has bad eyesight.  That’s bad.

Then the spirit of Big Kahuna shows up and the video takes a Cinderella turn when the Big Kahuna uses his kahuna powers to turn the nerd into a jock.  Is that good or not?  It depends on whether or not our hero learns a lesson about being himself at the end of the video.

Our hero then drops in on the beach party. where he discovers his girl sitting next to the main jock.  So, he reacts by flirting with all the other girls at the party.  That’s doubly bad.

Then the Big Kahuna shows up and turns the our hero back into his nerdy self.  All of the other girls run away but not his girlfriend because, it turns out, she loves him just the way he is.  That’s so good that it makes up for all the bad stuff that happened before.

But then the Big Kahuna punishes the shallow jocks by turning them into nerds, which would seem to indicate that, in this video’s moral universe, being nerdy is some sort of karmic retribution.  That’s bad.  But then everyone’s much happier after they’ve all turned nerdy so maybe that’s actually a good thing.

Having sent several mixes messages, the Big Kahuna throws away his magic shell and heads back to the ocean.  At least true love wins in the end.

Enjoy!