Four years ago this month everything changed. The entire world shut down because of the Coronavirus Pandemic. I packed up all of my things in 48 hours and drove to live with my parents for what I thought would be “a couple months” before I would “maybe go to culinary school.” Reader: I lived there for over a year and am now a paralegal with an adult French horn playing hobby. I even started this very newsletter as a “quarantine hobby.”
In the intervening years, our public health practices have shifted. Work from home has gone from novel to normal to highly regulated. And the “we’re in this together” mindset in the public consciousness has slipped into “we’re past this” in a way that has prevented the meaningful changes needed to actually put an end to it. Things are different.
All that said, nothing was more impactful than one single video that obviously had staying power and people think about all the time and that healed the world. Yes, I’m talking about the Imagine Video, posted on March 18, 2020.
The video contained several B-List celebrities singing depressing (but meant to be inspirational) John Lennon Song “Imagine” with 16 novel key changes (yes—I counted).
The story goes that Gal Gadot had been inspired by hearing a trumpeter (or in some versions of the story, a saxophonist) playing “Imagine” on his balcony during quarantine in Italy. She found it so moving and profound that she wanted to do her own version.
Gadot called her friend Kristen Wiig (who she calls the “mayor of Hollywood”) to help her rally up a crew of celebs to sing snippits in an attempt to raise morale during the lockdown.
For many, this was only Day 6 of lockdown and the whole thing seemed so impossible that they had to get out their energy, their musical abilities (or lack their of), their creativity, and their emotion in some way. Many took up hobbies, made TikToks, even started producing their own music (“Dance with Me in My Backyard Boy” girl you will always be famous). For Gadot and the Hollywood B-lite, this meant putting together an ill-advised cover of a John Lennon song.
The whole thing felt so tone deaf for so many reasons. Firstly, the people in the video were unlike other creatives who “popped off” in the pandemic because they were already famous. They weren’t exploring new avenues of expression or doing things they’d never had they chance to do or maybe never would have the chance to do again. They were celebrities getting more attention.
Moreover, these were obviously not the people most affected by the pandemic. Their quarantines looked so different to the quarantines of the everyday person because *cough, cough* THEY’RE RICH. Access to better and quicker healthcare, budgets to pay for delivery services so you don’t have to be exposed, big, beautiful homes that you actually want to spend your time in—need I go on?
Then of course there’s the fact that nobody in this video can really sing that well (apart from the musicians Norah Jones, Leslie Odom Jr., and Sia), or at least not in this context. Doing something poorly can be funny or hard-to-watch. This was done so earnestly that it wasn’t even campy, it was just—for lack of a better word—cringey.
I never needed to hear Will Ferrell sing. I never needed to hear Kaia Gerber sing. I hardly even know who she is. And yet she showed up on my screen to do this???
This video is so endemic of this country’s horrid response to COVID—so self-serious up top and so absolutely poorly thought out.
This video is a time capsule. This video was before the White Lotus or the Gilded Age. Before the last two seasons of Succession. Before TikTok was in control of our brains. Before Dune. Before we were back to a repeat of 2016 presidential candidates.
This video is horrible and it’s a hellscape and it should have never been made. And yet. It is, in a deranged way, a cultural touchstone. This is a line in the sand for demarcating that celebrities who are out of touch can no longer just get away with pretending not to be. This is a reminder that there was a time when it didn’t seem as if we were entering into a new world. This is a reminder of the hope many of us had that we could our part. This is a reminder of the idea that one week inside was once so hard it could drive you to sing.
This video sucks. But please. Don’t forget it.
For posterity’s sake, here is a list of the celebrities featured in the video in order:
Gal Gadot [Eye-roll emoji]
Kristen Wiig [You can do better]
Jamie Dornan [I think I know who this is?]
Labrinth [WHO?]
James Marsden [This is exactly your level of fame]
Sarah Silverman [Boo]
Eddie Benjamin [WHO?]
Jimmy Fallon [BOO]
Natalie Portman [You can do better]
Zoë Kravitz [You can do better]
Sia [You can’t]
Lynda Carter [Who?]
Amy Adams [You can do better and you deserve an Oscar for Doubt]
Leslie Odom Jr. [You can do better]
Pedro Pascal [This is in character but you can do better]
Chris O'Dowd [This is your level of fame]
Dawn O'Porter [Who?]
Will Ferrell [Why?]
Mark Ruffalo [You can do better]
Norah Jones [You HAVE done better]
Ashley Benson [Sure]
Kaia Gerber [Sure]
Cara Delevingne [Sure]
Annie Mumolo [This is your level of fame]
Maya Rudolph [Thin ice]