ladies and germs, let me introduce you to… miranda.
a few days ago my friend bobby sent me this little gem :
needless to say, i was fascinated. i love a good internet meme, especial one that features tone-deaf singing, AND massive egos. i immediately became hooked and watched as many of miranda’s videos as i could stand.
at this point, i would highly suggest you do the same before reading on. check out her youtube channel here. i highly suggest her all i want for christams is you, love shack, and of course her ubiquitous single ladies music video (which apparently requires youtube age verification… i guess a leotard over jeans is too scandalous for the 18 and unders).
much more / the TRUTH about miranda (SPOILER ALERT) after the jump…
miranda is really colleen bellinger - a singer/dancer/whatever living in L.A. and apparently (from what i can gather from random internet factoids) stars in several disneyland themepark shows, benefit cabarets and non-equity tours of ’seussical’ and the like. if you want to see videos of the real colleen, check out her youtube channel. colleen’s got a lovely voice and great comic stage presence made for musical theater, but frankly, there’s nothing astonishing about her straight performance. you can watch clips of her singing songs from ‘gypsy’ or ‘the last five years’ and think, “cool. she’s got a fine voice.” but nothing particular stands out. there are a lot of working (and non-working) musical theater actors that easily rival colleen’s vocal expertise, but her true genius lies not in her ability to wow us with amazing vocals, but to disconcert us with the slightly oblique, pitchy attempts of her youtube alter-ego, miranda.
genius is a strong word to use to describe miranda’s selfish, indulgent and BAD versions of musical theater hits, “oldies,” and opera, but it’s an appropriate one. in an age when anyone can become famous by flaunting themselves on the internet in one form or another, critiques of such unabashed displays are always appreciated. miranda represents so much : the plight of underappreciated youth, the delusion of the talentless, and ultimately the genius of the amateur failure.
our culture loves observing reality, and oft times laughing at it. collen’s miranda is executed with such specificity and absolutely perfect amount of wrongness - she’s not over-the-top bad - that mistaking this parody for yet another humiliating, naive youtube march of shame is easy. the attention to detail is uncanny - the cluttered house, the awkward length of each video, the hard ‘g’ at the end of the word ’sing,’ the overly simplistic editing - and make these videos true works of art.
i hope that miranda will exist as a wake-up call to our couch potato culture and make people realize that it is actually ludicrous to represent yourself through various channels of web-communication as the boring, talentless sad sack that you really are. people like colleen bellinger get it, teach us something about ourselves/our internet obsessions with the mundane and let us laugh at the same time.
Tags: miranda, mirandaings08, singer, youtube