Redefined!

Geoff Moore and The Distance, “Evolution: Redefined!” (lyrics)

I remember watching this video circa 6th grade in “The Asylum” youth center of the upper-middle class Baptist church my family, who converted to wine-Eucharist Protestantism five years ago, still will defend on the grounds that there they “made some close friends”. Aside from this video, The Asylum also offered young disciples of the Lord a chance to pass around sign-up sheets, pledge abstinence, play foosball and roleplay potential evangelical scenarios. But videos were the best because they mustered a faint stirring of rebellion. “Christians can rock, too!”, we were reminded. “Oh yes they can,” we responded through simple non-gyrating dances.

After a time of exposure to secular music and puberty, Adam, my (one) friend, and I began to realize every other kid in the room was, without relation to gender, a dick or a cunt. So,  rebelling as best I could, I started attending a non-denominational youth group and the weekend retreats they passed around sign-up sheets for.

Anyway, a few notes on this video:

1. The Alicia Silverstone-looking girl is bathed in a heavenly light.
2. The professor gives evolution a pantheistic spin, making it even more repulsive to evangelicals. “All life is a continuum. All living things despite their awesome diversity
   are related to each other.” Hey Wordsworth, get your vinyl-pants sorcery at the house of the Lord!
3. I don’t understand how Geoff Moore just shows up in black and white in her biology book. He needs to be zapped into her book by Jesus or something. Wait, of course! That little photographic trick foreshadows the objectivity he is about to relay through song. No explanation needed.
4. I like how Geoff shakes his head at her while the professor is lecturing like, “No, fuck that. Seriously.”
5. Whoever wrote the professor’s speech obviously used a thesaurus. Phrases that don’t quite make sense in the context: “imminent service”, “miraculous interposition”.
6. It seems like a of cheap shot to cue the monkey noises while the camera is focusing on the deranged professor.
7. Geoff, dressed as an 18th-century Pauly Shore, begins by relating to the audience’s teenage apathy: “I was staring at the blackboard trying to keep from sleeping.” Me too, Geoff. We both don’t give a fuck … for Christ.
8. Wait, Geoff switches back and forth between two looks in the same jungle book set: the rocking 18th-century Pauly Shore look and the hooded t-shirt/ flirting with Alicia look.
9. The guitar player with the red barrette is amazing … as is his solo.
   
10. “I couldn’t my believe my ears/ this is what you looked like back a million years/ Your uncle was a monkey, he was swinging through the trees/ he lived on green bananas, and his arms swung to his knees/ He spoke with such conviction, it really made me think/ Maybe my teacher, he’s the missing link!” Oh-ho, third-degree burn! Man, people will make up all kinds of crazy shit to try to get God out of our schools!
11. Why green bananas?
12. Is he flirting with Alicia?
13. Yes, and he was in his early 30s at the time. Interestingly, two youth pastors from the Baptist church I mentioned ran off with high school girls and created a poorly-handled contrversy.
14. I like the “therefore, Cro-Magnon man” professor-to-Geoff video morph part.
15. Alicia keeps looking around in jungle book land, but I’m not sure at what. Oh, I see. Only there she can truly search for the Word of God (as they did in the Garden of Eden).
    
16. I always wanted to sing “fart” instead of “heart” at the end of “Now you can wait a million years and hope that nature does it’s part/ but it only takes a moment, for God to change a heart.”
17. Geoff is the only guy with short hair. I guess he needs the shades/ leather jacket combo to keep up with the rock.
18. The video’s cinematographer is all about zoom-outs.
19. I didn’t notice until the bridge that he has leather tassels on the arms of his jacket.
    
20. The bridge is also the heartfelt witness part of the song where he reveals his own wayward path and puts a fatalistic spin on evolution. “I used to trust in natural selection/ My survival was all I could see/ My evolving to perfection/ started when God rescued me.”
    
21. I think the arm-march dance the students are doing, besides mocking evolution, also is some sort of séance to unlock the age-old secret to release Geoff Moore and The Distance from the jungle book.
22. In the very last shot of the book, please note that one of the monkeys has a flat top.
23. The outro morph seals the message. Evolution, yeah, I guess … REDEFINED!