Treo Pictures, a Brooklyn production company producing high quality commercials, music videos, and film has just released their newest installment “Unorthodox” with fellow Brooklynite company, The Shorts Show, a Brooklyn sketch comedy show (aka Brooklyn’s Worst) known for their hilarious performances, interesting and informative blog, and lively productions. Unorthodox is not only fittingly as a title but can also describe the thematic element as a whole. Unorthodox it is, in both the form and the message it portrays.
Unorthodox is a quirky music video with TOO MANY ZOOZ (Yes, those rascals from Union Square) creating the score which seems to musically illustrates the night of these two random Orthodox Jewish men who create havoc on the night before the Sabbath. In the video, the two men rampage down the streets of Brooklyn, hitting up bars and simultaneously getting thrown out of them, flirting with shiksas, chasing shots with even more shots with strangers who seem to be both laughing with and at them, snapping inebriated selfies and group pictures with said strangers, being carried around the city’s streets by a luxurious drag queen with huge biceps, throwing up the night on the sidewalk, smoking some pot at an art party, snorting coke at that same art party, walking in on two men having sex (and they even showed the penis!) a deep and hilarious contrast to the depressed waddling of their counterparts with the same garb but not the same spirit.
Funny, thrilling, a really great ride all the way through, but the video is not only fun to watch, it is also meant as a social statement. The Jewish men shown in the “Orthodox” music video also represent our generation. As quoted by the producer of Treo Pictures Anna Dale-Meunier: “There is a debilitating decadence in our modern youth and there are urges that we share no matter what outfit or mask we wear. Like Wolf of Wallstreet and The Great Gatsby show, we live in excess and the decadence comes out as parties and altering our own state through drugs and alcohol.” The visuals that are captured within this short film is not something you see every day and should the courage and insight of the director should be noted. The director’s use of having the opening shot be of Orthodox families walking down the streets of Brooklyn on their way to Synagogues to worship on the eve of a holy day versus the younger generation of Orthodox enjoying a crazy night out makes people question religion and what it means, if it is more of a culture than a law to be strictly enforced which is definitely a topic of discussion in our generation as well.
Article by Marissa Mireles
