Dear Uncle Ted,
Is the video for Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer” a treatise on the difficulty of confronting aging and loss, or a Proustian lament for a distant summer fling?
G.F., Los Angeles, CA
GF – I think Don Henley and director Jean-Baptiste Mondino were trying to tell us several things in 1984, one of which being: installing film projection screens into the walls of your house may seem like a cool idea, but they get boring fast.
Even screens placed serendipitously in alleys aren’t much of a draw. I mean, Don Henley backs away from his own face. Who does that?
Like many videos of the era (such as Young MC’s Bust A Move and Tone Loc’s Wild Thing) Summer bears a moral at its center. And that moral is: You will get tired of looking at a beach.
-Unk.
