It's Crazy That Gal Gadot's All-Star Rendition of "Imagine" Happened Three Years Ago Rather Than Three Decades Ago

Not too long ago Gal Gadot, the Israeli actress who rode to iconic status as Wonder Woman in the smash hit film of the same name, had a very sweet, very stupid, unbelievably misguided idea. 

She’d seen, and been moved and inspired by a viral video of a solitary trumpeter on a balcony in Italy playing a mournful solo version of John Lennon’s “Imagine” in a haunting rendition that wordlessly but indelibly captured some of the fragile, fraught intensity of this terrible cultural moment, with its alternating currents of cautious hope and soul-wracking fear. 

Gadot was so moved by this spontaneous moment of hope and unity from an unknown musician using his art and his truth to comfort his neighbors and himself in a time of great confusion, panic and uncertainty that it inspired her to create what she clearly saw as a companion piece that both honored its inspiration and built upon it but that turned out to be its antithesis. 

The Justice League star would recruit her super-rich, super-famous friends for an all-star sing-along circle-jerk as clumsily self-conscious, pre-fabricated and dripping with condescension and good intentions gone horribly awry as its inspiration was spontaneous, pure and organic. 

If people were inspired by some random nobody on a balcony, then they would undoubtedly be moved to tears AND inspired to overcome this pandemic with stiff upper lips and their heads held high if they were to hear the WORDS to “Imagine” (you know, the good part!) sung not by one mega-celebrity like Gadot but by a FUCK ton of celebrities, real A-listers like Amy Adams, Will Ferrell and James Marsden.

They set out to create a funky, intimate “We Are the World” on their cell phones for the age of the coronavirus. Instead, they created something closer to “We Are the Worst.” 

Instead of inspiring appreciation and gratitude among the ignorant, unwashed rabble that their social betters in the entertainment industry, the beautiful, famous multi-millionaires who create the television shows and movies and hit songs that fill their empty little lives with pleasure and meaning were deigning, in their Christ-like generosity, to devote five or ten minutes of their precious time to awkwardly singing part of possibly the most over-exposed song of all time generated something closer to rage and hatred, 

The anger, contempt and mockery that Gadot & friends’ rendition engendered helps illustrate how Trump was able to get elected president with seemingly the sum of show-business standing in staunch opposition to him with the exception of sad, random contrarians like James Woods and Jon Voight. 

Hillary Clinton ran with the universal support of Hollywood. Trump, because he had no other option, decided to turn a weakness into a secret strength by running AGAINST Hollywood. Trump couldn’t get any real celebrities in his camp so a man who represents the toxic cult of celebrity in its purest and most noxious form decided to put the concept of celebrity on trial and find it GUILTY of being yet another cesspool of Marxist elitism looking down on patriotic Americans as inbred hillbillies swilling moonshine and marrying their first cousins.

Trump’s sour grapes campaign asked why on earth he would even want the support of the Oprah Winfreys and Beyonces of the world when, by his account at least, they all desperately to bring Sharia Law to the United States, combine it with Stalinism and then outlaw Christmas when THEY obviously benefit more from the excesses of capitalism than practically anyone else. 

Trump acts as if every celebrity who uses their voice and their platform to argue that maybe society should strive to be a little more equitable and kind is violently screeching about the need for the streets to run red with the blood of the bosses once Maoism is violently enforced at gunpoint and land-owners are slaughtered en masse in converted football stadiums. 

For Trump, it’s perpetually all-or-nothing: celebs who are not Stacey Dash are forever on the wrong side, hypocrites and phonies poisoned by their hatred of Trump, and by extension, the American people and common man that he alone speaks for. 

I will be the first to admit that celebrities can be arrogant and tone-deaf and condescending. But it’s not like a gaggle of mega-stars thought the ideal response to a cataclysmic crisis involved asking the common people to imagine a Socialist utopia with no materialism or greed or belongings or God, or the United States, just humanity united in cosmic inter-connectedness through a painfully earnest screed by a wife beater, child neglector and hypocrite whose ego ensured that the greatest rock and roll band of all time never made it past a decade. 

Oh wait, that’s exactly how Gadot and her tone-deaf Super-Friends responded to self-quarantining, a motherfucking pandemic that could kill millions and destroy the economy in ways we might never recover from and a world in desperate need of soothing and reassurance! Like a freshman at the quad with an acoustic guitar, they thought they could reach us with the 4,000,000th shitty cover of “Imagine” only this time with more unwanted and unfortunate baggage than any one musical collaboration can bear, let alone one so staggeringly awful that to even call it music feels unnecessarily generous. 

As many an asshole at parties will happily let you know, John Lennon has a powerfully bifurcated persona and reputation. On one hand there’s the ultimate hippie flower child and countercultural icon with his long hair, granny glasses and Quixotic, Messianic yearning for a world of peace and love.  

This is the simplistic, reductive, angelic cartoon of Lennon commemorated on sappy posters adorning dorm walls. Then there’s the famously mean-spirited asshole who hit his first wife and neglected his first child and could be unconscionably, unforgivably cruel to the people who loved him most. 

Gadot obviously sees Lennon exclusively through that first prism, as the beloved personification of the 1960s. Instead a rightfully insulted public saw the song, and its writer, through the prism of Lennon’s moral hypocrisy because it reflected that of the rich and powerful celebrities singing the song.

“Imagine” dreams of a world where we are all equal but you need to be rich and famous to get invited to Gadot’s big celeb sing-along for coronavirus or whatever the fuck. Bear in mind, you don’t have to be able to sing, of course, but you DO need to be famous, and consequently better than the rabble you are singing so nobly at.

Elvis Costello said it best in “The Other Side of Summer” when he impishly inquired, “Was it a millionaire who said, “Imagine no possessions?”

On Gadot’s “Imagine” it’s not just one millionaire imagining no possessions: it’s 24 mostly millionaires joining forces to poignantly ask us to imagine a world without millionaires. It’s folks with a combined net worth in billions asking us scrubs to envision a world without massive economic iniquities. As someone with tens of thousands of dollars in debt and next to nothings in savings, I don’t have to imagine a world without possessions, thank you very much. I just have to project my own economic circumstances onto everyone else. 

Granted, “Imagine” is not quite “L’Internationale” but it’s as close as a bunch of privileged movie stars hiding out in their mansions are going to get to that stirring Marxist anthem. 

Then there’s the actual performance of “Imagine” itself, which is so stilted and painfully self-conscious and earnest and just plain painful that it makes three minutes of the most misguided celeb video since Kevin Spacey thought it’d be fun to resurrect his House of Games character for a fun Christmas video commenting obliquely on the actor’s sex crime accusations feel like three interminable hours. 

The awkwardness begins with Gadot on day six of the quarantine talking about how it has made her philosophical about how “the virus has affected the entire world, everyone: it doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, we’re all in this together.” 

Re-watching the video, I found myself wishing that Gadot’s “It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from” would be followed by a rousing solo rendition of the Backstreet Boys’ hit “As Long as You Love Me.” Now THAT would be fun. That would be goofy. That would provide distraction, escape and entertainment during a trying and terrifying time. 

Alas,  that is NOT where Gadot’s rambling introduction is headed, which is half as long as the song that follows and just as woefully misguided. Instead she starts talking about the “Italian guy” on the patio playing “Imagine” and how there was something so “powerful and pure” about “this video” before saying, “And it goes like this” before beginning the slow, agonizing, interminable process of singing “Imagine” terribly alongside 23 other famous people. 

Gadot’s phrasing just before launching regrettably into song is fascinating and telling. Accidentally, perhaps, Gadot does not say that there is something “powerful and pure” about that video, the one with the lonely Italian trumpeter that inspired her; instead she says that there’s something powerful and pure about this video (the one she’s making, one has to assume), one that “goes like this.”

Then Gadot begins singing, after a fashion. If Gadot were trying to genuinely pay tribute to the video she’s talking about, the phrase “goes like this” would either be followed by Gadot shocking the world by playing “Imagine” on the trumpet by herself, something that would be legitimately impressive, or her imitating the sounds of the lonely trumpeter with her mouth, a la Rahzel or the guy from the Police Academy movies who makes funny noises with his mouth. 

Nope, instead Gadot starts singing a cappella, one of many places where this video and its inspiration diverge dramatically. Gadot’s earnest and stumbling introduction accidentally posits the video that WE’RE CURRENTLY WATCHING is the one that is “powerful and pure” and “goes like this” as opposed to the one that went more like (trumpet playing “Imagine”). 

The miscalculations continue with the bizarre choice to have Kristin Wiig be the next celeb up to bat in this bizarre musical relay race. Wiig’s whole persona is rooted in clammy, painfully self-conscious awkwardness so she is perhaps not the best choice for the leadoff spot in a project defined by awkwardness and self-consciousness. 

“Imagine” is an exceedingly difficult song to pull off if you are a professional musician backed by other professional musicians. When amateurs sing it a cappella half a line at a time, as they do here, it becomes impossible and unbearable.

Gadot is breathtaking in her beauty. She is also breathtaking in her misguided earnestness, in her tragicomic sincerity, in her delusional belief in the power of celebrity and good intentions to overcome tragedy and devastation and a Cats/Robert Benigni’s Pinocchio level of miscalculation. 

Early in this slow motion train wreck Sarah Silverman sings the three “meaningful” words she has been allotted in “living for today”, at which point she begins to vamp, really throwing herself into the “whoa oh oh oh” part in a way that clumsily and awkwardly epitomizes the tonal weirdness at the project’s core.

Silverman understandably seems to have no idea what tone to take. Do you play it earnest or tongue-in-cheek? Do you play up the sincerity to comic effect or do you leave behind the comedy because it has no place in this awful cultural moment and this achingly, painfully straight-faced endeavor?

Silverman splits the difference. She sings “living for today” earnestly and then puts a tongue-in-cheek spin on “whoa oh oh oh” that betrays a distinct uncomfortableness with what she’s being asked to do. Silverman is only onscreen for a few seconds but her thought process is agonizingly apparent all the same. Her discomfort is palpable, but nowhere near as palpable or extreme as our own.

The celebs film themselves in tight close-up and without make-up, presumably because recoding themselves in front of their swimming pools or sprawling mansions would undercut the song’s anti-materialist message. We’re supposed to be able to relate to these de-glammed stars as scared and uncertain human beings just like us, except that they’re in a big group text with Gal Gadot and think singing half a line from “Imagine" will give the masses the strength to carry on in a time of great peril. 

Watching these celebrities slaughter “Imagine” illustrates a surprising truth about the song. Despite having some of the most famous, iconic, endlessly recycled lyrics of any song in human history “Imagine” actually works far better as an instrumental. That Italian trumpeter captured the fragile mood of the moment and the song’s hopes infinitely better than Gadot’s celebrity orgy of sub-par singing and clumsy sermonizing.

I hate the ubiquity, snark and over-use of the phrase “cringe” because in real life it takes a LOT to make us cringe but in the glib world of social media that phrase is tossed around to describe anything anyone finds awkward or disagrees with. But “cringe” is the perfect phrase to describe this video, in no small part because I physically cringed throughout Gadot’s noble folly.

Gadot and friends did end up uniting the public after all, but it was not in the manner intended. Instead they gave Hollywood-hating Conservatives and class-conscious Progressives something to despise equally. We all came together in a time of peril and uncertainty making fun of this idiotic video. 

Look, I’m not saying that Gadot’s creation is an abomination but watching the video I suddenly found myself experiencing a weird surge of sympathy for Mark David Chapman.

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