People say there’s a thin line between genius and madness. Christina Calph may be the one who erases that line. Those who claim to be into edgy comedy never came up with her approach. What is her approach you might innocently ask? Essentially she replicates the beginning stages of dementia with her youtube clips. I’m not sure where the humor lies, whether it is with the viewer or with the viewer’s viewing of the viewers. Something seriously strange is going on here. Another possible explanation may be Christina goes crazy and we all politely laugh at it not knowing her true intention. How or what you laugh at is not important, her goal is to make sure you do laugh at some point.
I have some evidence that the viewer creates the humor. On her video for “Milkshake – by Kelis” she sings in a made up language called ‘Tinker Tink’. The reason she created this language is she is bored of speaking English. Christina explains living in New York City she hears countless languages each and every day. During the video she explains by watching you’ll learn her language and become closer with her.
The comments between the video provide the greatest amount of humor, even more than the video itself. Perhaps she created something so weird that the audience does not know whether to laugh or get angry at wasting four minutes of their time. Reading the comments is pretty funny. “FootGuyBri” focuses on her aesthetic appeal stating quite eloquently “You are so unbelievably hot you can talk gibberish as much as you want.” Others agree, with “poppapump23” romantically stating “I totally jacked it to this”. Not everyone had the same reaction which I’m certain was Ms. Calph’s intention. A response to the support states “WTF she's so dumb not that really hot either retard” showing “TheRobertprz” to be somewhat dissatisfied with Ms. Calph’s performance. Finally, confusion lurks with a brilliant comment by “Ambernolan” stating simply “THEFUCK??!?!?!?!?!?”
She plays multiple characters in her videos displaying a wide range of crazy. In her video “Sexy Dance for Our Troops XXX Style” she appears to take on a mildly (or extremely) offensive Southern accent. Janae (Christina’s character) brings together many misconceptions about Southerners. By taking this route she has multiple levels of humor for those willing to put up with the many distasteful illusions she oftentimes makes. Keep in mind though that to some degree all forms of humor includes some kind of mockery. Christina proceeds to dance for the second half of the video to the song “Sweet Home Alabama”.
Commenters add an additional layer of humor once again. “Rustedrails” did not appreciate the large amount of talking during the video, stating clearly “Less talk more booty shaking” referring to her posterior moving about in a provocative manner. An argument broke out between the two commenters “subliminal8” and “mommyinlove101010”. Subliminal8 wrote “I freaking love you!!! You made this soldier happy, and you had the nice southern accent reminds me of home in Mississippi!!!” This sat poorly with “mommyinlove101010” his wife in the United States. Writing in terse sentences she says “You should be ashamed of yourself subliminal8 I’m your wife and we have a son try being faithful and not look at whores! Thank you” and “I’m your wife you asked to marry me not many women are faithful to soldiers but I’ve been faithful I take care of your son I love you and I take care of you and this is how u repay me?” Having this exchange made the video that much more ridiculous for me.
I wish I knew how to react to these videos. She has a lot of them up, none of them with the same repeating character. Within those videos are varying degrees of quality, form, and amounts of dancing, though dancing appears to be the only constant. Rarely do I say this, but I am completely confused by what is going on in these videos. Don’t think of Christina as a girl, think of her as a concept. You could spend your entire life exploring Christina’s deeply troubling/humorous youtube clips and never ‘get it’. That’s a good thing.