Life is a race to futility. This video of Barbie Jay is a showcase of those different scenarios of futility. Barbie Jay self-appoints himself as a teacher then invites various residents to his intellectual lectures as he presents his research thesis on futility. We are given the first scenario of two shopkeepers competing over a customer.
He then presents the case of a graduate who completes his degree at Makerere University. As the norm dictates, he throws a graduation party. Then, the endless search for jobs begins. You know where the graduate ends up? He joins the Old Taxi Park as a senior conductor.
This video is very much tuned to reality. It asks the same questions that we ask ourselves when alone, and it gives one answer to those questions; “it’s all pointless.” That’s the depressing part of the video. It shows us the Ugandan versions of Greek legend, Sisyphus, who cheated Hades and was punished for eternity to keep rolling a boulder up a mountain. Thus, in this video, Barbie Jay whether knowingly or unknowingly compares the human race to Sisyphus. Yet the video tries to make a similar conclusion about Sisyphus-that we must imagine Ugandans happy in this chase of wind.
But isn’t Barbie Jay’s video futile itself? Does it make any real point other than that which we already know? The video tries too much to illustrate every case the song talks about. A better work would have been done if the producers zeroed down on one case and gave it a laser kind of focus. As a result of the many cases, it seems disorganised, far off from a good music video, and another pointless video. Bwerere just.