Revisiting Jon Lajoie’s Heartbreaking ‘Friday The 13th Part V’ Video Tribute [Watch]
Josh Korngut
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Comedian Jon Lajoie basically invented the Internet in 2007 with a series of satirical music videos like Everyday Normal Guy and 2 Girls 1 Cup Song. These tracks solidified Lajoie as first wave YouTube royalty, right up there with “Shoes” juggernaut Liam Kyle Sullivan. Soon he would land a lead role on the FX sitcom The League, further catapulting him into the mainstream. But in 2016, Lajoie released a Friday the 13th project unlike anything we had come to expect of him.
While comedy was his bread and butter, Lajoie also had a more serious side. He releases darker folk music under the moniker Wolfie’s Just Fine. The debut album “I Remembered but Then I Forgot”, was a darker departure from Jon Lajoie’s earlier works. It pulled from the lyricist’s childhood experiences with a vividly nostalgic execution. The most jarring song of note on the record is a tragic track titled ‘A New Beginning.’ The song’s double meaning heartbreakingly layers a young boy’s sexual awakening as he watches Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning with his brother and friends.
The accompanying music video for “A New Beginning” follows The Boy (played by Gabriel Bateman) as he watches the fifth, and especially horny, Friday the 13th film. The video recreates the classic scene in the woods where side characters Eddie and Tina hook up ahead of their gruesome deaths. While watching the sexually charged sequence, Lajoie sings from the perspective of The Boy.
Oh I was wondering why you got naked
When that boy started kissing you
I was disgusted yet oddly excited
The feeling was completely new
Many of us were exposed to sexual content, often for the first time, through horror films. I’m in no way condemning sex in horror; the two often naturally go hand in hand. However, when an impressionable witness encounters the concept of sex for the first time while Jason is lurking nearby, excitement and anxious confusion can gestate. As The Boy watches Tina from Friday the 13th Part V lay naked in the woods alone, he imagines himself next to her. Soon he finds himself superimposed into the world of the film—an accidental voyeur—as Tina sunbathes. In horror, The Boy watches as Jason approaches with shears. Lajoie sings:
You didn’t have any time to move
We sat and watched as he murdered you
I thought it was safe
We wanted to play
Oh brother we should leave now
The Boy’s coming-of-age narrative overlaps with the brutal physical violence of the fifth Friday entry. Part of what makes Lajoie’s “A New Beginning” so relatable is the pinpoint-able moment of innocence lost. We’ve all been through this loss at some point or another. However, I personally find The Boy’s moment of coming to grips with sex and violence through retro horror extremely reflective of my own childhood experiences with the genre. This video and song present undeniably relatable pathos for horror fans of a certain age.
Watch the video for Wolfie’s Just Fine “A New Beginning” right here:
Lastly, what did you think of Wolfie’s Just Fine video for ‘A New Beginning’? Let me know on Twitter via @joshkorngut. I’m always around to chat all things Friday the 13th!
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