"" bshawise: Deluxe Hugs

Monday, May 4, 2009

Deluxe Hugs

In the comments section I put my thoughts about the ending. Read them AFTER you watch it. Leah, this means you.

11 comments:

bshawise said...

the end really made me sad. maybe it's a joke and that lady is his friend. i'm sure it is. right? either way, i stopped smiling at the point where she ran after him. that felt too real and desperate. if it was staged then...they got me.

am the only one who felt this way?

Unknown said...

I figured it (the ending) had to be staged. Who's gonna come up and ask what $20 will get you when you're clearly on camera?

Actually, I kinda thought the whole thing was staged... The shots are pretty nicely framed, which is hard to do with a hidden camera. Plus, why would a "free hugs" guy stay around and get mocked? Surely he'd move somewhere else.

Staged. But funny... if it was staged.

workinprogress said...

I sorta laughed explaining the end to Isaac, but it's not really funny. Even if it is staged. It's weird. some things I think are really funny and others just kinda make me sad. who knows.

Alex Green said...

Nope, that ending was sad. If it is staged (probably is), it's far less than amusing. If you actually see people selling their bodies, or the people desperate enough to pay for it, it's just...yuck.

John Arns said...

hmm... these days, who knows. the woman's a good actress if it was staged. she's pretty convincing. but if not an act, it is really sad. her giving the extra money was kinda funny, but yeah, once she started after him, the humor ended.

Liz said...

I hated the end. That is sad. Sure, it's probably fake, but it's close enough to reality that we aren't 100% sure. So, that's sad.

Christopher Day said...

Whether the ending was staged or not, the whole thing had such good Christian life parallels (though I doubt that was the purpose, but I could be wrong).

To think that the very thing these people needed was a hug. A simple hug. And the whole time there was a guy offering that very thing. For free. No strings. His only requirement was that they accept his hug. But 18 people were more content in trying to pay for something they could have gotten for free. They were enticed and dazzled by "extras". And then in the end it turned from a simple hug (actual need) to something entirely different (human want).

Pretty freakin deep without even trying.

ylmurph said...

that's 75k/year even without the twenties...

this probably wasn't your point though, huh?

I think Dave Ramsey has ruined my life.

bshawise said...

dang, Stopher. you're more than just a pretty (long) face.

tyler said...

I would prefer to get to know her before I called her "sad". Isn't there something, somewhere in a book, about something pertaining to not judging people? Didn't that guy all that time ago strike up a friendship with a whore? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is a downside to stuff like youtube. It's plastered up there waiting to be judged.

Staged? I would think the cameraman standing at 20ft would be tough to miss.

Jason Boys said...

Last summer, my buddy and I decided that we were going to start playing tennis. We went to Target and started checking out the racquets. They were priced from about 20 to 50 bucks. Now, I hadn't played tennis since I was eight years old, and I had no idea what I was doing. The cheapest racquet would have been fine, but I couldn't do it. I had to kick it up a notch or two. I ended up buying the one that was two price levels above the cheapest (around $30). Honestly, it seemed just like the cheapest one, except it was blue instead of yellow and it claimed to be "Volcanic." What does that even mean?

Anyway, here's my point. For some reason, we are programmed to think that more expensive is better. If I saw these two guys, I would honestly think to myself "what's $2? Maybe I should just go for the better hug." If the hug was really good, I would probably give him a one dollar tip, and ask him if he has ever considered working parties as a professional hugger.

On a side note, this video was clearly shot before the swine flu came in to the picture. CNN has me afraid to hug my wife or pet my dog. There is no way I'm getting near some random hugging hippie at the fruit market.