There are certain things that become so ingrained into our popular culture that we cannot imagine a time when they didn’t exist, and yet there was a time when they were wholly new. The image of Santa Claus wearing a red coat with white fur lining, for example. Although it is a modern myth that he was invented by the Coca Cola company, it is true that he used to be depicted wearing a green coat and bishop’s garb, and it was only through decades of illustration and consolidation that he took on the standardized version that we all know and recognize today. And other powerful examples. The point that I am trying to make, and that I think I am really nailing home, is that sometimes things feel obvious only after the fact, and the world without them cannot even be imagined, but there is also a gray zone in which we are currently living, where there is a video in which the new Daft Punk song “Get Lucky” is playing over footage from an old episode of Soul Train, and you suddenly wonder why there are not a million videos stretching throughout the entire history of womankind in which the hottest song of the day is played over archival footage of people dancing. It might seem like there are a million videos like this, because there obviously should be, but you might be surprised at how the examples you are thinking of are different enough as to not even be examples, and to discover just how novel this video really is considering how seamlessly it has already woven itself into the fabric of our lives.

THE WORLD HAS CHANGED, I CAN FEEL IT IN THE WATER. (Via RatsOff!)