Synopsis

Frank Zappa performs the title song amid brightly colored studio sets, band footage, comic character work and deliberately artificial video effects. The performance is interrupted by satirical images aimed at American identity, celebrity culture and political power, including a figure resembling President Ronald Reagan seated in an electric chair. The clip's cheerful pop presentation clashes with its provocative imagery and Zappa's intentionally ungrammatical lyrics, turning a conventional promotional format into an absurdist political joke.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video premiered on October 31, 1981, the same year the album *You Are What You Is* was released.

• Zappa said CBS had requested a video for overseas distribution and paid for its production. He described the project as the result of a record company request rather than a long-standing personal interest in making conventional music videos.

• It is generally regarded as the only conventional music video Zappa made during his career.

• The production combined standard singing and dancing footage with advanced color graphics for its time, giving the clip a more polished and television-oriented appearance than many of Zappa's earlier film projects.

• MTV refused to air the video, chiefly because of the sequence depicting a Ronald Reagan lookalike in an electric chair. The song's provocative racial language also made the clip especially difficult for mainstream television.

• The video later appeared in Zappa's *Video From Hell* compilation and was also included among the archival material issued with *The Torture Never Stops*.

• The song was later reworked for the 1984 album *Thing-Fish*, where its satirical themes were placed in an even more theatrical and confrontational setting.