A while back my friend Colin Spacetwinks learned Shia LaBeouf had read one of his Twitter threads during that weird livestreamed Trump protest performance art project he did and when he spoke about LaBeouf’s plagiarism on Twitter, one of LaBeouf’s “cohorts” (who may or may not have just been LaBeouf under a pseudonym) popped up to tell him it couldn’t be plagiarism because it was art, man. You know, like the time LaBeouf also plagiarized Daniel Clowes for “art.” Anyway, as they say, turnabout is fair play, as Chief and TheDoomsdayDevice so hilariously proves in his new video “Just to be Clear,” from his LoPhi collaboration Uncanny Valley.
The video has Chief repurposing LaBeouf’s motivational video “Just Do It” (whose title obviously rips off Nike’s infamous slogan) by placing his iconic cartoon head on LaBeouf’s raged out body while trippy things happen in the background (including flashbacks to other Chief videos). Chief has been altering historical photos to look like they star him for a while now but this is the culmination of that, a clever send-up of the world’s foremost culture thief that reconfigures dude’s Just Do It insistence for Chief and LoPhi’s moody and surreal productions. But with Chief’s animated head there instead of LaBeouf’s perplexingly intense visage, it takes on a calmer feeling, making for that rare satire that also feels quite zen. Take a peek for yourself and then go snag Uncanny Valley: