Nostalgia Minstrels

In attempting to come up with a research essay topic, I keep returning to what are perhaps the two most offensive music videos on TV at the moment - those for the latest singles by U2 and Red Hot Chili Peppers respectively.

I'm kind of interested in trying to unpack, if you like, these and similar videos in an attempt to see what exactly is so 'offensive' about them in comparison to others of a similar nature.
If you haven't seen the videos in question, they both fit into the music video genre of 'performers pretending to be other performers' - kinda like if Weird Al did a medley video but without the parody song to go with it (although I guess you could make a pretty strong case both bands have been parodying themselves for years...).

In the RHCP clip the band pose as a number of definitive, 'groundbreaking' acts from popular music history - so you've got RHCP performing as (something like...) Elvis, the Beatles, Ramones, Kraftwerk, Public Enemy, Nirvana, and then as... Red Hot Chili Peppers. Um, what? Says who?

The U2 video is a little different in that it uses some deft editing of actual footage of canonised pop musicians, 'from Bing to Beck', to make it look like they're all singing the latest U2 tune. It looks like it could be some kind of huge intergenerational charity single, only infinitely more disappointing when you discover it's Bono singing the whole thing. I think this one is probably the more offensive of the two if only for the fact that unlike the RHCP clip it appears to be entirely lacking a sense of humour (U2, pretentious? Never.)

So what's so bad about these clips? I haven't really figured it out yet. You could say "oh, they're saying they're up there with the Beatles and Elvis, what a bunch of arrogant old wankers," but popular musicians have been doing that for years - to miscontextualise John Lennon the Beatles themselves claimed to be "bigger than Jesus" and at the risk of sounding painfully white, don't such claims pop up in rap and hip hop all the time?

Maybe it's more the explicit use of a canonised performer's 'signs and signifiers' (here's where I wish I'd paid more attention in FTVMS101...) or something which seems so 'wrong', but then plenty of other videos have done the same and got away with it. There's that Weezer video for 'Buddy Holly' where they dress as (I'm assuming) the Crickets and play on the set of Happy Days, and there's a similar Nirvana video too. Yet I was never struck by any sense of profound misjustice in either of these videos...

Similarly, the Shins' clip for 'New Slang' sees them pose as a bunch of canonical indie album covers (Spiderland, Double Nickels, Zen Arcade... (fap fap fap)...) yet I never read it as the band 'positioning' themselves alongside these bands but rather as a throwback to a time when a mutual appreciation for the same obscure bands actually meant some.

So I guess some of the issues here are where the band 'positions' themselves in relation to the performers they visually quote, and also the whole insider / outsider, indie / mainstream kinda thing. Does Nirvana and Weezer visually quoting canonical popular performers reinforce their position as 'outsiders' just as RHCP and U2 doing the same reinforces their position as 'insiders'? Why is the former acceptable but the latter not? Is the band, the record company or the video director responsible? And so on.

Anyway, I didn't actually intend to share my entire potential research essay with everyone (sorry), but rather to see if anyone can think of any other music videos that are similar to the ones I've talked about. There must be plenty more, so let me know if you have any YouTube recommendations. Thanks.