Cat Jump Fail, is a a cat video paired with a rock song to make an entertaining video. The music seems to be perfectly crafted to the cats every move. The beat drops, and the cat turns his head. When the lyrics begin, it is timed perfectly with the cat’s journey through the air. There is also a double meaning as the lyric being sung is “Sail” as the cat is “sailing” through the sky, but also sarcasm since his journey was seemingly unsuccessful.
One type of media in the video is the home video of a cat on the prowl. The video features a pet attempt to jump across what appears to be the deck of a house. The name and health status of the cat remains unknown, but due to the nature of the video, it is assumed the cat lands on all four paws and sustains no injuries.
The other sample of media this video pulls from is a song by the band AWOLNATION called Sail. The song actually has very dark undertones in the lyrics. It touches on mental health issues, namely ADD and suicide, with the lyric “Maybe I should kill myself (myself)”.The song, which spent 79 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, gained mainstream popularity despite its dark meaning. The meaning of this song on its own is in stark contrast to the meaning of the remix version involving the cat visual.
This video gained popularity across Facebook, Tumblr, and YouTube. This video is received with laughs and humorous re-postings among friends, family, and colleagues. It falls into the category of “cat videos” on the internet, and is meant for a similar audience. The visual part of the remix is still geared toward the same audience, however, the song is being utilized in a different manner than intended. The song and remix video ended up gaining mainstream popularity and were probably enjoyed by similar audiences in the long run.