absurd. surreal. farcical. freakish. unfathomable. these are just a few of the words that we<u+2019>ve heard used to describe the 2016 election, plus several synonyms that we just looked up in a thesaurus to make the list look even longer and more weighty. and sure, last night<u+2019>s debate was strange. a first lady turned senator turned secretary of state versus a landlord turned reality tv host turned semiprofessional birther turned amateur horror movie lurker who creeps up behind you. yeah, that<u+2019>s pretty weird. but does it really count as surreal if one of them isn<u+2019>t also, say, a giraffe? and the whole thing isn<u+2019>t held underwater, or inside a volcano? salvador dal<u+00ed> would hang his head at our nation<u+2019>s casual misuse of his art movement<u+2019>s name . a career politician versus an alleged billionaire <u+2014> that<u+2019>s just american politics at its most normal! maybe it<u+2019>s just that so many wish this election were imaginary. so we have nudged last night<u+2019>s spectacle across the threshold of the fantastic, and fancied a debate in song. a debate where hillary clinton<u+2019>s and donald trump<u+2019>s voices rose together in harmony. where they danced in unison. and where joseph gordon-levitt magically replaced anderson cooper at the moderator<u+2019>s table <u+2014> because that<u+2019>s also how surrealism works. the gregory brothers are a music video production group made up of andrew, michael, evan and sarah gregory. their youtube music-video mash-ups include the series <u+201c>auto-tune the news<u+201d> and <u+201c>songify this!<u+201d> joseph gordon-levitt is an actor, writer, and filmmaker who has appeared in snowden, 500 days of summer, lincoln, and his feature directorial debut, don jon. he also founded the collaborative production company hitrecord. op-docs is a forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with creative latitude by independent filmmakers and artists. learn more about op-docs and how to submit to the series. follow the new york times opinion section on facebook and twitter (@nytopinion), and sign up for the opinion today newsletter .
the presidential debate in song: who<u+2019>s gonna work it out?
the gregory brothers and joseph gordon-levitt