Hollywood A-listers band together to torture the quarantined

Israeli actress and model Gal Gadot uploaded a video to social media this week featuring herself and a handful of A-list celebrities singing John Lennon’s Imagine, also known as one of the worst songs of the 20th century.

The three-minute Instagram video, which is meant to raise spirits as the world reels from the coronavirus outbreak, begins with the actress, who is herself in quarantine, saying she is feeling “a bit philosophical.”

“This virus has infected the entire world. Everyone. Doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from. We’re all in this together,” Gadot says.

She continues, explaining that she saw a “powerful” and “pure” video recently of a quarantined trumpet player in Italy performing Imagine for his quarantined neighbors. We must have different definitions of the word “pure,” because forcing people who have nowhere else to go to listen to a trumpet performance of Imagine sounds an awful lot like a hate crime.

Gadot’s video then turns into a wide-awake nightmare as it immediately turns into a montage of over-earnest celebrities singing a terrible song poorly.

“Imagine there’s no heaven,” Gadot intones.

That is a comforting thing to say to people on ventilators, fighting to stay alive.

“It’s easy if you try,” actress Kristen Wiig adds in a completely different key and tempo.

Actor Henry Cavill then adds, “No hell below us.”

You get the picture.

The video also stars Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, James Marsden, Sarah Silverman, Amy Adams, Sia, Pedro Pascal, Jamie Dornan, Zoe Kravitz, Chris O’Dowd, Leslie Odom Jr., Eddie Benjamin, Ashley Benson, Lynda Carter, Jimmy Fallon, Will Ferrell, Norah Jones, Kaia Gerber, Cara Delevingne, Annie Mumolo, Labrinth, and Maya Rudolph. It is the worst thing you will see all week.

Truly, the cruelest trick the devil ever played was convincing rich and famous people that Imagine is a good and meaningful song and not an abject embarrassment.

With everything else that is going on with the coronavirus outbreak, it is crazy that these celebrities chose to use their voices and influence to sing Lennon’s bland paean to nihilism rather than educate their followers on, say, guidelines for avoiding infection and death. You know — something useful?

Gadot’s video is like the string quartet scene from Titanic, except the musicians are terrible and they’re playing the atheist’s I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke for some reason.

I mean, seriously, Imagine? What — was It’s a Small World After All taken that day?

Messages of hope are great and much needed in times of distress. But if one is to present such a message, one must stick the landing. Getting your friends together to recite the worst song written by the worst Beatle is the opposite of sticking the landing. Talk about situations where the supposed cure is possibly worse than the disease itself.

Anyway, if you are looking for a message of hope and comfort amid the coronavirus pandemic, I recommend you seek it from someone of both taste and talent: