The Netflix documentary film My Octopus Teacher is also an emotional and evocative film about an unconventional relationship, but this one is much funnier.
For middle-class kids in South Africa, the Kreepy Krauly is as much a feature of summer weekends at your cousin’s house as the inevitable grazed knees and elbows in their crumbling gunite pool, the “incredible, rubbery, dangly… just majestic creature” that sucked at the algae and discarded Gatti’s ice-cream wrappers clumping the steps between games of Marco Polo. First invented in 1974 by Ferdinand Chauvier, a hydraulics engineer who emigrated to Gauteng from the Belgian Congo some 20 years previously, the Kreepy Krauly has since been introduced to the US and Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Australia, making it one of Mzansi’s most significant technological exports.
And now, also the subject of this hysterical parody video by Glen Biderman-Man and Mike Sharman.
My Kreepy Teacher. Written and Directed by @GlenBidermanPam. ECD @mikesharman. pic.twitter.com/nepvUDpA5B
— Glen Biderman-Pam (@GlenBidermanPam) September 20, 2020
I got one of those Zodiac pool cleaners instead of a Kreepy Krauly, and I feel like I’ve missed out on so much.