David T. Little

“SOLDIER SONGS” Trailer from Corey Michael Smithson on Vimeo.

Tickets are currently available here.

In June, the one and only Judas Priest released a brand new two-disc concept album called Nostradamus. Based on the title alone, I am thinking that it’s probably either one of the best things ever, or the absolute worst. After hearing the single, however, I think it may well be both. (Hello orchestral introduction!) This gets to an issue I’ve been thinking about for a while: heavy metal as camp.

I’ve realized lately that part of what I love about metal is that, despite its inherent silliness, it takes itself so seriously. In this, it is both noble and totally absurd. Musically, especially within the Extreme Metal genres, the bands tend to be highly skilled, but the look of metal has always been problematic,

Judas Priest is a great examples of this. They are technical masters and musically solid–Painkiller is one of the best metal albums ever–but as for taste, well…

Alex made a great point about Judas Priest versus groups like Mötley Crüe, or even KISS. These latter groups, less musically skilled, seemed too aware of their over-the-top image to really be camp. To be camp–if we follow Sontag–something has to be so out that it loses the ability to judge just how out it actually is; and it has to be dead serious.

This in so many ways is the essence of what metal is about–extra-musically–and I can think of no greater example than Judas Priest. I mean come on, does it get any worse than this?

But could it get any better?!

While researching Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock, I encountered the following passage from Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism.

Somehow it felt relevant to share.

“Corporations like DuPont, Ford, General Motors, and ITT owned factories in enemy countries that produced fuel, tanks, and planes that wreaked havoc on Allied forces. After the war, instead of being prosecuted for treason, ITT collected $27 million from the U.S. Government for war damages inflicted on its German plants by Allied bombings. General Motors collected over $33 million. Pilots were given instructions not to hit factories in Germany that were owned by U.S. firms. Thus Cologne was almost leveled by Allied bombings, but its Ford plant, providing military equipment for the Nazi army, was untouched; indeed, German civilians began using the plant as an air raid shelter.”

“Long before aeroplanes were invented he anticipated the horror of bombing attacks on people in air raid shelters. He is the lyric composer of the gas chambers of Auschwitz, of Dachau concentration camp, of the complete despair of the man in the street under the heel of fascism. That is his humanity. It is proof of Schönberg’s genius and instinct that he gave expression to all these emotions at a time when the world seemed safe for the ordinary man in the street. Whatever one may say against him, he never lied.”

-Hanns Eisler, 1948

Newspeak performing ‘sweet light crude’ at Make Music New York.

Video by skwizzdemona.

WALL-E is absurdly cute, ridiculously well-done, and ultimately quite moving. It proves, ironically, that there may well be no need for actors at all in the future, as long as there are programmers; that reality is creatable. (Although, I can’t imagine that animation could have replaced the ever-skeezy Fred Willard as the single human actor on screen!) But what struck me in this film most of all was the strength of it’s social criticism; this, I was not expecting.

Kids movies are good at this. If you go back to watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit, you’ll find much of the same, (especially if you’ve read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation for context.) One could also say the same about Ratatouille, though this might be more of a stretch. One finds this occasionally in popular culture, although it’s usually done pretty cheaply, often through evoking fascist imagery. (See, for example, the sub-plot of Wicked…yes, I’ve seen Wicked).

But this was done well, I thought. Basically a Dystopian cautionary tale disguised as a kids film, WALL-E delivers its message strongly, if a bit too strongly at times via over-zealous monologues. As one might glean from my recent posts, I’ve been reading some Orwell lately, and so one could say that I am prone to Dystopian interpretations, but I was not alone in this opinion. EM leaned over to me at one point and whispered “This is some subversive shit.”

The ultimate irony, though, is the audience. Here we are, a bunch of anesthetized Americans at the multiplex* sucking down cola, watching a film about anesthetized Americans at a proverbial outer-space multiplex sucking down cola–(well, liquid tacos). I imagine that many didn’t even notice that the movie was about us; and that it was critical at that. This begs the question: what good is social criticism if no on notices?

What’s more, as Roeper and Phillips said in their review: “There are a lot of movies that are anti-consumer, but you can still get the fun souvenirs!” And no doubt Disney has already started pumping the world full of more cheap plastic crap that we don’t need. I hope at least they are using recycled materials, lest they create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Though I have to say, the Buy N Large satire site is pretty fantastic. (Buy N Large is the Wal-Mart-type Big Brother that seems to have conquered the whole world. It envelops all nations under its banner. It is the ultimate victory of capitalism over, well, everything.)

In a nice twist, the site seems to have no mention whatsoever of the actual film.

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*Literally, we were at a hardcore multiplex in NJ. It was intense.

“Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. … The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”

George Orwell, Why I Write

…but I’m more of a loaded-handgun-under-my-pillow sort of guy.

(courtesy of EM)

More soon…

If I can continue to write pieces that make performers look this rockstar, I will die a very happy composer.

James Bobick singing Soldier Songs at the sitzprobe for VOX 2008. Photo (c) Jane Kung for New York City Opera