The Spectacle Speaks Again

In a previous post, I wrote about Thus Spoke the Spectacle, which combines rock music and video to provide artistic commentary in a media ecology vein. Well, Peter Fallon in a blog post has alerted us to a new video posted by The Spectacle, aka Eric Goodman. This one is entitled, "The Tragedy that Remains," and here's the write-up on YouTube:

"The Tragedy That Remains" documents the global media frenzy surrounding the death of Princess Diana. It has something for everyone: a fairy-tale princess, heaps of celebrities, overindulgent media, brain-sucking ghouls (oops, that's the same thing).

The video speaks to our society's deeply ingrained cult of celebrity. Beyond portraying the excesses of the scripted celebrity death extravaganza, it explores the responsibility we spectators bear for enabling such media events. As the recent "10 Years Later" Diana retrospectives indicate, mega-spectacles like "Death of a Princess" never truly disappear, but are rerun at opportune moments across various media to wring more profits from the production. Ten years later, in response to those who find the Diana material "dated," we stand by the main premise of the video: that the Spectacle itself is the tragedy that remains.

The video is part of the live music video media critique "Thus Spoke The Spectacle." For information, more videos, or to book a screening or performance, go to

http://thespectacle.net

Music and lyrics by Eric Goodman
live performance by Eric Goodman and Mike Stevens

LYRICS:
We sellers and buyers of souls make ghosts of the living, and the death of princesses not only inevitable, but necessary.

The Spectacle is the tragedy that remains long after it commands us to shift our gaze away from dead princesses onto newer obsessions.

While momentary tragedies flit through our lives, the cult of celebrity and the Spectacle it feeds voraciously hover above our battered reality, ever awaiting its opportunity to transform life into non-life.

The Spectacle is immune to contradiction. When a princess dies, the spectacle of her death bemoans the spectacle of her life, and the absurdity of it all serves only as fodder for another story. . . (more)

And now, this:



And, kudos to you, Eric, for another compelling bit of media ecological music video.