… it occurs to me that movies aren’t the best example of the Current Year’s creative bankruptcy — music is. Somewhere below, I joked that Pink Floyd’s album The Wall was a modern attempt at a Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, a “total art work”. Wagner thought opera should be a complete aesthetic experience, that a great opera would have not just great music, but a great story in the libretto, great poetry in the lyrics, great painting in the set design, and so on, all of which would combine to something much greater than the sum of its already-excellent parts.
As I said, that’s awfully heavy for an album whose most famous song asks how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat, but it’s nonetheless an accurate description of what Roger Waters was trying to do with the integrated concept album / movie / stage show. Whether or not he knew he was attempting a Gesamtkunstwerk in the full Wagnerian sense is immaterial, as is the question of whether or not he succeeded. Nor does it matter if The Wall is any good, musically or cinematically or lyrically.* The point is, he gave it one hell of a go … and nobody else has, even though these days it’d be far, far easier.
Consider what a band like Rush in their prime would’ve done with modern technology. I’m not a musician, but I’ve been told by people who are that you can make studio-quality stuff with free apps like Garage Band. Seriously, it’s fucking free. So is YouTube, and even high-quality digital cameras cost next to nothing these days, and even laptops have enough processor power to crank out big league video effects, with off-the-shelf software. I’m guessing (again, I’m no musician, let alone a filmmaker), but I’d wager some pretty good money you could make an actual, no-shit Gesamtkunstwerk — music, movie, the whole schmear — for under $100,000, easy. You think 2112-era Rush wouldn’t have killed it on YouTube?
I take a backseat to no man in my disdain for prog rock, but I have a hard time believing Neal Peart and the Dream Theater guys were the apex of rock’n’roll pretension. I realize I’ve just given the surviving members of Styx an idea, and we should all be thankful Kilroy Was Here was recorded in 1983, not 2013, because that yawning vortex of suck would’ve destroyed all life in the solar system, but I’m sure you see my point.** Why has nobody else tried this? Just to stick with a long-running Rotten Chestnuts theme, “Taylor Swift”, the grrl-power cultural phenomenon, is just begging for the Gesamtkunstwerk treatment. Apparently she’s trying real hard to be the June Carter Cash of the New Millennium™ these days, and hell, even I’d watch it.***
The fact that it hasn’t been attempted, I assert, is the proof that it can’t be done. The culture isn’t there, despite the tools being dirt cheap and pretty much idiot proof. Which says a LOT about the Current Year, none of it good.
* The obvious comment is that Roger Waters is no Richard Wagner, but that’s fatuous — even if you don’t like Wagner (I don’t, particularly), you have to acknowledge he’s about the closest thing to a universal artistic genius the human race has produced. It’s meaningless to say that Roger Waters isn’t in Wagner’s league, because pretty much nobody is in Wagner’s league. And philistine though I undoubtedly am, I’d much rather listen to The Wall than pretty much any opera — I enjoy the symphonic bits, but opera singing has always sounded like a pack of cats yodeling to me. I’m with the Emperor from Amadeus: “Too many notes.”
** If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then please, I’m begging you, do NOT go listen to “Mr. Roboto.” Whatever you do, don’t click that link …
… you clicked it, didn’t you? And now you’ll be randomly yelling “domo arigato, Mister Roboto!!” for days. You’ll probably get punched more than once for that. Buddy, I tried to warn you.
*** Anthropological interest only. I know I’m in the distinct minority on this one, but she never turned my crank, even in her “fresh-scrubbed Christian country girl” stage. Too sharp featured, and too obviously mercenary, even back then.
Severian, “More Scattered Thoughts”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-10-13.
May 4, 2023
QotD: Gesamtkunstwerk
Comments Off on QotD: Gesamtkunstwerk
No Comments
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
