They're hilarious. Each one, by title or tempo manages to capture a perverse insight into the mood of the footage, loathsome though it is. For instance, take Ace of Base's "Beautiful Life," set against the Führer's trip to Nuremberg, which is filmed almost as if it's a weekend getaway:
If all coldstatic had to offer were just videos, it'd be pretty clever yet at the same time nothing especially heady. But some videos come with funny riffs on political theory and agitprop, like this one from the Fischerspooner "Happy" video that just takes the concept to another fantastic level:
Mock philosophy aside, all the songs are good. I've only seen Triumph of the Will twice, once out of curiosity and once in a college course, so I can't speak to the degree of sophistication in cuts or speeding up the film. But they're all clever enough that it's hard to pick which two are best. The Pixies' "Cecelia Ann," set to a brief military parade, romps like a western horserace scene. Garbage has an almost grooving march feel, and the Elliot Smith song is too hysterical for words.Electronic-Disco rhythm, as a regular repetition, is the purest, the most radical form of the militantly organised rhythmicity of technicist production, and as such the most appropriate means of media manipulation. As an archetypal structural basis of the collective unconscious in a worker mass, it stimulates automatic mechanisma and shapes industrialisation of consciousness, which is necessary in the logic of massive, totalitarian production.
Still, I think of all of them, the mash-up of Will and Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight Tonight" works best because of the melodramatic strings, the surging sense of breakthrough and achievement, and the fact that Billy Corgan is a total piece of shit.
The world is a vampire.
Awesome.
ReplyDeleteI should hire this guy.
Those are fun. I'm guessing that the basic idea was taken from the writings of Slavoj Zizek. Zizek made the same point about the fascist nature of pop music, and fellow Solvenians Laibach articulated this in their music.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I never read Zizek, and I haven't had him come up in a discussion since college, which I think is a little weird, considering the number of philosophy/history/poli-sci wonks I know. I'm sort of embarrassed not to have understood the connection. However, since you're familiar with that, you should definitely click on the link in the first paragraph taking you to coldstatic's Youtube page, because, in what I'm guessing is a nod to the kind of commentary you're talking about, he sets part of the movie to Laibach's "Life Is Life."
ReplyDeleteFanfuckingtastic videos. You knew the nazi stuff would lure me in here right?
ReplyDeleteEDIT: AHAHAH, it must be fascism day on blogger to because my capchta word was "franco"
Oh, god, I'm now watching all of these and I now consider them a personal birthday present to me this morning.
ReplyDeleteThe Wife and I got into the car for a road trip a few weeks back, and the first thing she played off her iPod was "Beautiful Life."
ReplyDeleteAlso, I know I said it elsewhere earlier, but I still feel like shit that I found out about your birthday via this comment section.