All of this begs the question, for Kruger as well as for any politically engaged postmodern artist: If we’re all patsies of the simulacrum, how can we choose a political program? How does one slip out from under “remote control” in order to make decisions with any but false consciousness? In U2′s Zoo TV Live [...]
The reason for Kruger’s dyspepsia, it seems to me, is splashed across the cover. For though we (viewers) may think we wield the remote control, in fact, says Kruger, we are the ones controlled: “To those who understand how pictures and words shape consensus, we are unmoving targets waiting to be turned on and off [...]
At its worst, Kruger’s prose sounds like a ditto prepared for Postmodernism 101: “History has been the text of the dead dictated to the living, through a voice which cannot speak for itself. The ventriloquist that balances corpses on its knee, that gives speech to silence, and transforms bones and blood into reminiscences, is none [...]
Mes Chères, Working on my summer research, I was trying to remember something I thought I’d said about U2 in a review essay published back in 1994 in the online journal Postmodern Culture. When I found it and re-read it, I was surprised, actually, that I had written it: it’s been so long since I’ve [...]
I opined yesterday that “Pop,” as a term of opprobrium, has come to signify an ease of access coupled with an ease of consumption. Ease of consumption: this it would be foolish to deny. But passive consumption, mindless consumption (which, in Is Rock Dead? I connected to the 50s B-movie motif of the zombie)—that’s only [...]