June 21, 2005
Kraftwerk Remake
In Hollywood it is the year of the remake. The number of old movies and television shows being dusted off is staggering. A short run down includes The Dukes of Hazard, Dawn of the Dead, War of the Worlds, The Love Bug, Bewitched, House of Wax, The Amityville Horror, The Longest Yard, etc. The list goes on and on. Even George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel series is more like a remake tribute of the originals, filled as each is with inside jokes, than anything else. It is not clear what to make of all these remakes. Are they the result of an older generation desperately trying to market to a younger generation of moviegoers? Or, more probably, are these productions the result of the post-punk generation finally getting decision-making power. There has always been something frighteningly nostalgic about this generation. It may very well be that now that they are making marketing decisions it turns out they have absolutely nothing to say, are totally bankrupt, and sentimental remakes are the best effort they can muster. Whatever the reasons, these are often moments of cultural re-evaluation. A remake of a movie is not the same movie it once was. The times have changed, attitudes have changed, etc. Last years remake of The Stepford Wives, was, for example, notable as a humorous take on what was a horror movie. It is not clear what the latest crop of nostalgia is about, or even if it is possible to boil it down to any single coherent phenomenon. Suffice it to say that the rearward recourse to the comfort zone of past favorites is by no means limited to the movies. There are ample examples in all the other familiar sectors, not least of all music. But what happens when a group like Kraftwerk goes on tour? When the band first came out in 1971, the robotic music and performance was meant as a criticism of a technological world in which art would only become more and more automated, where the artist and musician was totally rendered obsolete. Over thirty years later the performance takes on a markedly different meaning. The hybrid man-machine is no longer considered an impending threat the way it was then. As the Stepford Wives remake illustrates, loss of personal identity to the domesticated machine has once again become an ideal in a way it has not been for some time. Without a healthy fear of robotic anti-consciousness, Kraftwerk’s message no longer has the same critical edge it had at the onset. In a gadget crazy era where robot pets are the craze in Tokyo, Kraftwerk comes off as pure Futurism, a la Marinetti. The stage-show background projections traced those tendencies as they have manifested themselves in various ways. It is worthwhile to note that as an Italian art movement much of what Futurism found sleek is classically derived. The bicyclists in the "Tour de France" video are definitely a marriage of the beautiful harmony of man and machine; the hard angularity of the model’s cheekbones in the video accompaniment to "The Model" might be a freak of nature but it is that freak of nature that the camera likes best; the neon bulb for "Neon Lights" derives much of its attractiveness from the acid definition of its edges; etc. In short, Futurism is traced right through our corporate esthetic. The entire stage show, in fact, with its giant video projections and laptop computers has the cultish feel of the business convention presentation. Remarkably, in an environment of rearward looking, Kraftwork never retreates completely to nostalgia and repeatedly manages to find a critical position by which it can maintain its relevance.