Secreted thesis (slight return)

 

From the NME 1974 Annual - which as is the wont of annuals, is really a survey of 1973.

Sorry, don't want to trample on any memories here, but this is just hideous

Glam-era-ous Japan

 

anti-theatricality and politics (theatre of war)

".... hundreds of serving generals and admirals were summoned from their postings around the world for a televised meeting on Tuesday with Trump and Hegseth, at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. “Central casting,” the President said, beaming at the officers in the audience, who sat listening impassively, as is their tradition. He praised his own peace efforts, particularly in the Middle East, and mused about bringing back the battleship (“Nice six-inch sides, solid steel, not aluminum,” which “melts if it looks at a missile coming at it”), then issued what sounded like a directive. He proposed using American cities as “training grounds” for the military, envisioning a “quick-reaction force” that would be sent out at his discretion. “This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room,” Trump said, like a theatre teacher trying to gin up interest in the spring musical. “That’s a war, too. It’s the war from within.....    

But the generals and the admirals assembled at Quantico might have reasonably noticed a paradox: although Trump seems to want no restraints on what he can do with the military, he hasn’t yet articulated anything specific for it to do, other than make a show of reducing crime in places where the rate is generally already falling....

“It all starts with physical fitness and appearance,” Hegseth said. He mentioned beards and fat (he’s against them) more than he did drones or missiles. “It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon,” he added. “It’s a bad look.” But does Hegseth want the best generals, or just the best skinny ones?...

"... On Tuesday, the White House announced that troops would be sent to Portland to “crush violent radical left terrorism.” That sounded much more frightening than the policy details reported by Oregon Public Radio: two hundred National Guard troops would be sent to provide additional security at federal facilities. For now, there is a heavy element of make-believe in the President’s domestic military ambitions....

The President’s lawyers asserted in a letter to Congress that the country is now formally in an “armed conflict” with the drug trade broadly, a determination through which Trump can claim extraordinary wartime powers. (There have been three more lethal attacks on boats in the southern Caribbean since early September, the most recent on Friday.) Each of these steps has elements of military theatrics and cosplay authoritarianism, but the more the White House insists on the trappings of war—the troop deployments, the “warrior ethos” grooming, the emergency legal powers—the more it risks nudging us toward an actual one."

- Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker. 

"The entire program is lavishly and howlingly fascist, of course, but it is also so preposterous and so small. All of this underwrought bombast and frantic churning bullying is doing real and unjust damage in actual people's lives, but it is also slick with the sort of flopsweat that adheres to the phrase "like and subscribe." In the absence of governance, or just in its place, the state has taken up a grim and shameful kind of content creation. The conservative elite, all purpose and prayerfulness in their powerful offices, now has to crash out about nonbinary baristas and kick around sophomores with septum piercings for clout, like common influencers.

Again, this all emanates from and returns to Trump himself, whose industry as a content creator is exceeded only by his blank and insatiable appetite for consuming it. There is a certain type of content that the big guy likes, which is mostly cops roughing up bad guys but also rich people attending fancy parties and crowds rising for him in unanimous applause and footage of missiles blowing things up. The political culture now works mostly to create those images for him and explain why they are so popular and important. It shows them over and over again, and discusses them in tones of calculated awe—are they bigger, will there be more, how radical or reckless or bold are they, do you think, relative to the ones from yesterday, or last week?"

- David Roth - The United States of Snitches

"It is sometimes considered gauche, in the world of American political commentary, to give words the weight of their meaning. As this thinking goes, there might be real belief, somewhere, in the provocations of our pundits, but much of it is just performance, and it doesn’t seem fair to condemn someone for the skill of putting on a good show. But Kirk was not just putting on a show. He was a dedicated proponent of a specific political program. He was a champion for an authoritarian politics that backed the repression of opponents and made light of violence against them."

- Jamelle Bouie 

"We are a bored, decadent nation, and we wanted a show, not a minority woman with actual plans for governing. The voters got bored with the show that replaced White House Apprentice, so they brought it back." - Tom Nichols

"Three years ago I taught a class at Harvard on the “theater of protest”— designed to help people understand why so many protests turn out to be Republican campaign videos working directly against the interests of the original protest.

A protest is an invitation to a better world.

It’s a ceremony.

No one accepts a ceremonial invitation when they’re being screamed at.

More important you have to know who the real audience of the protest is.

The audience is NEVER the police, the politicians, the Board of supervisors, Congress,etc.

The audience is always the American people, who are trying to decide who they can trust; who will not embarrass them.

If you win them, you win power at the box office and power to make positive change.

Everything else is a waste.

There are a few ways to get there:

1. Let women organize the event. They’re more collaborative. They’re more inclusive, and they don’t generally bring the undertones of violence men do.

2 Appoint monitors, give them yellow, vests and whistles. At the first sign of violence, they blow the whistles and the real protester sit down.

Let the police take out their aggression on the anarchists and the provocateurs trying to discredit the movement.

3. Dress like you’re going to church. It’s hard to be painted as a hoodlum when you’re dressed in clean, presentable clothes.

They don’t have to be fancy they just signal the respect for the occasion that you want to transmit to the audience.

4. Make your protest silent. Demonstrate your discipline to the American people. Let signs do the talking.

5. Go home at night. In the dark, you can’t tell the cops from the killers. Come back at dawn fresh and rested.

I have great fear that Trump’s staging with the National Guard and maybe the Marines is designed to clash with anarchists who are playing into his hands and offering him the opportunity to declare an insurrection.

It’s such a waste and it’s only because we haven’t thought things through strategically.

Nothing I thought of is particularly original.

It was all learned by watching the early civil rights protests in the 50s and 60s.

And it was the discipline and courage of African-Americans that drew such a clear line in the American sand that people were forced to take sides and that produced the civil rights act.

The American people are watching and once again if we behave in ways that can be misinterpreted, we’ll see this explained to the public in Republican campaign videos benefiting the very people who started this."

- Peter Coyote on protest as street theatre 

Glamorous Ghost

 Truly one of the immaculate TOTP appearances

The Subotnick-level electronics, the haunting refrain, the xylo tingles... the drumlessness  .... the hair... the white mask of Sylvian's face... the beauty of the other Japaneers....  even the shirt Sylvian is wearing

and the incredible video FX, still futuristic after all these years

It's quite amazing the way that the Top of the Pops camera crew and lighting people responded to the song, rose to the occasion... it feels like they knew something extraordinary was required for this appearance, or should I say, apparition. Every angle, every shot, enhances the song and cordons off the Japan performance in a special heightened pocket of the program, so different is the approach to how the other bands in that edition are presented. 

No wonder Mark Fisher, aged 14, was chilled in his bones, harrowed in his marrow * 

Appearances like these are one of the reasons why the late 80s UK Hit Parade felt so disappointing - such a fall from Associates, Japan, et al. 

Although the rot started as early as 1983 - the year after this was broadcast.

The whole 1982 episode is a good one

Imagination - their best song maybe, although the video is corny

The Gary Numan track, funnily enough, is from when he starts copying Japan - the fretless Karn-atic bass. A solid effort although nothing tops the Replicas / Pleasure Principle era material.

Alongside "Fade To Grey", this - "The Damned Don't Cry" is Visage's equal-first best tune. Is the video inspired by the Visconti movie?. Although a clothes horse, as a singer Steve Strange does pretty good job with the ashen Bowie-Low style. 

Even the tune from Classic Nouveaux - godawful group, I thought at the time - is quite diverting. Those strange drums.

(Forgot to mention ABC, "Poison Arrow" - discussed in the comments)

Tight Fit is good honest British tack.

The only real slop is the Leo Sayer tune. 

And then the incongruity of Derek and the Dominoes's "Layla" receiving a dance routine from one of Zoo. A flashback to a completely different rock zeitgeist. From a funny moment in the early '80s when various classic rock singles were reissued for reasons unknown and made the pop charts: Black Sabbath "Paranoid", Lynyrd Skynyrd "Freebird".

But Japan cut through it all with the astonishing stillness, the grace and gravity of Sylvian's performance

* my response to Mark's paean to Japan / The Tin Drum / "Ghosts" is in some ways the seed, or a seed, of Shock and Awe

As mentioned by Ed in comments, another apparition of "Ghosts" on BBC teevee - The Old Grey Whistle Test.