BBC Newsnight Sirens Sing-Scream 2014

Taking things out of context is one of the most effective creative techniques out there. Sure, there is an element of vandalism and appropriation at play, but creativity was never about keeping the contextual sanctity of the original. Context is for IP-holders. Things are much more interesting when you go beyond and try something different. Even if it is just taking one element out of the whole and presenting it on its own.

Case in point - this thing.


This is an excerpt from the conclusion of an episode of BBC Newsnight from December 2014. In it we're shown a scene from the play Sirens by Ontroerend Goed theater company. They were staging this play around that time at Soho Theater, so it was pretty sweet promotional plug. You can't ask for a better way of exposing your play to the wider audience.

The bit is prefaced by clumsy and somewhat awkward explanation from the presenter. He attempts to prepare the viewer for what they are about to experience. He describes the whole thing as "short taste" His tongue is firmly in cheek but he keeps a straight face. That was classy.

The excerpt itself is a bunch of women screaming, crying, hollering, screeching, shouting, shrieking, squalling, roaring, yelling, bawling, yawping, yawling. The presenter describes it as Sing-Screaming. It is the beginning of the play so it makes sense to make a bang from the get go. The whole thing is a kind of "irreverent feminist manifesto for the 21st century" that captures the spirit of the age. The problem is that this bit is taken out of context and put through an ironic filter.

In the context of this particular bit - the play and what it is about - doesn't really matter. There is not enough information to make a point and the excerpt itself is pretty self-contained and self-explanatory. What you experience instead - is the video that features two parts - the preface and the exceprt. Lack of cohesion between the two and the fact that both are torn out of their respective products makes them an odd pair.

Funny thing is - it works that way.

The many faces of DC Comics' Joker

Joker is one of the most versatile characters on the DC Comics villain roster. While this often results in the character being overexposed and overused, there is a reason for that.

Joker is a shorthand of a perfect comic book villain. You can do many things with him without bending over backwards. The basics of the character always stay the same - green-haired, purple-suited permanently grinning, tenaciously laughing psychopath with a knack for theatrics.

However, the characterization itself changes with the time and the attitude of the author.

Since there's a movie coming out soon, let's look at the most prominent iterations of the character.

1
The original Joker was a thug with a gimmick. He was a sociopath with no remorse whatsoever regarding his actions.

He was killing people left and right. Sometimes bluntly with no excessive theatrics. Sometimes exuberantly elaborately.

He was unhinged and somewhat reckless but not going overboard with the bombastic theatrical swoosh. He had a distinct style that differentiated him from the rest of the Gotham's crooks - a brand of sorts. But it wasn't his defining feature, just a coat of arms.

2
Later on, he morphed into a bizarre Clown Prince of Crime as seen in Silver Age comics.

Comics Code of Authority put a kibosh on the visceral violent antic, so the character needed a reinvention.

The characterization became much more cartoony, but if you think about it - the theatrics and the attitude of Silver Age Joker is rather chilling, to say the least.

All of his zany antics act as a symbolism taken to the extreme. It is weird, and you can't really tell when it is just a joke and whether it is going to be just a joke.

However, because of that, the gimmick became the personality. And that is how the character was presented from then on. It's not like it was detrimental to the concept. Quite the opposite, it helped to solidify the essence of the character.

3
On the other hand, O'Neil/ Adams Joker is a combination of the previous two iterations.

This Joker had the theatrics of the Silver Age, and at the same time, he retains the danger of a rabid dog. I think this is the definitive version of the Joker in terms of consistent characterization.

It had the right balance of nasty and odd. O'Neil/Adams' stories were showcasing Joker as an unpredictable psychopath with a knack for theatrics and quite practical managing skills in terms of maintaining a gang of crooks and planning his elaborate crimes to a tee.

This reinvention of the Joker reinvigorated the popularity of the character, and this led to Joker's most odd and random hour. He received his own solo series.

4
Solo series Joker is a very odd interpretation of the character. It is kind of O'Neil/ Adams iteration that devolved into Silver Age zany because it gagged and bound by the CCA guidelines.

In other words, Joker had to do Joker stuff, but it wasn't allowed to be anything but goofing around. 

The series depicts Joker as a master criminal who a taste for the show and some blunt and nasty attitude all while channeling Silver Age goofiness and slapstick. This combination creates some intense cognitive dissonance.

There is an issue where Joker taunts an actor who thinks he is Sherlock Holmes. If you pass through the clumsy scripting - the whole thing is downright cruel.

5
Frank Miller's Joker is O'Neil/ Adams version amplified up to eleven. This Joker means trouble and when he actually means it - this is some terrible, awful, horrible news.

In terms of showcasing what Joker in action really means - this is the most striking example. He kills people left and right with no apparent reason apart from causing the commotion and enacting chaos. He is unpredictable because he got no endgame, just the process.

In addition to that, Miller's Joker got very distinct death drive. Unlike any other interpretation of the character, this Joker wants to go to the absolute extreme.

6
Alan Moore's Joker is a rather strange take on the character. His iteration is more or less inverted Batman, and that was the whole point of the story in a way (among other things).

Moore fleshed out the character to the point of dissipating the initial mystery of the character and instead of creating another mystery of Joker's train of thought. However, it did a big disservice for the character. Fleshing out the character's journey turned him into something else that is based on the concept but not really represents it.

Since the whole story was ambiguous all the way anyway - the entire thing was impressionist padding for the sake of pareidoliastic fleshing out.

With that being said - this version of the character is downright nasty. The whole Barbara Gordon episode is disturbing, and the way he attempts to break Commissioner Gordon is vile and sickening.

7
Grant Morrison's Serious House Joker had an emphasis on being a really-really violent fellow with some weird, cruel, and manipulative tints.

He was a psychopath with lapses of character and distorted perception of reality. It was a great spin on the concept - it avoided overexplaining things while retaining a nondescript but definitely unambiguous sense of threat.

On the other hand, Morrison's latter regular continuity Joker was more traditional take primarily based on O'Neil/ Adams version. It had some splashes of Silver Age zaniness, but the core character was rooted in the 70s iteration and offered no new insights.

8
The Man Who Laughs Joker takes on the original concept of the character and amps it up to eleven. There is a resonance with the O'Neil/ Adams version, but it is distinctly a thing of its own.

This Joker is a career criminal with a gimmick. He is deranged and utterly nihilistic. Nevertheless, he's a little bit improvisational here and can have a laugh for laugh's sake just because why not in the end. There also this maddening completely spontaneous streak in expressing his thoughts.

Despite that, his actions are logical and clearly planned. He's there to orchestrate mayhem that benefits him and provides with opportunities to grab what he currently wants.

This approach is further elaborated in The Devil's Advocate story. This Joker is O'Neil/ Adams version updated to the current times and a little bit intensified.

He's the man with the plan who can pretend to be absolutely mental when necessary but otherwise he is the guy who knocks. And smiles.

9
Elseworlds' Batman: Nosferatu got an interesting take on the character. In this story - he is murderous cyborg, which is an interesting direction to explore.

There is a slight reference to T-1000 with a more sadistic twist and horrifying self-awareness. It is not well-developed in the narrative, but the concept is fascinating.

10
Flashpoint version of Joker is a u-turn. For instance, instead of being an enigmatic character, the origin of this iteration is more than well-known.

In this case, the Joker is Martha Wayne, who went mad after her son was killed in a random mugging incident.

This version of Joker is implied to be a really nasty one. The comments of her misdeeds are peppered throughout the stories. But we have only glimpsed what she is capable of and what she had already done. There is a lot left to be explored. 

However, suggestions and implications are working better than just showing off the stuff. It gets your imagination working, and it is the right way of building up the menace of the character.
After all, when you have such a set-up for the character - there is a lot to chew regardless.

13
Brian Azzarello's Joker is probably the nastiest, most wicked and vile, and at the same time the most grounded (for the lack of the better word) take on the character.

It depicts him as a career criminal with a lot of baggage that is expressed and elaborated through his theatrical gimmick.

In a way, he is not very different from Richard Stark's Parker. Given the fact that he just moves forward from scene to scene as a knife through butter makes him really scary. He's driven by his goal and doesn't really care where it takes him because, in the end, he will get what he wants.

13
Scott Snyder's Joker is inspired by Frank Miller's take on O'Neil/ Adams version. This Joker is nasty and deranged. He does stuff that distresses. It takes Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns Joker's death drive and elaborates on it, adding new shades and figuring more setpieces to the mix.

He enjoys being bad. There is this hollowness in the characterization that makes the character unknowable, even ununderstandable. He's not much of character to speak of but a force of nature that wrecks and wrecks and wrecks.

In order to present this new and improved iteration of the character - Snyder got his cut off his face and wears it as a mask.  Then he goes on to orchestrate an increasingly chaotic spectacle that leads to literal down and dirty endgame between him and his nemesis.

***

Exploring the Joker character is an exciting journey. He was taken in many different directions and was used to represent different kinds of evil depending on the intentions of the authors and the tune of the zeitgeist. 

However, in every iteration he retained that demented vibe that kept all the disparate versions of the character consistent. 

That's a testament to the power of the Joker character concept.

The Rubber Band - Cream Songbook review

I've heard the strangest thing lately. But first a bit of backstory. During the Independence weekend i've visited Odesa for no apparent reason but to listen to some late 60s hard rock through the wall during the periods of rest in-between the night out in the city. The playlist was not very diverse. There was Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, lots of 60s Deep Purple (an odd choice, but stranger things happened) and also lots and lots of Blue Cheer and Cream. Especially the latter. I guess i've listened to their entire discography through the wall for three days in the row. Now that's something i can be proud of!

And for some reason, Cream-related content started to follow me around. First i've a guy playing "Sunshine of your love" in the subway passage, then i've head "White room" on the radio, then i saw a commercial with "Strange Brew" all over it. And then i've looked through the newsfeed of my favorite blogs and saw Cream cover album of all things.

And because i'm good at writing pointless things - i thought it would be a good idea to write a review of this album. Because The Beatles "Because".

The album in question is "Cream Songbook" by The Rubber Band.

It is one of the series of releases that reinterpreted then white hot rock music into something else. Some albums tried electronic music like Wendy Carlos "Switched-on Bach", some went into a user-fiendly muzak direction. This album is the latter. 

The albums starts with lounge version of "Deserted Cities of the Heart" with its teeth pulled out and balls busted into a soup. Now the song sounds like an Eleanor Rigby cousin with some drums tacked on its with a scotch tape. It is a James Last level of atrocity. You have Sinatra-cheese strings bumbling through the song making it nice. The main melody is handled by the obnoxious placeholder flute which makes you want to bath in acid. Drums are trying their best to drag this song to the end in a breathless run-through. 

Track 2 is "White Room". It leaves the string section to do some stuff on their own and it is actually pretty serviceable lyrical composition. 

The melody is entwined into an arrangement more naturally and it doesn't feel like a placeholder sticking its tongue. The strings move like a cloud of steam brushed by the fan, the melody swirls around feeling lost barely scratching the surface. 

Then, slowly but surely the piano starts to move from the background to the foreground and by the middle of the song it starts to take over like emotions breaking through the shell. It is really good arrangement. The piano breakout changes the flow of the string section and makes it more intense. By the end, the composition presses itself against the wall in a stalemate. There is no closure but it works so well with this cliffhanger coda.

So naturally the promise of track 2 is squandered by track 3. "Toad" is Ginger Baker's showcase composition, a drum extravaganza he pushed to the conceptual limit with his latter project "Ginger Baker's Air Force". Ginger Baker is very good at music psychology. He knows how to tell the story by playing an instrument. If you listen to "Toad" - there is so much going on - it is like a tsunami meeting a tornado and stumbling upon a volcano to have a firecracker party. None of this is present in this rendition. It is just a melody bookends and the drums playing bunch of stuff.

"Those were the days" is more of "Deserted Cities of the Heart" kitschy detournement, but this time  i is less appalling. The thing sounds like a stage end screen music in a Sonic The Hedgehog 2. The strings are doing buzzsaw seesaw and some swirls while the flutes are mostly in the background. They don't carry a melody so they are tolerable. The string arrangement of the middle section is actually quite good. It would not sound out of place on some Moody Blues record. 

"We're Going Wrong" gets back to the "White Room" format and it works incredibly well. It is probably the highlight of an album. 

I always thought the original version lacked the detail in sound design to fit its themes. The Rubber Band version pulls of the morbid tone of the song wih its superb string arrangement. It is a tone poem with an ominous vibe, eerie atmosphere and haunting sense of creeping dread. It feels like a lost theme from some Hammer Studios production. 

You can almost feel the fog coming down and getting thicker while the light starts to crack from the horizon lighting up some nondescript vague shapes and outlining the desolate landscape. The moment it hits crescendo you're dumbfounded into stillness. It is astonishing. 

Naturally, it is followed by the very worst muzak lounge rendition of "Sunshine of your Love". There is a flute cheese artillery and some zing cringe harpsichord. It is as pointless and annoying as it gets. If you This is some Abu Ghraib level of sonic torture. The guitar solo is performed on guitar and it is so out of place you think your sound system signal had an intrusion of a pirate transmission. The end is an attempt at making a psych-out rave up and it truly sounds like the end of the world, the whimper compressed into a thunderous roar version.

"Dance the night away" tries to pull off "White Room" trick but it falls flat. In fact it is so flat and featureless, you start to question the integrity of the third dimension. It is a wallpaper music. But it would sound fine backwards with tape delay and phasing.

"Sweet wine" is horrible. It is like "Toad" but with more flutes, pan flutes, oboes, recorders and other whistling instruments. It sounds like the spirit of Frank Sinatra had possessed someone and got himself into the exorcism session which ended with a binge-watch of Teletubbies. 

The last track of an album, "Strange Brew" sticks to the original, save for swingy organ replacing the organ. While it sounds just like the Cream original, it is also incredibly not punchy and oddly grooveless. It is truly a background music version of a smoking rocker tune. Unlike the other poor renditions on this album, it is not offensive, just pointless. The conclusion is another variation on the end of the world, the whimper compressed into a thunderous roar version.

So that's "The Rubber Band - Cream Songbook" album. While it is definitely a cash-in on the popular act, it is not without its merit. "White Room" is really good, while "We're Going Wrong" is a tremendous interpretation of the song that needs to be implemented into some period gothic horror. These two need a listen. The rest is mostly by-the-numbers lounge muzak.