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Punctum
By George
Chen
Retro
rockets
LIKE A LOT
of records that are being lauded these days, Laurie Anderson's
Big Science came out in 1982. It isn't an obvious choice
for a primer on new wave, because she was not part of any wave,
but it does capture the era's alienation and politics. Originally
released as a single in 1981, "O Superman" starts side
B with a loop that sounds like an exhalation while Anderson sings
and talks through a vocoder. She has a thing for phones and technology,
so there's a tentative answering machine skit in which a mother
leaves a message that goes cosmically askew. You're not aware of
the character change at first, but it becomes obvious when the already
creepy voice intones, "You don't know me, but I know you, and
I've got a message to give to you. Here come the planes."
The character
Frank in the movie Donnie Darko is a humanoid rabbit from
the future that saves the title character from a falling jet engine.
Frank's voice also sounds like it's run through a vocoder, and if
one compares the associated falling planes in both the movie and
the music, it seems like more than cold war paranoia on Anderson's
part. As the song progresses, though, the planes she sings of are
"American planes, made in America." Maybe she's gazing
through time as Donnie does.
Perhaps you
don't think about apocalypses all that often, but if you've ever
given them much thought, Donnie Darko and Big Science
are things you probably shouldn't watch or listen to late
at night.
All of the best
films about an apocalypse were made in the 1980s, along with their
attendants: dystopian fantasies. Even though many of these might
have been really bad movies, there was the unified schematic of
a future world (circa now?) made uninhabitable by environmental
destruction and/or nuclear war. Often this was just an excuse to
mix frontier westerns with cheesy sci-fi special effects,
bands of badasses that had to become mercenaries or cannibals to
get by, but there was a link that seemed to play out all of the
deregulation policies from the Reagan era. Released in 2001, Donnie
Darko even takes pains to place itself at the end of Reagan's
second term most likely because it was a great time for End Times.
Anderson was
high art, though, not Hollywood schlock. She was not going to get
all Robocop on anyone, even with her vocoder aimed at the
powers that be. No, she's got to be subtle for some reason. "And
I said, 'OK, who is this really?' and the voice said, 'This is the
hand. The hand that takes.' " Is this the "invisible hand"
of Adam Smith, the economic logic that justified all of the trickle
down that evaporated before it hit us? Or is it like Freddy Krueger's,
waiting for us to nod off?
The vocoder
itself sounds dated to the period, removing traces of gender and
accent to give a sense of robotic objectivity. The Bell Labs invention
was even used in military communication experiments before its musical
application kicked in, and then it was rampant in electro and kitschfests
like Styx's "Mr. Roboto." Anderson uses its impersonal
tone to cut through the novelty, and she hits marrow. There's something
beautiful and sad in her delivery of the song's minimalist plea:
"So hold me mom, in your long arms, in your automatic arms,
your electronic arms ... your petrochemical arms, your military
arms." It answers the fear of war with the logic that built
the arsenal, longing for the safety of a metallic womb or shadow-government
bunker.
By some counts,
we've been through all of our fictional dystopias already –
1984 passed, the birthday of fellow disembodied voice HAL went by
without a hiccup, the Y2K bust was a bust. America is the toughest
jock on the block, but we are told to keep rolls of duct tape handy,
perhaps so we can to do to our enemies what Emilio Estevez did to
Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club.
Why, then, does
a 20-year-old record with a gimmicky sound effect still give me
goose bumps? Cue Laurie: " 'Cause when love is gone, there's
always justice. And when justice is gone, there's always force."
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