Event Title
Revealing the spectacle between bass drops: a Situationist reading of Nero
Location
Panel 28: Kearney 314
Start Date
27-10-2012 3:00 PM
End Date
27-10-2012 4:30 PM
Description
The lyrics and aesthetics present within DJ Nero’s music videos and songs seem to question reality as it is commonly known and consistently remind listeners of the widespread presence of commercialism and social conformity. These musical, rhetorical and visual aesthetics seem to draw from a poststructuralist Marxian social analysis similar to that which is used by Guy Debord and Paul Vanageim as part of the Situationist movement of 1968. An embrace of a Situationist theoretical lens in the analysis of the electronic dance music (EDM) produced by DJ Nero can then be understood as a detournement or “revolutionary juxtaposition of meaning” which can reveal the spectacle or Capitalist pseudo-reality as it currently operates within society and the various cultural sites of meaning wherein that spectacle can be opposed and its continuous cultural reproduction can be temporarily halted. The music and music videos of DJ Nero can be then situated as a force of resistance to the spectacle, which, along with other resistant entities, such as the Occupy movement, works to reconfigure various aspects of the spectacular system in order to create various cultural moments of truth in a society reliant on the continuous production of falsity.
Additional Files
Revealing the spectacle between bass drops: a Situationist reading of Nero
Panel 28: Kearney 314
The lyrics and aesthetics present within DJ Nero’s music videos and songs seem to question reality as it is commonly known and consistently remind listeners of the widespread presence of commercialism and social conformity. These musical, rhetorical and visual aesthetics seem to draw from a poststructuralist Marxian social analysis similar to that which is used by Guy Debord and Paul Vanageim as part of the Situationist movement of 1968. An embrace of a Situationist theoretical lens in the analysis of the electronic dance music (EDM) produced by DJ Nero can then be understood as a detournement or “revolutionary juxtaposition of meaning” which can reveal the spectacle or Capitalist pseudo-reality as it currently operates within society and the various cultural sites of meaning wherein that spectacle can be opposed and its continuous cultural reproduction can be temporarily halted. The music and music videos of DJ Nero can be then situated as a force of resistance to the spectacle, which, along with other resistant entities, such as the Occupy movement, works to reconfigure various aspects of the spectacular system in order to create various cultural moments of truth in a society reliant on the continuous production of falsity.
Comments
This presentation was not listed in the NEPCA 2012 Conference Program.