Postmodern views of Zoo TV.
"One nation under God has turned into one nation under the
influence of one drug-television"(Heroes). These were the leading words
of U2's Zoo TV concert extravaganza and an introduction into the possible
meaning behind the flashing TV's and flashy stage dressing of Zoo-TV. U2,
a band who just four years ago
stood on a bare stage singing songs about war and faith, had
become aware of the contradictions inherent in its position. By the
time of their breakthrough Joshua Tree, the band were multimillionaires,
but they dressed on stage like paupers and continued to rail against the
system; even though their position in the music industry had placed
them in the very system they railed against. Their struggle to resolve
such contradictions led them to a music and conceptual search
that incorporated postmodern realizations of the inescapability
of capitalism's inescapablity, media corruption, and the perversity
of technology.
Yet, in this ironic costume, they still wanted to communicate the
message of their music, which struggled to work through this madness
and refused to let go of such old fashioned topics like love, spirituality
and hope. This search resulted in the album Achtung Baby and the tour
that followed it, Zoo TV. Zoo TV was U2's response to both their
contradictions and the general postmodern condition and through
exaggeration of its symptoms they hoped to transcend the conditions.
"What do you want, what do you want?" These words ring
out over
an introduction of military like drum beats and satellite broadcasts.
A speeded up version of "An Ode to Joy" plays over news reports of
the Gulf War as U2's Zoo Station begins. U2's lead vocalist Bono
walks in to the electronic rhythms of the song with stiff and
marionette like movements dressed in a composite rock star outfit.
This is the wear of the first of two characters he plays in the
course of this show, the Fly. His leather pants are borrowed from Jim
Morrison, his jacket from the 1968 Elvis comeback special. One lyric
he sings during this song "Time is a train, makes the future look
past", speaks of the acceleration of life as we know it. Time "leaves
you standing at the station, your face pressed up against the glass".
Frederic Jameson also speaks of this condition in his essay
Postmodernism and Consumer Society. "One is tempted to say that the
very function of the news media is to relegate such recent historical
experiences as rapidly as possible into the past"(Jameson 1974). Here
Jameson comments on the media lampooned in the introduction of Zoo
TV. It streams information in such a way that events that occurred
only a week prior are relegated into yesterday's news. The postmodern
west is losing its ability to retain its past, and so lives more and
more in a perpetual present and a perpetual future. Recognizing this
loss, Zoo Station goes on to declare that it is ready to embrace
technology and the media. "I'm ready for the shuffle, ready for the
deal"(Zooropa). In this the U2 declares that they are ready to
embrace technology and capitalism, ready to be sold and sell
themselves ( Dolinar).
Following this admission, U2 then leads into the Fly.
This is
first single from Achtung Baby and also the origin of Bono's Fly
character. Throughout this song, the breakdown of meaning is
explored. One possible cause of this breakdown mentioned is the
disappearance of the modern conscience. "It's no secret that a
conscience can sometimes be a pest"(The Fly) Late capitalism has
completely distorted the origin of the things we consume. It has
estranged the consumer from the origin of our products and erases
their history. Though many hours of backbreaking labor may go into
the nicely packaged shirt we purchase, we remain ignorant of it.
Without a sense of history, we can deceive ourselves, and the song
suggests that our ready consumption of commercials encourage that
self-deception.
The nature of that deception and self-deception is explored
more
explicitly as "The Fly" bleeds into "Even Better than the Real
Thing". At the conclusion of "The Fly" The Fly gives a short
introduction to the show. He holds an exaggerated remote control and
zaps the televisions mounted on the stage. This is a simulation of
our own TV habits, and when he stops on a serious program, he changes
it and remarks "That's the thing about TV, when something serious
comes on, you just change the channel". Through this monologue the
Fly, a parody himself, parodies the viewing habits of the fans at the
concert. He concludes his speech by ending the channel flipping and
exclaiming "but you didn't come all the way out here to watch TV now
did ya", and launching into the Baudillard inspired "Even Better than
the Real Thing"
In Baudillard's Procession of the Simulcrea, Baudillard
claims
that signs have replaced the real in culture, and U2's song points to
this as well. As the Fly sings "You're the real thing, even better
than the real thing" to the simulated images on the flashing
television screens that surround him, he places Baudillard's theory
that the hyper-real has replaced the real into the eyes of the
concert audience. Through pointing out that consumer culture promises
us products better than reality, U2 admits the pervasiveness that
consumer culture has on the modern experience. The song speaks of
false transcendence that consumerism promises in "take me higher, you
will take me higher" as well as the emptiness behind its
promises "we're free to fly the crimson sky, the sun won't melt our
wings tonight".
The first three songs performed in Zoo TV contain
shades of
postmodern theory and suggest a postmodern outlook on life. The
fourth song in the lineup, however, begins a transition to the second
stage of this multimedia spectacle. "Mysterious Ways", which also
searches for the transcendent, begins with the question "is she going
to be there when I hit the ground?" Unlike "Even Better that the Real
Thing" the she in this song has a personality. "She" talks of things
the singer can't understand, like love and truth. The song ends
affirming meaning by claiming "one day you'll look back and you'll
see where you held, high by this love".
Through this song U2 transitions to the Elvis stage of
their
show, a stage where the trappings on the stage remain, but
the songs are transparent. Much like Elvis sang "How
great thou art" surrounded by the flash and surface in Las Vegas, U2
sing non ironic songs like the civil rights affirming "Pride" and the
heaven alluding "Where the Streets Have No Name"while illuminated by
TV
screens. The song that begins this stage is "One" and with lyrics like
"one life, but we're not the same"
it addresses isolation and uncertainty, but affirms that we get to
"carry each
other" anyway. Also, the TV screens,previously used during the Fly
as means of sensory overload and alienation, now slowly flash "One"
in
various languages. Jameson's pastiche is in evidence as U2 makes use
of
a stage that extends into the crowd, borrowing from the little square
stage used in the 1968 comeback Elvis special. The finale song of
this stage is "Where the Streets Have No Name" and the accompanying
video to the song is a film of the band made in 1987. In the course
of the show, the Fly turns around and waves at the film. This film,
made while U2 were creating their image for the bare-bones Joshua
Tree, shows the band dressed in Amish clothing and walking in Joshua
Tree national park. The song itself sings about transcendence in the
abandonment of material idolization. The singer wrote the song after
volunteering six weeks of his time to be a relief worker in Ethiopia.
He has said that he wrote it after seeing the spiritual richness present
in the lives of the Ethiopians and comparing it to spiritual poverty he saw
in the western world.
It is this belief, that much of the meaningless of modern
life is self-created, that I feel drives
the existence of the grand narrative in U2 songs. They realize that
in our media and surface greedy western world that much of the
postmodern bogeymen observations hold merit. However, they perceive
them as only constructs of late capitalistic society, and do not
believe they represent the ultimate human reality.
It is this hope of overcoming this late capitalistic
mindset
that drives the final stage of Zoo-TV. In this stage we see the Fly
morph into Macphisto. Macphisto, which is a stage character
influenced by late period Elvis, televangelists and
CS Lewis's ironic admonitions of devil named Screwtape; acts as a symbol
of the late capitalist
reality in the show. Macphisto's monologue "I gave you capitalism
so you can all dream as being as wealthy and famous as me"asserts a
satanic quality and his lounge lizard movements are reminiscent of Las Vegas
performances. When Macphisto sings in
Lemon "these are the days when our world has gone asunder, and these
are the days when we look for something other" he speaks of the
collapse of the modern belief in rational evolution. Instead, these
are the days when the things we have built are destroying us.
However, since U2 retain a belief in spiritual existence, these are
also the days when "we look for something other".
The dual assertion that a devil like character represents
the
crumbling of late 20th century life, but that redemption is still
possible, drives this final stage of the performance. The Fly, which
symbolizes Elvis and capitalism, becomes Macphisto, a symbol of late
capitalism and fat tired Elvis. However, U2 end the concert by
allowing Macphisto to dissolve back into a human and in this
providing hope for an eventual transcendence of late 20th century
western reality. In the final song, Macphisto's make-up runs off and
his vocal affections change. He asks for a lady from the audience to
come up and dance with him and at the climax of the song lets out a
passionate cry that symbolizes the humanity still existing in him.
U2, rather than giving an apocalyptic ending to their tale of life
in
late-capitalistic society, allow an atonement of humanity in this
symbolic performance. Thus, the resulting tour is not entirely
postmodern in itself, but rather a reaction to the postmodernism that
surrounds them. They exaggerate and mock the symptoms of the post-
modernity through abusing technology and mimicking rock star cliches,
but ultimately hold on to a meta-narrative and try to inject this
into the bloated monster of postmodern life.