Culture Feature

This Haunts Me: Why Is Roy Orbison's "Crying" Always in Apocalyptic Movie Scenes?

It appears at critical moments in "Gummo" and "Mulholland Drive," among others, and always seems to signify something absolutely terrifying.

Apocalypse

Photo by Rowan Freeman-Unsplash

Roy Orbison's "Crying" is one of the most haunting songs I know.

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MUSIC

The Uncanny Inevitability of Whitney Houston's Musical Hologram Tour

Whitney Houston's hologram will tour this January through April.

A hologram of Whitney Houston is seen during the dress rehearsal of 'An Evening with Whitney Houston'

Photo by Oscar Gonzalez/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

This fall, Whitney Houston will go on tour.

Or at least, a holographic version of her will. The late singer's image—recreated via laser beam shot through a prism—will be transmitted out on stages across the world, allowing millions of fans to experience the star's legendary presence in not-quite real life. The tour will kick off in Mexico on January 23 and will end in Belarus on April 3rd.

Entitled "An Evening With Whitney," the tour will be "a celebration of her best work," according to Brian Becker, the chairman and CEO of BASE Hologram, the company responsible for this. Previously, BASE sent simulations of Roy Orbison and opera singer Maria Callas around the world.

Unless there's an afterlife and Whitney Houston is looking down from above, the real Whitney will have no say in where and how her image will be projected. Many fans aren't happy about that. "Capitalism will recreate your likeness and project it in front of millions, so it may posthumously profit off you for eternity," wrote one disparaging Twitter user. "There are truly no limits to its ethical depravity. Nothing is sacred."

Another wrote, "Utterly disrespectful and disgusting. Let the greats Rest In Power. Shameful they're using her name and likeness for this. An evening with Whitney? "That" is NOT Whitney Houston. I'm sorry Nippy, you deserved better."

It's true that Whitney Houston will have have no say in where her image is going to be sent and what she's going to sing on this tour. This raises a lot of questions about the dead and what it means to respect a person's posthumous legacy and autonomy.

Namely, what do we owe the dead? Is a hologram tour that different from a posthumous biographical film that pieces together a person's narrative? And if so, why?

Whitney Houston seems like an inevitable choice for a hologram tour, but in some ways she's also a particularly terrible selection because of how widely and deeply beloved she was and is. Fans are so tenaciously invested in her legacy that it seems like this concert has a good chance of being canceled, in both the real world and the digital one (the lines between these worlds, of course, are feeling blurrier by the day).

Still, is a hologram tour so different from what record companies have always done to artists, creating images and projections of who they are and selling them at thousands of dollars a seat? Regardless, there's something so profoundly uncanny about the concept of buying tickets to see a 3D representation of a deceased person that it's hard to imagine one of these tours ever sitting right.

In the end, hologram tours seem like the logical result of late capitalism's desire to drag every last penny out of each product and consumer, humanity's desire to transcend death, and the emergence of the technology that theoretically makes this transcendence possible. The problem is that Whitney Houston herself never signed off on her own rebirth—but if she had signed a waiver allowing her hologram to be projected after she dies, would that make a hologram tour more okay? What if a living artist started sending out holograms instead of (or even while) actually touring, and would it make a difference if the holograms were broadcast live? Or is there something irreplaceable and sacred about seeing your favorite artist in the flesh?


MUSIC

Don't Worry, Miley Cyrus Is Still Freaky

With "Mother's Daughter," Miley Cyrus makes a pro-choice tribute to feminist punks.

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Anyone still concerned that Miley Cyrus might be reverting back to her squeaky-clean Southern roots can stop right now, because it's clear that Miley isn't going back to white dresses and fields of wildflowers anytime soon.

Her newest video, "Mother's Daughter," finds her celebrating feminism, freedom of choice, queerness, and gender fluidity. She spends most of the video rolling around in a skin-tight red leather bodysuit and calling herself nasty, evil, and a witch—all words traditionally used to denounce women who don't comply with patriarchal norms. "Don't f**k with my freedom," goes the refrain, and it's clear that Cyrus is deadly serious: She has a fanged genitals to prove it.

Miley Cyrus - Mother's Daughter (Official Video)www.youtube.com

Though her performance comes off as slightly trite and exaggerated, the video's strongest point is its lineup of diverse bodies, all in flattering and powerful positions. That's a refreshing change from the legions of slim, mostly white, heteronormative-looking backup dancers that have been constants in music videos since the dawn of MTV. Guest features include 11-year-old philanthropist Mari Copley, body-positive actress and model Angelina Duplisea, dancer and activist Mela Murder, non-binary professional skateboarder Lacey Baker, trans models Aaron Phillip and Casil McArthur, and Cyrus's own mother, Tish Cyrus.

Overall, the video is decidedly intersectional, not exclusively fixated on race, gender, or sexuality but rather concerned with tearing down the boundaries between them. Along with its diverse cast, it features an array of feminist messages, including "virginity is a social construct" and "my body my choice" flashing between clips, alongside "images of breastfeeding, C-sections, menstruation pads—everything [about the female body] that's supposed to carry some taboo, but we should be beyond that," in the words of the video's director, Alexandre Moors. This imagery and the video's overall concept were modeled after the punk aesthetics of pioneering feminist groups like Riot Grrrl and Guerrilla Girls.

miley cyrus mother's daughterImage via YouTube

"The video is about the woman's body—the right to own your own body and make it free from the male gaze, in any way shape and form," said Moors in an interview with the New York Times. "It's a broad message, and we're not trying to be dogmatic. But we're living in difficult times in America, and what I get from this video is that it injects a lot of energy and determination and the right fuel for the struggle."

Still, in an era where social justice equals profit, it's likely that we'll be seeing more and more pop stars (or rather, their marketing teams) cashing in on diversity and social awareness. Sometimes, that will lead to painfully manufactured flops like Taylor Swift's ill-advised "You Need to Calm Down," which used a demographic Swift was not a part of as an accessory, so that she could place herself at the helm of a phony brand of allyship.

On the other hand, Cyrus—who is actually bisexual and who has a long history of supporting LGBTQ+ causes—comes off as a bit more genuine in this video than Swift did, as she's not trying to speak out for groups that she doesn't belong to. She also puts her own body on the line, drawing "mixed reactions" for its "intense imagery," according to Fox, and seemingly promising that her commitment to radical feminism is not just an act.

However, what really needs to happen in this era of social-justice-as-branding is the elevation of voices who actually belong to marginalized demographics. After all, Miley Cyrus has done performed her fair share of cultural appropriation, picking up and dropping identities at will; perhaps she's found her niche in intersectional feminism, but time will tell.

In the end, it's great when stars support intersectionality and representation, but that doesn't make up for actually recognizing artists who don't belong to dominant identities (or who aren't backed up by massive corporate record deals).

On the other hand, in a nation that seems closer to Handmaid's Tale-levels of dystopia each day, any protest is better than nothing, right?