“Original” soundtrack: pastiche and political crisis in Eighties’ visual and audio revival

pastiche e crise política no revival sonoro e visual dos anos 80

Abstract

This article aims to analyze – taking Adorno ́s motto “the unsolved antagonisms of reality return in artworks as immanent problems of form” as a standpoint – the revival and reshaping of some visual and sound elements taken from the Eighties and inserted in contemporary cultural productions, most notably in vaporwave musical scene. By exaggerating aesthetic references to the limit of caricature and parody, this genre seeks to produce a new kind of aesthetical experience by the collage of fragments and debris from previous cultural experiences. Coincidentally, the Eighties are the same period in which neoliberalism gained steam in hegemonic countries (like US and UK) and witnessed the rise of yuppie subjectivity, which has Donald Trump as its main symbol. However, the contradiction arisen by the crisis of neoliberalism made room for another kind of revival: the resurgence of fascism in contemporary times. Coincidentally, the two main subgenres of vaporwave are Trumpwave (which praises exactly the greatest symbol of the neoliberal mentality) and Fashwave (whose main audience is the alt-right community and neo-fascist groups worldwide), yielding a visual and sonic collage between The Triumph of Will and Tron films. Based on this dillema, is it possible to analyze this “art of debris” as a peculiar way of dealing with both the frustration generated by the collapse of neoliberalism and its resemblance to fascism?