I used to think it was silly that Haynes, in the 1984 scenes, outlined a vague conspiracy about bland corporate rock and its complicity with the security state. Now I’m not so sure—not when the much-heralded future of the entertainment industry is algorithmically generated home broadband sweeteners masquerading as art, and the act of consumption is beginning to resemble another British dystopia about aesthetic conformity, the one about being immobilized in a chair and subjected to an unrelenting torrent of brain-bleaching Content. Seen from the vantage of the endless 2020, Velvet Goldmine comes back around to universality. It inspires you to be not just a consumer, but an aesthete, curator, explorer, and invests those identities with life-or-death urgency.
That’s Me!
Mark Asch on Velvet Goldmine
(via alwaysalreadyangry)