La Hype Machine
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Later this week, a supposedly unforgettable, magical, vast, breathtaking and captivating cultural event is coming to Liverpool. It’s called La Machine and it’s a large-scale art project created by French artist François Delarozière.
I use the word “supposedly” because nobody can truly know whether it will live up to the various adjectives used above (which, like any good journalist, I lifted from the La Machine website) until they see it. Before that happens, the whole thing is surrounded in secrecy for the entirely understandable purposes of hype and PR.
North West Tonight has bought into this hype by running a series of stories on La Machine that say absolutely nothing about the project because the programme’s “08 correspondent”, Jayne Barrett, is “sworn to secrecy”. One report featured some taxi drivers looking at the “thing” off camera and saying stuff like “It’s amazing”. I mean, seriously.
The Sunday Telegraph is also at it. Its correspondent helpfully reported this weekend:
Moments after arriving at the workshop, I come face to face with the Liverpool machine, suspended on its mechanical float, not quite completed. Smaller than the elephant, it is none the less a mega-scale version of an animal. It is also less hefty and will not plod so much as prance or pounce. As many as 16 operators will manage its multi-directional movements, and it looks intricate enough to suggest that these will be impressive.
So, er, what the fuck is it? I appreciate that we aren’t dealing with WMD or Watergate here but what happened to the basic journalistic premise of finding something out and then telling your audience about it? If, as a reporter, you are “sworn to secrecy”, then where is the story?
I’m not a total news purist - there’s a place for fluffy stuff in a regional news programme - but even fluffy stuff should say something. This obviously isn’t news and, thanks to an almost complete lack of content or insight, it isn’t a feature either. It’s just pure, unadulterated hype.
Perhaps after the event has happened there will be some great pictures of what will probably be an entertaining show. It might have made sense to wait until then before covering it.
(PS It’s a spider isn’t it? It’s just a big bloody spider.)
Update, 4 September: Fancy that! It really is just a bloody big spider. And a bloody terrifying one at that. Remember, I half-heartedly guessed it here first.
No. 1 — September 5th, 2008 at 8:42 am
It’s been common knowledge that it was going to be a spider for months. Even the details of the programme have been knocking about for a bit. Isn’t the secrecy thing just aimed at keeping kids excited?
No. 2 — September 5th, 2008 at 9:52 am
You miserable bugger Dave. I’ll be sure to spam you with pictures from the launch later on.
No. 3 — September 5th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Right. I obviously just don’t understand this modern art.
No. 4 — September 6th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Philistine.
No. 5 — September 7th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
It’s not modern art, it’s street theatre, and pretty brilliant street theatre at that. It combines technology with music and theatrical spectacle. No narrative is required and no hidden meaning is to be discovered by the onlookers. Ask the hundreds of thousands of people who will have been enchanted by La Princess over this weekend and they’ll tell you that it was “sound, la”. And that’s all that Francois Delacroziere would desire.
No. 6 — September 12th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Heh. You got pwned on this one Dave. Quite a few friends of mine were sceptical, until they actually saw it too, including one who actually wept.
My uncharacteristically gushing musings on the hole thing are here: http://www.liverpoolcultureblog.co.uk/2008/09/liverpool-gets-it-right-la-princesse-farewell/
No. 7 — September 12th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Congratulations on becoming a one-stop La Machine multimedia node, Robbo. You deserve a medal for standing gawping at the thing for three days solid in the pissing rain.
Just to be clear though, I never said the thing was shit, I simply questioned the simplistic tone of the news coverage in the run-up to it, which was content-free, hype-driven and seemingly aimed at exciteable eight-year-olds.
After seeing it on TV, I agree it looked cool (although I’m not entirely sure I would have wept at the sight of it). The difference is that - like you - I waited to actually see it before commenting on how fucking marvellous it is, rather than blindly following the Liverpool council/Capital of Culture party line in advance of being able to make any useful judgement.
Pwned? Pah!