DJ Medhi, Layton, Winehouse: A Dead Famous Person or The Collective Ritual

The death of famous people does something funny to the common people left behind. It's not quite like loosing a friend with whom you've actually talked to, established a reciprocal relationship with, it's more like loosing a collective notion, idea or product embodied by a human. 

Obviously everyone agrees that death is a sad event - it's difficult for humans to conceive of their own mortal nothingness - but when it comes to celebrity deaths it generally turns out to be this really great opportunity to connect with all the living people left behind. Over and over again similar things occur: facebookers change their facebook statuses quoting their last words (Jack Layton), tweeters tweet #allmythoughtstothefamily (DJ Mehdi), bars play their music again (Amy Winehouse), the highest-grossing documentaries of all time are produced (Michael Jackson), prices skyrocket (Lucian Freud) and solo shows sell out (Alexander McQueen); and all this with the best indications that they were simply geniuses, that success and death are anecdotal.... 

Overall a virtuous circle gets established through general mobilization: everyone wants to partake in this collective mourning or performative event where the famous person's death and life get washed-down, simplified and commodified into a tasty digestible narration. Unlike those that are still alive, famous dead people can't disappoint. Unlike those that are still alive, famous dead people get closer to home and in a sense become more alive than when they were actually alive.

Consuming a famous dead person is both an attempt to belong to and by those left behind and an honest mechanism of panic in front of oblivion.

Hence, because DJ Mehdi died earlier this week, as a way to confront death and in the hope to be part of a collective CBC played this - I never knew he produced it, but Tonton Du Bled was a huge hit when I was 15 keeping it real in Sèvres:

Another way of seeing 'controversial' videos by Romain Gavras

Romain Gavras recently made a few headlines with his video of MIA's Born Free song - a 'controversial' take on race that involved red heads, evil institutionalized force and compulsory runs over mine-filled deserts. The video's temporary ban from YouTube and MIA's New York Times post-article scandal gave the French filmmaker's work more North-American exposure than his three precedent videos for Ed Banger musicians - DJ Medhi, Justice and Simian Mobile Disco.

Highly publicized, these videos' subject matter, caliber of production and trendy realism enabled him to be coined a provocative filmmaker. Provocation helps success. At 29, Gavras has done well for himself and his first feature film Notre Jour Viendra is coming out in September.

If, to his credit unlike most music video directors Gavras' works presents some of humanity's most unglamorous aspects, the filmmaker's simple concept of taking a marginalized group of people (aka those who will not consume the final product), collecting their objects, habits, faces and homes, and then enrobe the whole with self-professed underground coolness (Ed Bangar music), doesn't seem to do much more than re-appropriating uncool (read poor) people and making them look very cool to his own advantage.

Like thirsty hipsters re-appropriating red-neck icons like the plaid shirt and Paps Blue Ribbon beer a few years back, Gavras has made re-appropriating caïlleras (rascals) beating the shit out of Japanese tourists on Montmartre and the tackiness of old mining towns the main feature of his success. He wouldn't be caught dead jump dancing around a car in northern Europe but hell yes is he ready to film it. 

So his images might be beautifully cold, his characters filled with a certain charming realism and the ambivalence of the details he fills his frames with captivaing, yet there's something much more disturbing in Gavras' approach than there is provocative and controversial in his final renditions.

DJ Medhi's Signatune:


Justice's Stress:


Simian Mobile Disco's I Believe: