By Mac Cat, Director of Coffee
There have been so many different OVO articles and interviews, I can't keep track of who said what in which one. I do know that in one of these interviews, Gabriel was asked if he disliked technology. On the surface, it may seem like a stupid question. We know that obviously Gabriel doesn't have anything against technology. On the contrary: he's the Anti-Luddite of the Music World. He's the first to create a decent music CD ROM, is a music studio wizard with his music-making and recording gadgets, and is practically a walking advertisement for Apple. He founded Real World Multimeda. The list goes on and on.
But when you look at the storyline for the OVO album, an unaquainted non-Gabriel fan could get the impression that he has an anti-technology stance. And when you look back at the CD ROM for Eve, it seems to have a similar message as well (we'll get to that later).
Okay, a quick rundown of the story: It starts out with a family of "Earth People" living in a farming utopia. It appears that everyone is happy with the state of things, except for a boy named Ion who is a visionary who wants to invent things to make farm life easier. At the end of the first act, the father of the clan dies in a storm. (I thought this made the story seem balanced and realistic...too many writers want to show nature as being all-benevolent when in fact Mother Nature can be a real bitch at times.)
Later Ion takes his inventions and ideas and transforms the farming communities into an industrial world of factories and machines. The Earth People are actually pleased with this arrangment. The only problem is that (1) Ion becomes a bit of a control freak (2) the land is completely ravaged and (3) This new way of life proves restricting to a population of creatures called Skypeople who want no part/have no place in Ion's Industrial revolution. Still, it's kinda hard to feel sympathy for the Skypeople as they don't bother to adapt to the new environment in order to survive, to peacefully protest, to move to a better area, or try to beat the Earth People at the own game. Instead the Skypeople just sit around and sulk. Strangely enough, Gabriel believes the Skypeople are the "good guys" in this story.
The last straw comes when Ion catches one of the Skypeople, wrongly accuses him of all sorts of crimes, and sentences him to jail and torture. Ion's mother Beth, and sister Sofia, like the Skypeople and think Ion is being a tyrant (but never bothered to make a move until now). Beth and Sofia help the Skypeople rescue their fellow man. This leads to a skirmish between the Skypeople and the Earth People, and the prisoner is freed.
At this point, Ion has a sudden and unexplained change of heart...he realizes what he did to the land was wrong and is so overcome with remorse, he kills himself. The Skypeople are now so hellbent on kissing Industrial World goodbye, that even after the prisoner is freed and Ion dies, they go into the armory and blow up the tower the Earth people had built. In doing so they kill a lot of Earth people, including the mother of the original family, Beth. Sole remainder of the family is Sofia, and to make a long story short, she gets married to the Skyperson that she had been in love with and had helped to free from prison. Now that the tower is gone and the land has been ravaged, the survivors are back at square one, which they take in surprisingly good stride.
Here's where I start to have problems with the storyline (not including Ion's unrealistic and sudden change of heart): the Skypeople are supposed to be the good guys here. They're the beleagered natualists/environmentalists who are supposed to be in the right. And yet they kill a bunch of Earth people when it clearly wasn't necessary. Sofia feels no bitterness whatsoever at the fact that her now husband and his people had an elemental role in the death of her people, and her mother who had helped the Skypeople out! The story appears to be saying, "Hey, they're the nature lovers, so it's okay for them to murder a bunch of greedy industrialists." This is the story I get a lot from the Hard Left: It's wrong to oppress minorities, but it's okay to kill a lot of capitalists.
I'm also dismayed by the extremist stance here...after the Skypeople freed their brother and learned that Ion had bought the farm, perhaps they could've ended things peacefully with nature and technology working together, but a peaceful attempt is never made. Or they could have attempted to evacuate the tower, or at least get Beth out of there before deciding to blow the place up. However, there's no remorse or any indication that maybe the Skypeople reacted a little too harshly. It's either all of the technology or none of the technology, and the decision was made real quick to put the land back into the stone age, consequences be damned. And these wankers are the good guys?!
Why can't there be a middle ground here? Yeah, I know...because "it's not in the script" and because a peaceful solution would be boring. As they say in the newspaper business, "no bodies, no bylines." Still, if anyone could make the middle ground work it would be Gabriel and Company, and I really which they had at least attempted it.
A similar extremist stance can be found on the CD ROM Eve. [WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!] In Eve you start out in a forest. Later that forest is turned into mud and you, the player, is supposed to figure out what happened and what to do about it. You start to click around and the landscape changes from mud to brushwood to a garden, then to an big evil ugly industrial wasteland (although I personally liked the look of the industrial world, finding a moody dark beauty in the wreakage, but that probably wasn't the effect RW Multimedia was going for.)
Anyway, as the game continues, guess what happens to Industrial World? Same as in Ovo, everything gets blown up! And after hanging out in a place called Ruin, things become cool again and you wind up in Paradise, which looks remarkably like the forest behind my parent's back yard.
Eve, like the story of OVO, ends with the world of science and technology being destroyed, which once again, didn't seem to be a necessary thing to get the pro-nature point across. Plus I was disappointed with Gabriel's vision of Paradise. Where's the never-empty coffee machine? Where's all the various Mac hardware lying around? Where's the ultimate stereo system to listen to GabeTunes? Where do you plug things in at? Where's the cats? Humfph. Not my idea of paradise. So I ask the question once again: why can't paradise mix nature and technology? Am I the only person who's not that impressed with nothing but trees? I mean, if that's paradise, I should charge people to hang out in my parents' back yard. And it seems strange that Gabriel seems to be happy with the idea of pure forest life, since that would mean giving up his liveihood as a recording artist.
Speaking of trees, back to me complaining about the Ovo story: Okay, the tower is destroyed and due to plot contrivance #335 (with the help of a magic object a the good guys "believes" a miricle into existence. See the ending of the movie The Secret of NIMH for a good example of this) a great tree magically grows, and just in time too. The whole land gets flooded, so everyone (the survivors, Skypeople and Earth People alike) has to go live in the tree. Sofia gives birth to Ovo. Then for some strange reason, the sky turns into land, and the land turns into sky. I know it's the basis for one of my favorite songs, "Downside, Up" but I still don't get the metaphor that's trying to be achieved here. Anyway, because of this, everybody has to tie themselves to the tree to keep from falling into the sky. And they remain that way for the rest of the story, and perhaps for the rest of their lives. Ovo sails the sky in a nest, and then it's end of story.
So, that's what the future is supposed to be? The glorious post-industrial vision is everyone being tied to a tree? There's no indication in the story that being tied to a tree is a bad thing, or even particularly restrictive. I guess these people are such naturalists they have no problem with spending their lives literally tied to a tree. If this represents the post-industrial age, I hope I'm not invited to it. I'd like to stick with a Slightly Used World Order, thank you.
What really puzzles me is why the story behind OVO (and also of Eve) has this extremist, somewhat anti-technology tone when I know for a fact that doesn't reflect Gabriel's personal views at all. Having a strong Buddhist philosophy, Gabriel of all people should know to push the "middle path" angle whenever possible. But there's the problem that Gabriel is undoubtedly aware of...the middle path is a great rule to live by, but makes for lousy drama.
Postscript: Three more nitpicks about the OVO story. It reads that Beth has the ability to see the future while weaving. This little fact comes up once in the beginning of the story, and then never again. Why did anyone bother to bring it up if it wasn't going to be a plot point? It's as though someone said, "Beth doesn't have a big enough role. Let's give her a superpower!" and then completely forgot all about it. Had they allowed this gift of prophesy to play a part, it could've been useful as Beth would've at least known to get her tail out of the Tower at a certain time. Maybe Beth's ability to prophecise works just like astrology, tarot, and numerology in that it's a widely believed-in skill that appears to be completely useless.
Second, the whole story and album is called Ovo. Who's the least interesting character in this whole story? Who's the character who has no personality whatsoever? Yep. Ovo. I guess he's special because of what he represents, but I still figure that if you're going to make a character assume an important role, he or she should have something along the lines of a personality.
Third, Sofia decides to ship her only son, an infant, into outer space. Alone. Why? Because she had a dream that told her to. Now, I know Gabriel takes dreams seriously, but this is ridiculous. I can only pray that sometime soon Gabriel has a dream that tells him to send me large amounts of money and finish the recording of Up.
Mac Cat, Director of Coffee
In recent interviews, Gabriel says that he supports the Millennium Dome despite it being essentially, as I like to put it, "a big, fat bomb". Gabriel says that the ideas behind the Dome is valid, but he blames the Dome's lack of success on the management and the planners. I agree...I have little doubt that the Dome exhibitions were poorly planned, so obviously the management should have a large part of the blame. I agree that if things were done differently, it could've been great. But what bothers me is Gabriel's insistence that if a single artist was in charge and not these evil pragmatics, why, the Dome would've been a smashing success! This sounds somewhat (unintentionally) elitist coming from an artist. Besides, I beg to differ.
Gabriel remarks on the British reluctance to let a single artist run the whole Dome show. "We're afraid of artists," he sulks. True...for years mothers have been telling their children artists-hiding-under-the-bed stories. And I admit, that one scene in Psycho where the artist attacks Janet Leigh in the shower with a paintbrush was pretty darn scary. But all joking aside, I don't think Gabriel is giving the public enough credit. Just because the UK government decided not to hand the Dome over to the artists is not enough reason to make the sweeping statement that everyone is afraid of artists. Coming from Gabriel this sounds overly defensive of his profession (and slightly paranoid, to boot).
And if the public is afraid of artists, maybe it's justified. There is that stereotype that artists are a bit scatterbrained, and some artists have proven that they are totally out of touch of reality and with the public...not the type of people I'd want to have in charge of a huge, expensive public project. Artists are not particularly known for being prompt or punctual. I believe Gabriel could have done absolutely wonderful things with the Dome had he been in charge...only that it would be about ten years late for the Millennium (I can just hear Gabriel say, "So what if we miss the deadline. We'll just call the Millennium Dome something else.")
For some reason Gabriel never mentions the simple truth that putting an artist in charge of a large project and having it "work" depends largely on which artist is chosen. You can't just give the job to any artist. For example, Robert Mapplethorpe (RIP) was a great ambitious photographer, but most folks wouldn't want him in charge of the World Expo, for good reason. One can only imagine how something like that would've turned out...
(Side note: I've seen projects where an artist was in charge and, oh me brothers, it wasn't always a pretty sight. I won't give specific examples to protect the innocent, but trust me on this one. Let's just say that this whole artists-in-charge thing is pretty hit-and-miss.)
Then Gabriel says about the French Bicentennial, "Effectively, the nations credibility was entrusted to one man, one artist -- Jean-Paul Goude. And he came up with something incredible..." In others words, "Look what France did! They put an artists in charge and it worked! We should all do that!"
Uh, no. For one thing, what if an artist like Jean-Paul Goude isn't available for the project? You gotta have the right artist for the job. Second, I wasn't all that impressed with what Jean-Paul Goude came up with. I watched several specials and news reports, and read many articles about the French Bicenntenial, and I can't remember a single thing that Jean-Paul Goude did that was so great.
Which brings to mind another point: art is subjective. Just because an aritist thinks something is brilliant doesn't mean anyone else is going to think it is. What were to happen if an artist had been in charge of the Dome, and it became a critical success, but Joe Blow Average didn't like it? The Dome would've still bombed. But hey, at least the artists can pat themselves on the back, I guess.
And although they weren't in charge, there were still many artists involved in the Dome project, so they are partially to blame as well. They need to be held accountable for some of the exhibits failure. To say otherwise implies that artists by virtue of being artists are somehow absolved of all responsibiliy and above recourse.
But my real problem here is that by insisting the artists get put in charge, Gabriel is unintentionally dissing the pragmatics. Behind every successful artist, and behind every good project are a team of pragmatics and "feasibility guys" who actually make things work. Without them, nothing would get accomplished.
So, the Dome bombed but I think it's overly simplistic to say that it's because an artist should have been in charge. There are a number of reasons why the Dome didn't work, management being just one of them. I can say that the reason the Dome's lack of success because it didn't have a team of Solsburians in charge ("We're afraid of Solsburians"), and my complaint would be just as valid.
I think we need to look at the "middle path" (see above rant) and say it really would take a group of artists and pragmatics working together to make something like the Dome a success. As far as who I think should've been in charge, I'd say anyone except an artist, if for the only reason that as a pragmatic myself, I enjoy giving artists a hard time:)
Agree? Disagree? Think Mac Cat is full of...baloney? Write in with your so-called thoughts on any of the above issues.