A MULTI-MEDIA PROJECT BY MAIA STAM
GESAMTKUNSTWERK AND POLITICAL CULTURE
Following World War II, art in the cold war period created an opportune time for artists to raise questions about faith and humanity in a dark political atmosphere. Here, one can find examples of both definitions of Gesamtkunstwerk - those that fit with Yeats’ idea of making “strange events credible,” and those that veer towards Tatlow’s theory of making “all-too-credible events strange.” Andre Tarkovsky’s 1979 film “Stalker,” depicts deeply dramatic supernatural events, with very little explanation as to how they came to be. Tarkovsky worked meticulously with his actors, production crew, and composer to create a realistically bizarre narrative based upon his social and religious studies at the time. The film embodies Tarkovsky’s interest in taoist philosophy and his views on the destructive nature of nuclear war.
On the other hand, the 1984 musical “Chess,” used chess as a basic backdrop and symbol of the cold war. The musical’s release was followed by that of a concept album by the play’s composers Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, an example of expanding a single work into multiple art forms to optimize its social impact. In an earlier example, the 1957 musical “West Side Story” attempted a very real depiction of the animosity among different clans in the 1950s. Jerome Robbins originally conceived the story as a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” with the forbidden lovers being a Jewish girl and an Irish Catholic boy. Eventually, the characters were adapted into a Puerto Rican girl and a caucasian boy whose families are in dueling street gangs - the Sharks and the Jets. In an effort to endow the stage production with as much realism as possible, choreographer Jerome Robbins treated the cast extremely harshly - forcing them to remain separated at all times, and refusing to address them unless giving them orders. In this way, Robbins attempted to actually change the actors’ psyches and produce a genuinely impassioned performance.