The title of the first chapter of Stuckrad-Barre’s new book became the subject of an independent work of media art, which is to be acknowledged separately here.
Writer Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre with actress Jasna Fritzi Bauer, one of the 70 celebrities who took part in his advertising campaign.dpa
The colleague asked the only legitimate question: “Why are they all doing this crap?” Yes, why is everyone being harnessed to advertise the new novel by Benjamin Stuckrad-Barre? The former pop writer skillfully drives the celebrity and media bubble in front of him, lures some, rejects others, drives wedges into the pack – the well-known disruptive strategies intended to confuse established responsibilities and work processes: “Still awake?”
No advance copies for the media mob
Just don’t be considered a spoilsport or belong to the offended grumps who are not initiated. The fact that Stuckrad-Barre does not send out any pre-review copies of his novel sets the competition in motion and increases the pressure to be up-to-date. At the same time, it opens the floodgates to speculation. Whether there are qualified reviews at the end is of secondary importance.
When he published a video with the participation of around 70 celebrities via Instagram over the weekend, the prophets were looking for starting points for content-related predictions. Apparently, Stuckrad-Barre scrolled through his celebrity contacts and asked for a sentence spoken into the cell phone lens: “The women don’t have to be surprised either.” That’s the title of the first chapter. So that already works as a cog in the marketing machine. Because not only the celebrities involved are exploited, but also the media that respond to the commercial. Yes. Here too. But.
A spell is broken
Nevertheless, we would like to acknowledge the film as a work of art in its own right, as a work of Concrete Poetry. The repetition of sentences or words turns them into enigmatic spells. The meaning liquefies, slips away, the sound and rhythm of what is said varies, the sequence of sounds and noises becomes increasingly strange, the decoding machine adjusts and rubs off on the content. It’s a nice old children’s game. Cue: The cow ran around the pond.
But it gets the real twist into the language-critical and creative here, because the sentence is already a spell with which the speaker draws attention to the victim, who need not be surprised. One can sense how alone one is left when this phrase rushes in from all directions, perpetuating violence and abuse and deepening the trauma as a blame-it-yourself mantra. This sentence is a weapon.