Page - 89 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

audio-visual combinations. These videos become powerful educational resourc- es because of their popularity and dissemination capacity. Often aesthetic vanguardism focuses on eschatology/devastation, recreating (fascinated by?) terror/sinister images (for example, David Bowie, in the gloomy video compo- sition, music, and lyrics of “Future Legend”). A key visual-literary element that permeates all this music is darkness, normally preceded by the blinding light of missiles (like in Iron Maiden’s “Brighter than a Thousand Suns”). Afterwards, darkness and silence dominate the scenario, sealing the triumph of death. Dark- ness is comparable to a visual silence, implying the end of colours, music, and life; it is described in the book of Revelation as a powerful weapon that releases the forces of evil. Contrast is one of the main narrative resources within dystopia. In some songs, horror, death, hatred, devastation, bombs, and screaming are combined with love/nostalgic evocations of life, as happens in Tom Waits’ refrain from “The Earth Died Screaming”. Sometimes contrast turns into bitter irony, like in REM’s “This Is the End of the World”, where a happy melody sings, “And I feel fine”. Or even mockery: “welcome to the hereafter” (Mr. Lif, “Earthcrusher”) and the album Smile, It’s the End of the World, by Hawk Nelson (2006). An ex- treme case is the celebration of war, as in Morrisey’s refrain “Come—nuclear bomb!”. Irony becomes provocation, to galvanize the listener’s conscience and incite action, very much in the spirit of critical dystopia. Striking titles are used to attract attention: “1984”, “Sky is Falling”, and “Earthcrusher” are clear examples (see Annex). Some words recur in titles and lyrics of apocalyptic orientation, for example, “End”, “Sky”, “Doom”, and “Apocalypse”; but surprisingly the most common is “World”, involving the de- struction of the whole earth in the catastrophe. This obsession may reveal in addition a call for universal twinning, which is logical because the life of every- one is at stake. The outcome is somehow an ideological unison regardless of the musical genre (punk, rap, pop, rock, heavy metal, and psychedelia) and as- sociated aesthetics, as a fundamental agreement about peace prevails. Another key locution is “The end”, which becomes an absolute in itself, entailing the an- nihilation of the world. “Authenticity” is a moral imperative but rarely uttered; the mere fact a menace such as the end of the world is addressed elevates the singer and the song to a committed dimension, above normal music. Moreover, the ordinary treatment of the notion focuses to a larger extent on criticising “inauthenticity”, understood as a sacrilege due to spurious grounds and leading to a fatal destiny. Some verses are especially sharp/accusing, like those by Bob Dylan in “A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall”: “the executioner’s face is always well hidden”. An imper- ative tone is another common feature, with many direct orders to the listener that are reminiscent of military discipline: “do”, “go”, “hide”, “beware”, “stay Apocalypse as Critical Dystopia in Modern Popular Music | 89www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 69–94