Page - 92 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

92 siting futurity Day, in which Bowie poked fun at the commercialization of Val- entine’s Day’s perversion of love by making Valentine a pathetic killer with “a tiny face” and “scrawny hands,” who has “sold his soul” and told the narrator that “the teachers and the football stars” were “who’s to go.” Lazarus sets Valentine against New- ton’s immortality. Even though Newton claims he wants to die and lives accordingly in the addictive, self-destructive manner consumption-oriented, capitalist culture encourages and thrives on, the musical makes clear that there is also a part of him that values life and wants to hang on to it for as long as possible. What Valentine has to do, therefore, is to get Newton to kill himself or rather to kill what is keeping him alive, namely, hope. That is what is shown to bind Newton to life on earth and what he needs to free himself from so that he can embrace death he- roically, if just for one day. Only after Valentine has convinced Newton to kill his last hope, embodied in the person of the Girl, can Newton declare that he is “done with this life.” Only then, after they sing a re-versioned “Heroes” that ends with Newton singing the final line “[j]ust for one day” by himself, does the Girl leave, and “Newton finds rest” (ibid., 63). Most productions of Lazarus stage this deliberately ambigu- ous ending in a way that fosters hope. Düsseldorf has Newton lifting off to the stars in his spaceship; Bremen has him climbing a white ladder; Leipzig has him looking out over the stage from the bridge of the set’s deconstructed cabaret contraption; Linz has him standing triumphantly at center stage with his arms raised; Göttingen has him contentedly reclining against a grand piano; and even in the Nürnberg production, which shows him expiring very slowly, this happens with him lying on his back with his head resting on the lap of the Girl. In Vienna, in con- trast, Franzmeier teeters off the revolving stage to the front of the stage, where he sings “[j]ust for one” and then collapses as the lights go out, leaving the audience to fill in the final “day.” Rather than suggesting any type of otherworldly continuation, this heart-stopping finale makes an extraordinary impact, con- fronting audiences with the reality of death as an unavoidable end and provoking them to reflect on the experience. What will