The Queen-inspired musical We Will Rock You is conducting its 10th anniversary tour throughout 2013 and into 2014. I had the pleasure of seeing it opening night at the Hippodrome in Baltimore on October 15. Although some of the writing and themes did not sit right with me, on the whole I enjoyed myself but was especially pleased with the emphasis placed on archival concerns of records and context.
The premise of the show is that the self-named Galileo and his female fellow outcast (whom he names Scaramouche) escape an Orwellian future bereft of original creative thought and expression. They are found by a fellow “bohemian” and his “chick” and brought to their hideaway, the Hard Rock Café in Las Vegas. The staging of the café resembles a Hard Rock on hard times with vintage t-shirts hung on lines like tenement laundry and artifacts haphazardly mounted on walls. Galileo and Scaramouche are introduced to their fellow rocker bohemians by a man calling himself Buddy Holly; the actor is the same man who politely asked over the public address system that the audience turn off their phones and was the first actor to appear on stage for the prologue. All bohemians adopt their names, and indeed their entire lifestyle and worldview, from objects contained within the Hard Rock Café. Two of the funniest names included a chick (an endearing term second only to “bitch”) named Ozzy Osbourne (whose Canadian accent memorably leaked out when she sang “about” at the top of her lungs) and the dim but strong “dude” with the most terrifying name of them all—Britney Spears.
Beneath the dusty and contemporary musical references, which included a Miley Cyrus twerk joke premiere, was something very old; the Hard Rock Café is a church and an archive. It is from their holy site that the bohemians worship at the altar of rock with comically incomplete impressions of the past. Since the archive was found rather than collected, their RIM and appraisal policy would be moot and so might their intellectual control. The exasperated Galileo and Scaramouche bemoaned the abounding and mysterious music references known to but not understood by the bohemians. “But what does that mean?” the protagonists would say only to be answered, by the awe-filled but ignorant Buddy or the chorus, “I/We don’t know!” I was immediately reminded of the problems arising from de-contextualized information whether it is a misplaced document or missing representation information.
It is revealed that Buddy was an archivist for Globalsoft, the quasi-governmental ruler of the iPlanet, and stole an artifact, a precious VHS tape (“Vy-day-oh Tap-ee”) allegedly containing dangerous materials. The ill gotten donation is naturally crucial to the plot, which I leave up to you to experience. Records (the non-musical kind) however are rarely sexy enough to be plot devices. Personally I’ve always enjoyed storylines where old records, books, or paintings are central or at least strongly supportive.
Although I have only read three titles from Arlene Schmuland’s 1999 American Archivist article The Archival Image in Fiction, I love catching references to records and history in all media. The attack at the archives in Star Trek: Into Darkness, the top secret records maintained (but given to Bruce Willis without protest) by Ernest Borgnine in RED, and fat Samwell Tarly unsuccessfully explaining the usefulness of centuries old ledgers and texts in George RR Martin’s novel A Clash of Kings all come to mind. Currently I’m reading Arturo Perez-Reverte’s The Flanders Panel, which concerns an art restorer embroiled in a centuries old murder investigation surrounding a 1471 painting by the fictional Flemish master Pieter Van Huys. The book was published before The Club Dumas, which was adapted into The Ninth Gate by Roman Polanski in 1999. The movie excludes the Alexandre Dumas manuscript, which for most of the book is central to the plot, and thus also discussions of diplomatics and provenance in the world of rare book dealing.
As to everything else in We Will Rock You I cannot say for the sake of spoilers. Read a review online or, better yet, see the show for yourself. So long as you do not live in a plains state you won’t need to drive more than 150 miles.
Counterfactual Archivist 