lundi 15 août 2011

dangerous bed rest

Bed rest is more dangerous that you might think, so while John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Bed-ins" of 1969 may have been derided at the time, indeed still are today by some, I consider their action to have been courageous.
I was four years old then, and black and white images and grainy colour film footage of the event have been a small part of the media firmament I have gazed on ever since. So it was nice to find that Yoko Ono (now 78!) has decided to make the film they made about the happening available on YouTube for a little while (until 21 August apparently), and I watched the whole 80 minutes with interest.
There is much to appreciate: the obvious charisma and intelligence of John Lennon; seeing Instant Karma and Give Peace A Chance in their original contexts (and imagining their gestation); the bespectacled fashions; the frank hostility of some of the media representatives. It's interesting that I've never really had the chance to hear John Lennon speaking at length before, and I guess that's because he was sincere in his revolutionary beliefs, and never failed to promote them when interviewed.
Reportedly only otherwise available on VHS, it's perhaps a bit too much to expect an elderly person to "get it," and "turn on" to the internet by releasing the work less restrictively, so the gaping blank that will appear in the embed hole below after the 21 August can stand as a testament to the shortsightedness of the bourgeois(e) artist who does not realise that the point is to communicate...
Oh, and it's a bit dark, so turn up your screen contrast. And very tediously, this embed seems to have been automagically made too narrow, and I really can't be bothered sorting it out. If this troubles you, click through to youtube. Still, camerapointyman guy who shot the thing in the first place seems to have done a pretty good job at keeping the important stuff in the middle of the picture, so I'm not going to worry about it too much.