"!" [Hollywood Blues] July 2013 | Page 35

Perhaps, then, if Hollywood has the blues, its condition owes less to the perceptual displacement by devastating contemporary moments (with which my friend’s question was concerned), and more to a now-familiar postmodern nostalgia for a lost realm of ‘reality’ upon which representation qua representation implicitly relies. In staging both the cinematic and the mediatised as always already imbricated, or collapsed into one another, …Blues performs the hyperreal. Whilst its very liveness enables visibility, in this sense — as the hyperreal is displaced from those contemporary mass medias by which it is naturalised in the cultural mainstream — the play of absence and intertextuality underscore the piece’s concomitantly postmodern aesthetic strategies. Just as the spoken text of …Blues highlights the interconnectedness of Hollywood, and the hyperreal of those contemporary tragedies and disasters re-‘played’ without end or catharsis, so too does the positioning and formation of the seven bodies on stage. The act of speaking towards the audience, without the use ?\?X?Y?\??\??X? ?\??H\???Y\??\?[]?\?[??]???\?\??[?H;? Y[ ?[?H?\Y?][???]?Y[????\?[??[?\[?[???X?\??X?[?H]KX?\][\? ?\?\??H^\?Y[??H?;? ?X??[???]?Y[?][\H?[??[??]H?[[?H???? ?]\?H\?HX\??YH;? [\???X?H]YY[??HX\????Y?Y[??\?[???H??\]H[?\??]][??H8?&?\?\???&H\??X? \?]HH?Y??\?[????[???]??]???Y]H??X?\?[]?[ ????X[H[???YY8?$??\??\?Y???]?H?Y[???Y][???\?HZ?H]?Y??H8?$?]?\?\?Y?HX????\?H[?\?H?[?H^ ?UQQS??B???B??