Bryan Ferry has apologised for comments made in an interview with the german paper Welt am Sonntag. Ferry had praised the look of the regime's parades as well as the work of the Nazi architect Albert Speer.
"The Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight and present themselves.” He said"Leni Riefenstahl's movies and Albert Speer's buildings and the mass parades and the flags - just amazing. Really beautiful." Ferry also reportedly revealed that he calls his west London studio his Fuhrerbunker...
The upshot of, all of this was the release of a statement on his behalf: "I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused by my comments on Nazi iconography, which were solely made from an art history perspective,"
Bryan Ferry: advocate of the Fourth Reich or yet another musician who could do with engaging his remaining brain cells before opening mouth? The latter, I think.
19 comments:
"which were solely made from an art history perspective"
Oh well, that's alright then.
As another fool once said, "I don't think much of their politics, but the uniforms are fantastic".
Form an art history perspective, he says.. It's as ugly and crass as socialist realism. I mark him down as an idiot but what irritates me is that using soviet symbolism is okay... Heaven forfend that anyone faces "gulag chic" at first hand again!
This may sound a tad simplistic.
Many artist have goofy ideas but on a certain level we can seperate the artist from the idiocy.
I am not certain this case is exactly what I am pointing at. Paul Robeson was a Stalinistic hack but he could sing. Arthur Miller was a Communist apologist but the Crucible is a decent play even if his symbols were off.
We need to stop venerating the artist and understand that the ability to paint, sing or write does not impart wisdom in other aspect of life.
I am also free to vote with my money and I will not see a film with someone like Sean Penn.
<snark> Hear hear, beakerkin! Cut yourself off from any artist whose politics disagree with your own. Let's see, that leaves... nope, sorry; none left. It's a politically pure but art-free life for you! </snark>
Almost 30 years ago I was once standing beside Beethoven's former grave outside Wien (they dug him up and moved him to Bonn long before I got there) when an ancient Austrian woman came up and started talking to me. Even with my fractured German, I could understand that she missed the soldiers... by which she meant the Nazis. The only stereotype she omitted was the one about trains running on time. That those people are out there (in either sense of the phrase) is no surprise: that name-brand performers could even allude to them in a positive way, in this day and age, makes my jaw drop, every time it happens. They are indeed fools, no matter whether it's Stalin or Hitler they admire.
Well, I struggle with supporting artists who are so vociferous in their ideals and politics that run so contrary to my own. That's the beauty of a free market society though. If you don't agree with someone, you can make your displeasure heard from withdrawing your cash and eventually things self-correct.
Bryan Ferry looks really suave in a suit. He has a nice voice. I don't expect anything else out of him and wouldn't waste a moment on any fool thing he says in a press release.
"Bryan Ferry looks really suave in a suit."
He's currently modelling menswear for Marks & Spencer.
I wonder how his new employers feel about his admiration of Nazi iconography.
I worked with Fashionistas who are mostly clueless. Imagine people so shallow as to juggle their social lives around the TV show Sex and the City.
Most of his coworkers read the fashion page but seldom rise above the intellect of Shaggy in Scooby Doo unless they are in accounting or logistics.
"Well, I struggle with supporting artists who are so vociferous in their ideals and politics that run so contrary to my own." - EWBL
<intentionally_provocative>
So, they should just, as Natalie Maines was told in one of the death threats she received, "shut up and sing"? How well did that situation "self-correct," EWBL? I understand the Chicks are doing pretty well these days, certainly compared to the man Maines criticized.
</intentionally_provocative>
I know there is a separation between the art and the politics unless you are, say, Crass. I wouldnt advoate going out and burning his records but I still think he's an arse! For some reaso I never liked Ferry or Roxy Music.
As forthe fashion business. Fashion business or castration with a shears? bring on the shears!
I can't abide Ferry or his fox-murdering twit of a son. Sometimes, I think celebrities' inflated egos lead them astray into making the most ridiculous statements. Are't we, the public, possibly a little to blame for this, for raising these people to an iconic status in the first place? After all, if we didn't make these people believe they were important, maybe they wouldn't feel the need, or indeed, find themselves in a position, to hawk their ill-conceived opinions.
There is an element of that Siani, lionise a celebrity to such a point that they feel they can do anything and get away with it. But we dont have to lionise them!
Reminds me of Billy Bragg's "Waiting for the Great Leap Forward".
Was he too stupid to know about the millions of deaths the Great Leap Forward caused, or did he not care as long as he was lining his greasy pockets?
Steve
In the States we are protected by the First Amendment. The only place PC speech does exist are in Marxist Gulags formerly known as higher ed.
All of us get paid to do a job. I do not go to my mechanic for stand up comedy. An audience pays for entertainment not to hear the political BS of low IQ musicians.
The other part of the First Amendment is if you make an ass out of yourself it is my right to stay home. Sorry, but I am not spending my cash on a Sean Penn film or any movie industry crap.
As far as your comments about my President please do make them more strident. Every time ill mannered Euros lecture Americans you place more Republicans in office. The only opinions that are relevant in American politics are those of the American people. We do not lecture you on who your leaders should be and quite frankly we don't care.
Err Beakerkin I think you'll find that Steve is a Houstonian
Bryan Ferry: advocate of the Fourth Reich or yet another musician who could do with engaging his remaining brain cells before opening mouth?
Neither. More like a victim of political correctness run amuck. Triumph of the Will is a great film, period, just like Potemkin. Their ideologies are another matter.
Saw it, great techniques I will agree, but I did not care for Triumph of the Will at all. I suppose the same could be said for Birth of a Nation too...
I suppose my bias is that I dont like Bryan Fery, never have and never will.. I can be as subjective as anyone else!
Jams
That is even better as the more unhinged the critique the better it does for the opposition. Most people do not listen to unhinged people.
Shut Up and sing was a book by an Ameican Talk Show Hostess Laura Ingraham. Subjecting your audience that has paid to hear you perform to a political diatribe is wrong.
What a lot of people forget these days (and some aren't even old enough to remember) is that in the 70's the Nazi influence was prevalent in more avant garde music. Bowie became obsessed with Berlin at one stage and its darker elements. Early punk was riddled with black SS uniforms and Nazi swastikas. Jim Kerr from Simple Minds being a prime example. Nobody took offence as political correctness had yet to be invented. Yes there was a sinister undertone but it certainly wasn't racially motivated nor was it anti Jew. More symbolist with focus on the Berlin Wall and the divison between East and West Germany. I have been a fan of Ferry for over 30 years and I have never heard him say or demonstrate any deep interest in politics or to be at all racially motivated. But he does have a great admiration for many art forms and I think he has been naive in believing that the general public are intelligent or open minded anough to accept his views for what they are.
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