Okay, so on Laibach. They're a Slovenian avant garde band, doing kind of industrial music but also not. Genre is less important though. If you watched Tanz mit Laibach, you surely saw the overt Nazi and fascist imagery. Not even remotely accidental. Before I go into that, check out this song, particularly the chorus (at 1:03):
Then compare that to Laibach's infamous cover of Life is Life:
Did you catch what they're doing? Life is Life by Laibach is the most overtly fascistic music video ever made. Yes, even more than Tanz mit Laibach. To be honest, I didn't really catch the fascism the first time I watched it, I just felt a bit unsettled. The second I realized the entire thing recalls strongly Triumph des Willens. The shots of mountains, triumphant poses, the water shot mimicking the canal scenes, then the final third of the video where the singer is shot from below with lighting from below (a la Leni Riefenstahl), while the other band members gaze up at the singer, strongly recalling onlookers of Hitler's speeches. The song itself is made militaristic with rolling drums, the melody taken from sung la-las to triumphant trumpets. It's all very obvious.
So, uh, what the ****, right? They're being pretty blatant. What are they trying to say? There's the dumb interpretation, the obvious one, that they're implying Opus and Life is Life is actually fascist. I think this is the wrong interpretation. Consider the lyrics of the original Life is Life:
In the original life is life is taken to mean something like c'est la vie, which is to say "this is just how things are". What Laibach is doing is exposing how the lyrics of this song reflect work and subservient ideology within western democracy. But what they're actually not doing is saying western democracy is fascistic. What they're saying is many different ideologies, no matter their shape or form or desirability - depend on sucking the life out of us in order to sustain itself. Life is life in their version doesn't mean c'est la vie, rather it means more like life (our lives) is Life (the life of the political system). We give our lives to sustaining the political and social order. If you ever watch Der Sieg des Glaubens, Hitler's speeches deliver this message almost exactly. The German worker is to give themselves to the fascist system for the glory of Germany. We don't have that affect in democracy. Instead, we sing it to people in easy to listen to pop songs.
Consider how they modify the chorus:
This alongside with the shot of graves along with a boldly sung "Life!", the ending set in a mausoleum, make it pretty apparent that "life is life" is really meant to represent the sinister aspect of giving yourself totally, how "life is life" is meant to mean your life is sucked out of you until death. It is a total and complete end of anything else you could ever be. You live to support the system's life. And their point is that, this isn't really unique to fascism. Opus' song is the democratic, happy version of sublimating yourself wholly to the system. I mean, really, what else could the lyrics mean? Read them again:
It literally just says "work and don't think about your situation". It's like the They Live dream song, a super happy, easy to sing along to overture to complete and total control of yourself. The fascist imagery I think sets out to accomplish something. It's to say: people often paint democratic systems as the polar opposite of fascism. But they aren't in every way. There still exist systems and messages to sublimate people, it's just ideologically blurred instead of being made direct and apparent like in fascism.
Which is why I find them fascinating. And why I think Zizek makes a bunch more sense, now. Zizek is from the same country as them (Laibach's political history in Slovenia is vast, influential and important). I think a big part of Zizek's critique of ideology comes from Laibach's actions. He has spoken about it:
I think he's right here. Most people wouldn't take Opus' lyrics seriously, that it reflects any sort of serious ideology. I think it actually does, and we're all trained in some way to put ironic distances between ourselves and these ideologies. If Laibach was obviously ironic in the way they present their fascist imagery, it would make it too easy to "get" and laugh as a joke. By taking themselves seriously, they then make the message more serious. They want us really to understand and feel how our lives are controlled in democratic societies. I think there's more than enough evidence out there that they don't support fascism, moreover the more I think on it that sort of question is really a dumb one.
Naturally, Laibach was the first western group brought in to perform for North Korea.
I am the Stig