Laurie Anderson's political art

Homeland is perhaps best understood as a spoken-word political satire with songs and music serving as interludes to pithy and didactic musings on war, corporate corruption, terrorism, torture, American consumerism, American imperialism, global warming, bureaucracy, Evangelicals, and on and on.

Some musings were funny. Anderson joked about malpractice insurance, underwear advertising, and about the English language: how you don’t have to memorize the sex of every object in the room. Some of these musings were striking in their imagery: “My eyes are black like nail heads popping out of the wood waiting for the hammer.”

But most felt stale, like reading a newspaper from a couple of years ago.

The music simply wasn’t strong enough to overcome the weakness of the message and the cuteness of the poetry. If Anderson had delivered Homeland in 2005 or 2006, it would have felt more powerful, as if she were saying something that badly needed saying.

As it is, it’s already been said, many times over, and our collective attention is now elsewhere. Despite its avant-garde antecedents, Homeland, which is Anderson’s first Spoleto gig since 1999, seemed a bit passé.

“Are you young enough to have enjoyed that?” asked an older man outside Memminger Auditorium after the show. He and his friend were baby boomers. The remark implied that Homeland was an outgrowth of a kind of artsy-fartsy fare that the kids like so much these days.

But it wasn’t that at all. Homeland sounded to my ears like a product of a creative mind forged in the counterculture of the 1960s. The question might be are you old enough to have enjoyed it?

Anderson attempts to satirize American imperialism by singing a happy song about a young girl joining the armed forces. It’s a kid’s war, Anderson sings, but business is good.

“We keep calling them up” is the tuneful refrain.

The language suggests that she equates joining the army with the draft. The song feels like yet another attempt by a baby boomer to apply the values of her generation to the problems of mine. But those values don’t fit.

More than Homeland seemed stuck in time. Anderson does, too.

Originally reported in Charleston City Paper’s award-winning Spoleto Buzz.