Viva Christmas!

I'm gearing up to see El Vez's Viva Christmas tour on December 18. What a perfect antidote to the Holiday Blahs - a new show backed by Los Straightjackets and sure to be filled with humor, political critique, and rock and roll. I am excited to see how this new show gets me thinking in new ways.

I just sent off an article on El Vez's use of spectacle, irony, and entertainment. In it, I condense a lot of the arguments I made in my dissertation, suggesting that El Vez is able to pierce through stupefying Debordian spectacle by picking up the ultimate spectacular joke - Elvis. Elvis becomes the common access point to a show that radically revises the political, social, and consumerist tropes that surround us. By embracing spectacle, humor, and entertainment, El Vez effectively flips our encounters with pop culture, allowing us to critically assess prejudice and injustice through a thoroughly pleasurable performance event. More news if it gets published.