Les Pères Lachaises Part Three: Final Concept and Alternative Reality
For the final resolution of the project on different perspectives of Pere Lachaise, my group decided to run with the idea of a television series, creating an alternative reality in which “The Cemetery” and it’s characters exist. We assigned ourselves different tasks to cover the media campaign. My responsibilities were to manage the social media. I created an Instagram and Twitter account for the show and created posts and wrote captions to publicize the show.
https://twitter.com/TheCemeteryShow
https://www.instagram.com/thecemeteryshow/
We also each created our own Instagrams for our character. My Instagram for Wes plays on his character of being a “brainless white surfer boy”, going along with the holistic theme of the project of satirizing popular media culture. I used quotes about death from different books and philosophers, as if Wes has been spending some time reading, or just google searching quotes about death and then posting them as Instagram captions.
https://www.instagram.com/surferb0i/
In class, we decided to give a live performance of an interview with the cast of “The Cemetery”. We choose to parodize daytime television with a segment show titled “Art With Kathy”. I played Kathy Fray, an un-famous, self-proclaimed alternative art connoisseur who takes her work incredibly seriously. In preparation for the interview, I wrote down a general script of what I would like to say and memorized it.
Our intention of giving a live performance in a show about alternative art was to bring unity to our mockumentary-reality show “The Cemetery” and how it relates to art and can be, in itself, art.
In the interview, I spoke about how creating a television show in real life is the art of the creator. A television show doesn’t hang in a gallery or is put on display in a museum, but it is on TV screens in somebody’s living room, their phone as they ride the daily train. A television show is a work of mass creation and creativity. Practically, it requires a large team of talented artists — actors, writers, costume designers, lighting designers, set designers, cinematographers, musicians, and the list goes on. However, beyond the practicalities of creating a TV show, the reception of the viewer is also what matters. Does the show have a meaning besides mere shallow entertainment? Does the show connect to greater topics and issues that will ask the viewer to think? Could the show be controversial, subjecting itself to a diversity of opinions and beliefs?
Below are the recordings of the in-class live performance.
By creating an alternative Pere Lachaise universe, where ironic ghosts wander the cemetery by day, a small camera crew follows them around documenting their lives, the cast members have social media accounts and a media team posts GIFS to Twitter, the show becomes a critique of popular media culture, including social media, American sitcoms, and celebrity lifestyle. By creating a second television show, one in which the cast members attend an interview, the show becomes a critique of itself.
