“Edgar Allan Poe had the most original imagination in the world; he struck an entirely new note. I shall have to find its equivalent in music.” Debussy.
Something that I learned during this course was that Poe had become an integral part of American Culture. He has been turned into a commodity, an object to consume, a voiceless lab frog to dissect for free. He is now part of the American trend of conspicuous consumption. His works are copyright free and I think that fact alone has everything to do with his objectification.
Ironically, Poe struggled his entire adult life to become economically successful and failed miserably short from this goal. After his dead his short stories, and poems had been subject of an everlasting reading of them; interpretation after re-interpretation of his texts are constantly tackled. The fact that they have been preserved in writing thanks to the technology of mechanical reproduction helped raised Poe to the status of public figure. In his essay entitled: "Anastatic Printing" (1845) he acknowledges the benefits of said processes applied to books. He talks about the diffusion of knowledge and information; above all, he talks about the possibility of the general public obtaining access to the circles of control defined by the market place, both in terms of consumption and production when he claims that:
"The tendency of a this [Anastatic printing] to cheapen information, to diffuse knowledge and amusement, and to bring before the public the very class of works which are most valuable, but least in circulation on account of unsaleability - "
Poe was fascinated by technology. He was eager to embrace it and he kept trying to find ways to make his texts available to the general public. He wanted to create a massive demand for his works. He was constantly thinking about how to reach audiences in great numbers while he continue to develop his marketing and managerial skills, not doing a good job at either of them.
He never attaining his goal of financial success. He did not only live in poverty but died in it. He was a very hard critic of fellow writers which might have kept him away from the circles of Literary production. (My observation)
After his dead in 1849 many cultural products were developed based in Poe's stories. Among them we can find films, magazines, books, musical scores, and spoken word projects. Professor Ronald Smith provides a great account of Poe's influenced work in his book entitled POE in the Media. Screens, Songs, and Spoken Word Recordings. (ISBN 0-8240-5614-0).
My personal interest during the semester focused into those re-appropriations, and particularly about his most well known poem: "The Raven," and how it has been rewritten to adapt it to new technologies. Right below you may download the resulting draft-paper I worked on regarding this topic:
During the development of this short academic exercise I concentrated my efforts in a record ( LP ) produced by Allan Parsons Project. They did it as their production team debut album. Selecting texts such as The Raven, The Cask of Amontillado, among others to turn them into into a full LP album was no coincidence. Poe's texts were chosen for this project in 1976 under the name: "Tales of Mystery and Imagination." This cultural construction was the result of a marketing analysis conducted by Eric Woolfson (Parson's partner) during his college years.
The reason I mention it is because of the use of a vocoder, an electronic device that alters the human voice. It was the "newest toy in town" among emerging electro-techno-music-engineers and composers.
Click the link to download a sample (not the complete song) of what the Allan Parsons Project interpretation of The_Raven sounds like. Pay particular attention to the introductory voices as they were re-interpreted by the vocoder. The sound you heard results from passing a normal human voice through this electronic device. These are the lyrics of The Raven by Allan Parsons project:
The Raven
Lead Vocal: Alan Parsons, Leonard Whiting
The clock struck midnight
And through my sleeping
I heard a tapping at my door
I looked but nothing lay in the darkness
And so I turned inside once more
To my amazement
There stood a raven
Whose shadow hung above my door
Then through the darkness
It spoke that one word
that I shall hear forever more
Nevermore
Thus quoth the raven, nevermore
And still the raven remains in my room
No matter how much I implore
No words can soothe him
No prayer remove him
And I must hear for evermore
Quoth the raven, nevermore
Thus quoth the raven
Nevermore
To honor Edgar Allan Poe and his earnest attempt to incorporate technology
in his textual production I will use the latest novelty in the market place:
Spore® by Electronic Arts.
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