[-empyre-] Perfect Leader

["Melinda Rackham" <melinda@subtle.net>]

political context and artist intervention is not just about contemporary
issues.. this work was produced 20 years ago.. :

Video:
Perfect Leader
Max Almy/Chris Robbins
1983, 4:11 min, color, sound

Produced to coincide with the 1984 Presidential Campaign, Perfect Leader is
a cautionary tale  that brings to life a prototypical politician, as
packaged by Madison Avenue. With a driving soundtrack and bold visuals,
Almy/Robbins satirically present this dynamic simulation of media politics
as a fast-paced music clip. The narrator is a disembodied Big Brother, an
Orwellian computer program who creates candidate images -- dictator,
evangelist, moderate
-- as models for a mass-marketed leader. The image of the potential
president is overlaid with graphic symbols of multinational power:
technology; economics; warfare. As a woman hysterically intones, "We've got
to have a perfect leader," the bland, telegenic candidate is  brought into
two dimensions on the TV screen. Concise as a commercial, insistent as a pop
song, Perfect Leader is their most effective use of television techniques to
critique the impact of the media on contemporary life."