Audrey Hepburn: Galaxy Chocolate Commercial, Adpressive, youtu.be/gx9eDoS76LM
Hearing the voices and seeing the images of the dead is so commonplace today that I struggled to understand how it was viewed in the Victorian times. Listening to The Beatles or Buddy Holly or watching Robin Williams films isn’t the least bit eerie to modern media consumers. In trying to relate to uncanny experience of hearing a dead person’s voice when recording was first introduced, I thought of two recent representations of dead celebrities. The Audrey Hepburn chocolate ad and the Tupac hologram both created quite a stir for their representations of the dead. Tupac appeared to perform live years after his death, and a young Audrey Hepburn once more graced our screens in footage that wasn’t recorded during her lifetime.
We don’t think twice about listening to the voices of long-dead musicians, but the technology that created Ash in “Be Right Back” strikes us as definitively wrong. Tupac and Audrey exist somewhere in between. The question I’d like to pose is this: Will we ever draw the line at reanimating the dead, or are we engaged in an unstoppable progression towards Ash-like technology?
I obviously can’t predict the future, but I think it’s likely that recreating dead celebrities on screen will only become more commonplace. I don’t think Ash tech is that far off either. Enormous technological advances that may seem to defy nature (such as hearing the voice of someone dead), eventually become normalized. I think, therefore, that while Ash tech may initially seem startling, it could very likely become integrated into our lives the way recording technology has. These two representations make it clear that existing beyond the grave is becoming more of a possibility each day.
Tupac Hologram Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre Perform Coachella Live 2012, westfesttv, youtu.be/TGbrFmPBV0Y