there's no business like show business #1

meta commentary about stardom and its costs by a group I once described as The Associates of emo (so therefore not without a glam tinge)

that was about and circa "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" - whose melodrama and overripe video I enjoyed

not so keen on their more recent stuff (less band-oriented, heavily infused with musical theater, ) but me and my daughter (big fan) are going to see Panic! At the Disco in a month and half

auto-tone

"What we have with digital culture now is a strange hyper-ordinariness. People done up to the nines but it isn't like Bowie where you're playing with abstract aestheticisation. It's a normative model: perfect teeth, skin tone. An utterly conservative artificiality... A normalisation of photoshopping & cosmetic surgery: a wash-back from digital, people's anxiety about their appearance is measured by the standards of a depressing normativity. Neuroses & dissatisfaction are highly productive & useful for capitalism: they can be sold to endlessly" - Mark Fisher

aka digital subglam - use of pixel-by-pixel control of the image in postproduction digital intermediate zone, to sand down skin into porcelain perfection, erase spots and blemishes, whiten teeth, supergloss hair