Requiem for a Dream Catalogue: A ‘Nobody Here’ Film Review, and Rant
Disclaimer: The following is all based on personal opinions, experiences, and musings about the film. I’m not an academic or anything like that, so expect me taking liberties, going off on tangents and plenty of personal indulgences. Please take this all with a grain of salt. I’m not associated or represent anything or anyone in this film, and should not be considered anyone credible enough to be commenting on this or that so please don’t @ me.
I want to begin by thanking Enzo Van Baelen, Christian Britten, Donor Lens, My Pet Flamingo, and everyone who had a hand in creating this monumental project. It was no small task to capture something so broad and strange. Immense respect for the love & work that went into creating this.
TLDR; Overall, the film is very well made, entertaining, informational, and visually alluring. Somethings were left out because it was just too much to say within a reasonable amount of time in my opinion. I highly recommend watching it, even if just to see some interesting visuals/music and a cool story. I’m not just saying this because I’m in the film. Buy it here.
The Politics of Being Vague
A big topic of discussion in Nobody Here is the meaning or philosophy of vaporwave. The majority of people involved would say it was just a joke, that there was nothing inherently anti-capitalist or anything like that. Just a bunch of kids playing with electronics and messing around with samples. Maybe to them it was just that, but I personally thought at the time that it was a way to give the middle finger to the corporate overlords that were trying to train the world that there was only one way to use music and art, which was for profit. Stealing music, ripping video, and using unlicensed content to create things that almost mocked capitalism seemed very punk. Hearing from some of the big names say that they didn’t feel it was actually like that that seems a bit insincere, unaware, or maybe just oblivious to what they were actually doing. Maybe they were just trying to seem cool during the interviews without admitting it, like hipsters in the 00s when asked if they were hipsters would always say ‘no, I’m not.’ It could also be that no one wants to admit they were stealing samples or anything like that. Regardless of what they thought, to someone familiar with anti-capitalism looking in, it was an almost Marxist statement. The genre sprang up around the same time as Occupy Wall Street. Take from that what you will, or maybe read the communist manifesto and see how well it all aligns instead of being a philistine.
People trying to explain vaporwave are always funny to me, because no one can ever really elaborate too much on it without seeming like ‘a boffin who’s really gone off on one’. I’m not one who can easily describe it either, but the simplest way I can imagine is that it’s surrealist retro-futuristic nostalgia filtered through the lens of jaded millennials during the height of web 2.0, and trying to say more would lead into a rabbit-hole that no one ever really enjoys or makes sense of, but here we go anyway. To the unfamiliar, the genre is just some artsy-fartsy collection of whimsical lost internet-era crap, so convincing them that it is anything more than that is a challenge, and I honestly think Nobody Here did its best to convert some people, but sitting over 2-hours, it’s a tall order. Only the most committed of music snobs and film critics will stay tuned in long enough to finish it and actually gain insight into what the film was saying, even though the film is one of the most unique productions to come out lately. It was too much of a reach for the stars to get anyone to give a clear enough answer to satisfy the question soon enough into the film before moving onto another topic, but to most vaporwave enjoyers, it was an orgy of validation that glorified the things they already knew to be true.
I think vaporwave music was important at first, but the aesthetic choices became the focus too quickly. The priority of the scene would shift every few years between the aesthetics and the music. The music at its core was just using uncleared samples of old 80s and 90s muzak, late-night VHS infomercial clips, and all kinds audio/visual ephemera to create a very specific mood that felt a little bit cyberpunk-ish, new age-y, and sometimes like it could have just been a legit 80s banger. The genre became very broad, which is why people started splitting off into weird sub-genre tags. Why did we make it? Because we could. Millennials at the time were given the tools to do these things with programs like Garage Band, Adobe Premiere, and other software that made it incredibly easy to make music and video from just about anything. Now it’s normal to do these things easily without even owning a computer, but back then it was kind of new for any internet user to make their own music with just a laptop and share it through things like Bandcamp and Soundcloud.
The entire idea of vaporwave is sort of high-concept and most people will see it as silly, vapid, or just plain ridiculous. It’s definitely something you’ll either love or hate immediately. It can be confusing, and more like an inside joke than a veritable art movement. Yes, the style has influenced culture to some degree, but whatever that influence is will certainly never be credited with vaporwave having inspired it, even though the writing is on the wall for people who know. I know very well what it’s like to have your contributions stripped from a musical movement, so I sympathize. Getting back to the film, it was really cool to see that a lot of the artists that were put on pedestals by the vaporwave scene were just normal people at the end of the day. Once the veil of anonymity dropped, you are left with plain old humans grasping to explain something they barely could make sense of themselves. It felt at times like when someone makes up a story, tells it to the person next to them, then they make up more to the story, and this goes on until the original story is now insane.
I think the film makers got caught up in making sure people in the scene were pleased, and that the representation stayed within comfortable boundaries. Had the film been funded privately instead, I think we would have been looking at something with a much more dynamic view of the genre. The film is more like a love letter, which I honestly don’t mind. When I was asked to be in it, it was a bit of a shock to me, because I have always been a critic, not particularly liked in the scene, and my writing has often been shat on for pointing out some uncomfortable truths. I don’t know anyone in the film personally, and honestly, I’ve always been okay with that. Vaporwave has always been a hard genre to break into because for one, no one really knew who anyone was, then, you had angry redditors and FaceBook group moderators bashing anyone for the smallest of reasons. I had been banned from SPF420, the Vaporwave subreddit, and the biggest vaporwave groups on FB, simply because anything that wasn’t seen as pleasing to group mods would get you silenced. Asking the real questions would bring down the iron hammer. This is why I think the genre got moved to the dust-bin. You have people that can’t think critically moderating things that require critical thinking, so you’re bound to start going backwards, stopping growth, and ultimately pushing people out.
For what it was, I did speak critically during my interview, but they chopped most of that out and left me as a very light antagonist, which I appreciate because being the only person to speak negatively would not have been fun. My comments were some of the only even slightly critical words said in the entire film, which is understandable, given the circumstances the filmmakers were in. They had to appeal to the vaporwave community, because they funded the majority of the film. Creating any kind of negative view would have been a disaster, but at the same time a missed opportunity to give a more realistic depiction of something I think would have made it more legitimate to those outside of vaporwave. During the film, I’m basically saying that vaporwave wasn’t vaporwave anymore because it turned into the very thing that it parodied; mindless capitalism. To me what it became was experimental pop music. What made the style interesting at first was that it was unlike others, because it wasn’t trying to sell itself. Once artists wanted me to start buying things, I knew it was over. It had become like pop.
Nobody Cares: The Story of Getting Old
Chillwave is often a very under-appreciated genre, given how much of it went into vaporwave. I was a little surprised it didn’t get a mention in the film. In my opinion, Neon Indian’s Dead Beat Summer, Washed Out’s Feel It All Around, and Toro y Moi’s Blessa, were the chillwave pre-cursors to vaporwave. Hell, before chillwave, I was into Nu-Rave, Nu-Disco, and Electro-Clash; the genres that dominated the ‘cool kid’ music spheres in the 00s. I’ve always been an outsider, and my music tastes naturally gravitated to the unconventional or odd. I used to frequent the defunct Pitchfork spin-off blog called Altered Zones, where I discovered a lot of burgeoning Dream Pop, Experimental Ambient, and Synthwave-esque stuff that was coming out. Daniel Lopatin, the purported creator of vaporwave, had a music project or two that were some of my favorites of that era. Before Altered Zones, we’d have to resort to blogs that catered to niche tastes, like the legendary Hipster Runoff. All these genres are what immediately pre-dated vaporwave, but are now just sort of audio relics, left for some curious internet user to find on spotify randomly.
Depending on when you tuned into vaporwave, the genre could have been in a very different state. Depending on the year it could have been a cabal of mysterious producers, a faux-art movement, chatroom gameshow, internet meme, over-saturated graveyard, war between labels and artists, or IRL shopping experience. It was truly a mind-boggling internet creation that just like the internet, was insane in someways, but also comforting in others. I think the nostalgic aspect of it is what pulled me in originally. These shared memories of late night commercials and music that lingered in the background of my earliest memories. The search for these memories, to keep them safe, so they’re never forgotten again is at the heart of vaporwave. Inevitably, vaporwave suffered from what all humans must suffer; getting old. For however many times someone comes along and tries to inject some new blood into it, it always needs more, and like a haggard old vampire, can never integrate into society again no matter how many times it feasts on the sanguine soul of the young.
Around 2010, the hipster era was ending, but the remnants of that subculture were still there. I was living in South Beach at the time, not far from where I was born, working at a niche boutique called Base. The shop combined selling clothing, scents, artisanal objects, niche books, and novelties, but at a luxury level. They had something that not many other shops offered at the time, a ‘CD Bar.’ Where you could sit down and pick an album from the wall and you’d be able to sit down and listen on a CD player grounded to the bar. It was probably seen as something very chic during that era. Miami Beach at the time was a bit wild in terms of what was what. An art gallery could be nested between a between a strip club and a zen garden with a mime on the corner of an art deco mansion and no one would really think it unusual. I attended a magnet art high school not too far away in Wynwood, so many vaporwave-y things had already been ingrained in my psyche early on. This was all happening at the very early stages of social media so there was no real way to capture this mood for me, until vaporwave came along.
I observed vaporwave since it began, and while I was somewhat involved, I kept a safe enough distance to be able to see things more clearly than those who were at the center of it. I think one thing that always happens to something underground is that it gets discovered by more and more people, and then suddenly what made it special, that esoteric element, is then gone, and suddenly you aren’t in on the secret anymore, and then it’s just normal. This happens time after time, and it’s like once the population sinks its fangs into something pure, the life force contained is drained and you’re left with a raggedy corpse of something you once loved. This is one reason I think HKE wanted to remove his music from the vaporwave category, to give it a chance to live outside of the commodification of dead samples, but I don’t actually know. I remember being on his side of the argument when it happened on Twitter, because I thought he had solid reasons why, and also because he also saw the vaporwave community for what it had become. It was validating that I wasn’t the only one.
B-Side: Gatefold, Gatekeep, Gateway
This is just me ranting now. I find it very interesting that the CIA’s declassified Gateway Process, intended to allow humans to access “other states of reality”, describes the use of sound to create a hypnogogic trance that allows the mind to slip out of the body and into mental environments that may or may not be local to the individual’s consciousness. This is fascinating to me, because it means there are places that are only reachable through the mind that might exist outside the mind, if that makes sense, probably doesn’t, but that’s exactly what the CIA believes. It does sound very new age conspiracy-ish, but at its core, the Gateway Process is very similar to intense meditative practices that are pervasive in many eastern religious and philosophical teachings. David Lynch himself swore by using Transcendental Meditation, he was able to come up with the bonkers stuff he was putting into film and TV. The document itself is from 1983, so they must have been practicing this for some time before it was perfected. It’s likely that experiments persist, and some governments might actually have psychic spies that can steal you mind’s elation, but I digress, this is removed from vaporwave, but I think at the same time it is very vaporwave.
By using sound, according to the document, many people were reportedly able to transcend the boundaries of space and time, potentially being able to reach the source of all existence itself, remote view, implant thoughts, time travel, encounter non-human intelligence, and all kind of weird shit. I’m not saying I believe all of it, but it is interesting nonetheless. Looking at what was happening with vaporwave, teens and young adults at the time who were experimenting with slowing down music and using visuals to create these hypnogogic states might have been doing something similar, or at the minimum, fucking up the collective consciousness with some weird stuff that had never been done before by connecting like-minded, potentially psychic-sensitive kids that had inclinations towards expressing what their minds had been conditioned with throughout their entire lives; commercial content, non-stop advertising, trauma, and romanticized dystopian media. There might be more to this but I’m not going to be the one to write any more about it. I remember the GATE Program in school, and Magnet Art Schools, of which I attended, that tested us for a variety of what could potentially have been for psychic aptitude, among other things. Please do not misquote me, and see where I said ‘potentially.’
Mallworld
One of the weirdest things is the phenomenon of ‘Mallworld.’ Apparently, many people have come forward online to describe that they have all been visiting a place they describe as an infinite mall with escalators going in every direction and pristine environments that are incredibly similar to the Virtual Plaza that vaporwave popularized within the scene. The people reporting this usually are not even connected to the vaporwave community. They call it the ‘original shared dream’, and what’s funny is that it’s mostly millennials & gen-z that report to have visited Mallworld either through dreams, hallucinations, or out of body experiences. It even has its own subreddit. Some people who report having been there were supposedly in the GATE program when they were in school, which makes it a bit curious. Vaporwave has long spawned a sub-genre called Mallsoft, that is kind of like muffled background music you’d hear in a mall in the 90s, but while heavily medicated, or drinking lean. This is another genre I thought the film might mention, but it was only referenced through the work of an artist interviewed instead. I think that was for the best because going into the subgenres would have been alot to process for most people who barely even understand vaporwave as a whole, let alone things like Slushwave, or Barber Beats. I think there is a connection there somewhere, but I think I’m going to skip trying to investigate things like this, but I have taken note of its strangeness.
Outro
Overall, I echo the sentiment of a lot of people who have commented about Nobody Here. It was a timely throwback to better days that re-ignited a bit of the spark the genre had. Where that spark will lead is up to the people who still want vaporwave to grow. I’d say to moderators and group admin to invite people to be critical, and stop gatekeeping conversations that bring up uncomfortable truths, because getting past that is the first step in evolving. There is no chance of progress if you can’t work past mistakes and deal with reality. Nothing can grow by only feeding it false positivity.
I haven’t even started talking about Dream Catalogue, Vektroid, or how City Pop (which is bigger than vaporwave now) sprang from the genre. This will need to happen another time… There is just too much to say, and saying it all would have made Nobody Here unwatchable for the average normie. - Van
AUTHOR
Van Paugam is a successful Internationally-Acclaimed DJ and leading figure specializing in 70s and 80s Japanese Music, dubbed City Pop. He has organized and hosted over 100 events dedicated to the style, and actively works for the Japanese culture center of Chicago, while working closely with the Japanese Arts Foundation of Chicago. He has been featured on CNN, NHK, and many other publications for his dedication to City Pop. Van is credited with being the first person to begin popularizing City Pop online through his mixes on YouTube in 2016, and subsequently through live events. Learn More…