Nine Years Later ("Girlfriend in a Coma") (1998)

• 82%
• 1998
• Robert Beck/Buck

In the three-part series Nine Years Later, Beck revisits video performances he created nearly a decade earlier to music by the British pop band The Smiths. Beck betrays the apparent effortlessness of the original clips by editing them alongside the numerous rehearsals, variously self-conscious and obsessive, they required. With inter-titles and voice-over, Beck recapitulates his performances according to the video technology he used to produce them. As a result, the body, in its correlation with the evolution and obsolescence of technology, is revealed as a purely "enjoying" substance. Whether portraying a vindictive martyr in Bigmouth Strikes Again, a suicidal loner in Panic, or a comatose drag queen in Girlfriend In A Coma, Beck brings the violence and malice implicit in lead-singer Morrissey's lyrics graphically to life.