REVIEW & INTERVIEW: GUY DAVIS “WASTE LAND”
“Personally, I'm not overly convinced we're going to beat the climate crisis anytime soon. Not before we see drastic, negative impacts to the planet and its wildlife,” said Guy Davis.
The climate is changing faster than predicted. With our continuous effort of manmade environmental damages, our planet is heading towards a dangerous “tipping point.” global warming, flooding, destruction of wildlife habitat, coal mining, coral bleaching, and heat waves are at stake.
However, our concerns sometimes are being used as a marketing tactic. The truth is buried and derived by the next breaking news, empty promises, and fake, positive images.
Looking down the concrete jungle built upon wastes, as the sun sinks, when we have destroyed our planet and its natural habitat, all there left is a wasteland. Guy Davis intended to raise awareness of the climate crisis and bring attention to the negative effects of advertising, news, and media with “Waste Land.”
“Feed me your headline stories; it’s already yesterday’s news; cut and paste a new religion, selling your subjective point of view:” We are fed up with constant breaking news, nothing seems to matter; we are repeating the history over and over again while being blindfolded by one-sided stories. We are reassured that everything will be fine until it isn’t, “ladies and gentlemen, we regret to inform you that everything little thing is gonna be just fine.”
“There is a huge disconnection between what we say we are doing and the reality of the situation,” said Guy Davis, “I think this problem has been emphasized by the growing use of social media as a go-to source of news. The online branding and image of a company have never mattered more. Social media has made it very difficult to verify whether an organization meets the messages it’s putting out. As upsetting as it is that we are probably not doing enough. The empty promises and token gestures are a bit of a kick in the teeth.”
Although sonically, “Waste Land” has an “end of the world” sonic environment, the music video is optimistic with the will to fight. “I think perhaps the most hopeful thing, and something that comes through in the music video is that the younger generations are being brought up in a world where climate change and climate issues are at the forefront of society. The school climate protests certainly demonstrate that, and stock footage of those protests is used in the video,” he said.
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