Are ABBA afraid of death?
Becoming a hologram is one way to manage mortality, by Mary Harrington, unherd:
[…] How to stay in control of something – death – that can’t be controlled? This is a generation who grew up amid boundless optimism about the seemingly limitless potential of technology to extend human freedom and potential infinitely, and smash every seemingly natural constraint – even that of biological sex.
The invention of the Pill enabled women to defy a previously irreducible difference between the freedom of men and women to pursue risk-free sexual self-expression. And it was arguably that extension of sexual freedom to women that kicked off the “swinging” Sixties, and informed much of the boomerism that has followed.
A generation marinaded in the positive nature of cultural, political and bodily freedom is thus now confronting, in every ageing boomer body, its own Boomerdämmerung. According to Engelhart, Nitschke himself sees his movement as boomer-driven: “Boomers getting into their twilight years,” he says to Engelhart, “just want access to lethal drugs.”
Not every person born during this period rages thus boomerishly against the dying of the light. Some want to evade it altogether. Late-era boomer Jeff Bezos (b.1964), now the richest man in history, is reported to be funding a new venture to research eternal life. Elsewhere, boomers are seeking to greet the Boomerämmerung not with a heroic last stand, but a form of ascension into virtual realms.
The latest news story to dress this response to Boomerdämmerung in feel-good clothing comes from Seventies pop sensations ABBA, who announced last week that they’re releasing a new album for the first time in four decades.
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