Digital caricatures of dead cross line
Tupac Shakur’s reanimated, holographic corpse was a hit at this year’s California-based music festival Coachella. So much so that Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, the performers who featured the hologram in their performance, are now considering taking the virtual ghost on tour. Digital Domain, the media group that has also worked on movies such as “Tron: Legacy,” says this is “just the beginning.” So prepare yourselves, world — an awesome new method of exploiting the dead has, literally, appeared out of thin air.
While at first glance it seems like a fun parlor trick, I find something deeply disturbing about the reanimation of a dead performer for commercial purposes. The proposed tour by Snoop and Dre, along with the ominous comment by Digital Domain about similar products in the future, is a symbol of everything that’s wrong with today’s consumerist culture.
The rights of the dead have always been somewhat vague, and it seems impractical to have some sort of property rights to a relative’s image after death. This technology could have so many great uses — imagine some convincing recreations of Civil War battles at Discovery Place. However, when it comes to digitizing dead public figures then charging for their posthumous performances, something tells me there are moral and legal problems brewing in the background.
Besides, this really just seems like a Generation Y’s version of taxonomy. If you think it’s creepy for people to have their pets stuffed and displayed, imagine your relatives flickering around the dinner table.