Life By the Throat-- With Dijeridoo

Wilhelm Reich was a castoff of early psychoanalysis who believed that the energy of life, including that from orgasms, was a distinguishable and collectible force called "orgone energy." An orgone accumulator could be built (and he built them-- in part for which he was imprisoned in the USA and his books were burned) which would enable those positioned in the small cabinet to be revitalized by the forces of life and of ecstasy

Yes indeed, that's a schematic outline of part of the most prurient of Reich's ideas.

The Serbian filmmaker Dusan Makavejev used those Reichian themes and more to shape a "70's ludicrous," * tedious and hilarious movie called WR: Mysteries of the Organism in 1971.

Makavejev subsequently made a well received "serious" movie called Montenegro in 1981 dealing with political themes from his native Yugoslavia and beyond.

Four years later, for some reason we can only celebrate, an international consortium paid for Makevejev to create a sublime concoction of politics, commerce, surreal humor, cultural imperialism and romantic comedy called The Coca-Cola Kid. Eric Roberts plays a good-ole southern boy sent to the Australian outback to capture for American business the drinking habits of one of the few places in the world that had not yet succumbed to Coke.

It's a universal movie; it resonates more over the decades. It features a luminous Greta Scacchi. It has fewer Australians than expected in lead roles. And yet, as a character in the following clip jests, it's "As Australian as a barbed wire canoe. It's as Australian as a shit sandwich."

This movie will repay your attention but it's not what you expect.

Behold Neil Finn of Crowded House toying with the American corporatist for all he's worth and then performing the best Coca-Cola jingle that the corporation would never allow to represent it.



Lyrics:

Don't want to go
Where there's no Coca-Cola

You've got

Life by the throat
When you're drinking Coke

Choke back the tears
When there's no Coca-Cola

You've got

Life by the throat
When you're drinking Coke

Under the hot sun
When the day is done
And you're dying of thirst
There's only one drink
It's universal

Don't want to go
Where there's no Coca-Cola

You've got

Life by the throat
When you're drinking Coke
Choke back the tears
When there's no Coca-Cola

You've got

Life by the throat
When you're drinking Coke
Life by the throat
When you're drinking Coke

Life by the throat
When you're drinking Coke
Keeps you up 'cause
there's nothing like Coke

* Footnote: "70's ludicrous" is a category of films from the late sixties through the seventies that are bold, experimental, "counter-cultural," sometimes tedious and often outrageous. It's my own designation. I know it when I see it.