The empty seats, the man standing beside the screen, the ethereal music, the ethereal images ("the centre sways in the nucleus just like some creepers"), the enigmatic ending—all of this must not simply be associated with karaoke but with something deeper in the culture, something that was once expressed as the benshi of the silent era in Japanese cinema.
Charles Tonderai Mudede, The Stranger’s senior staff writer, is a Zimbabwean-born cultural critic, urbanist, filmmaker, college lecturer, and writer. Mudede collaborated with the director Robinson Devor on three films, two of which, Police Beat and Zoo, premiered at Sundance, and one of which, Zoo, screened at Cannes. He has also written for the New York Times, Cinema Scope, Tank Magazine, e-flux, LA Weekly, and C Theory.