Air Guitar Nation

Synopsis: A documentary that follows two Americans, David "C-Diddy" Jung and Dan "Bjorn Turoque" Crane, as they progress to the 2005 Air Guitar World Championships in Finland.

The line between rock documentary and rock mockumentary has been a much trafficked one since Rob Reiner/Christopher Guest’s This Is Spinal Tap (1984). Some would say that it has been crossed more times than is advisable. Alexandra Lipsitz manages to wring at least one more stop out of the relationship with a documentary about a bastard offshoot of rock that is so ludicrous and so determinedly parodizing of its parentage that it is hard to believe that it is not a mockumentary.

The art of air guitar gives us tried-and-true guitar hero stage antics and its bombastic, world-saving off-stage philosophising in the complete absence of any musical talent or even instrument and it is just this sort of conceptual serio-comic bentness and Zen-like irony which gives it its rationale and appeal for both its practitioners and followers. As Dan "Bjorn Turoque" Crane puts it in the film’s most memorable line: “to err is human, to air guitar, divine”.

Air Guitar Nation uses the now very familiar device of tracking the journey of its characters to the peak competitive event of their given preoccupation. Here it is David Jung who as C-Diddy, wears a long red robe and Hello Kitty backpack as a breastplate and blitzes audiences with phantom Steve Vai-like prestidigitation and real Gene Simmons-like tongue waving and his main rival Dan Crane, who presents as his alter ego, Bjorn Turoque, an unshaven, headband-wearing t-shirt tearing power punkster. Along their way to the Air Guitar World Championships in Finland we meet a gaggle of air guitarists (including a worryingly high proportion of Australians) who thrash about for their own amusement and that of others.

Make no mistake, Lipsitz’ documentary is about nobodies with no talent and apparently no self-respect yet Air Guitar Nation is a likeable oddity that will appeal to those with a taste for the absurd and one that makes for a mildly entertaining footnote to the rock/mock-rock film archives.

 

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