Every year, when the new season of American Idol launches, I catch myself singing a little differently to the tunes in my car, as if I were on the show. I find it sickingly entertaining, and have been one of the millions to vote every week with the hopes that my American Idol would win. (Of course, it hasn’t and I have been forced to choose another Idol.)
What does it say about our entertainment industry that we have to have a reality show to choose our “Idol”? Why can’t musicians climb up the Idol ladder and earn their Idol status the way they had to 40 years ago? The Beatles didn’t simply become Idols. They had to work for it (and based on the interviews about the Hamburg years, it sounds like they really worked). Has entertainment become so cookie-cutter that the industry will choose someone who will earn $$$ rather than letting talent speak for itself? What happened to the music?
I have the luxury of living in a town focused highly on its music, and defines its identity as being a “music capitol”. Every night, the clubs are filled with at least one live band, some local garage band just trying to make it big. Perhaps it’s not big in the American Idol sense, but it does take a lot of balls to perform in a club on a regular basis, to make one’s career one’s music, to stay true to the art form. Some of those local bands might get a break and get out of our wicked little town, and some may never receive recognition beyond being a local favorite. Isn’t that okay?
Why does entertainment have to be as much a corporate whore as the rest of our society? Why does the business of escaping the horrors of life have to be fueled by the same devilish, greedy goal as the rest of the country?
Can’t we just have a break?
September 22nd, 2008 at 1:47 pm
I’ve often thought that the highest compliment paid to an artist or musician or writer-or even politician- is that he or she does NOT become popular(In 2004, or maybe it was 2000, Nader took 6% of the vote in Austin ; and less most places elsewhere: clearly the superior candidate!). I agree with you that it is nauseating to see the tripe that is passed off as “talent” in pop-culture: the forum of popular opinion is the forum of the lowest common denominator. And the “opinion” of “popular opinion” is a euphemism for the latest leaning of popular culture that is manufactured and insinuated into popular awareness for the purpose of making a buck. (“We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts well full of authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.”-Thoreau).
I guess what I’m saying is pretty obvious and probably not cause for a great deal of commotion. I look back with embarrassment at my own participation in various pop-culture phenomena; and I guess I contributed to making more than one tripe-peddler a little more money.
But even real talent can become “trendy.” Years ago I read about a painting hanging in the parliament building in Belgium or Holland, or some such place, that just sat there on the wall decade after decade with no one paying it much attention. Then someone figured out that it was an original by some Flemish master or other. It came right down off the wall and went to the auction block where it fetched some outrageous amount. The painting couldn’t sell itself on its own merits but had to be associated with a famous name before it was deemed noteworthy(ie, worthy of a lot of C-notes).
But usually pop-pulp is aimed at the young who have no taste and are really just struggling to find a group to feel like they belong. Perhaps we can’t even judge their tastes(or lack thereof) by what they wear and listen to because the need to belong overrides the development of their own individual aesthetics.
If an artist has patronage then we’ll see some good stuff because they don’t have to “sell-out” in order to feed themselves. But what is the trend in this country towards patronage? I remember hearing a few years back that the current administration wanted to scale back its endowments for the arts(or cut funding for public broadcasting or something like that); which means that an artist these days has to first learn to be a good businessman if he doesn’t want to “starving” an inordinate amount. I remember going into an artist’s store here in Wimberley a while back; I didn’t get two steps inside the door before a man, presumably the artist, approached me with a wide grin and a handshake that I felt would be more appropriate for a used-car salesman than an inspired artist.
Is “art for art’s sake” a thing of the past? Too many “artists” these days are those can “create” a big cash-flow; whose commerce is not with the Muses but with the pop-culture pimps.
But it’s not all dark. The success of artists like Jimi Hendrix and Tool is a bright island in the morass of pop-culture.