Most importantly, they are about affirming to "regular folk" that while they have no talent at least they are not idiotic enough to believe that they do and therefore don't embarrass themselves like "that moron" or that "as regular folk" they're neither as irresponsibly class-less as elite folk like Paris Hilton nor as utterly without class as redneck rubes... that it is good to be you cuz the folks "above" and "below" you suck.
The second thing they are about, and its true in this remarkable instance as well, is reinforcing what genuinely objectively "good" pop style and performance are. My students often love Manu Chao or Curt Cobain or Bob Marley or David Bowie or Jimi Hendrix or Johnny Cash or Bob Dylan or Chuck Berry or... well, you get the point but, until it is pointed out to them, they've rarely considered how quickly those folks would be jettisoned from these kinds of shows.
There's been this recent exchange about the PirateBay verdict... listening to NPR this morning I heard the recording industry hack say that "discovering", "grooming" and "getting real talent" to the market is expensive and if people want that "high quality" music then there has to be a way to pay for it. And there is was, baldfaced and unapologetic... the bullshit pop taste-makers whining that its expensive to make lame ass over-produced middle of the road pap and that, because all they are doing is giving people what they want, the industry deserves to be compensated for how hard it is to control our taste for crap.
My thought while watching that video was exactly like Joanna's for a moment and then I started paying attention to the lyrics and the glory of her voice remained but I wanted to hear her sing Patti Smith or PJ Harvey or something off of Marianne Faithful's Broken English or something from Scout Niblett's or Vic Chesnutt's songbook... I have a feeling that'd be an even more real epiphany... though Simon Cowell would hate it.
********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Visiting Associate Professor Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 7:45 PM, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net>wrote:
> At 04:23 PM 4/17/2009, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
>
>
> Though I think the phenomenal circulation of this video might be the
>> beginning of a little crack in the system.
>>
>
>
> Didn't happen before with a guy who sang opera on that show?
>
>
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