August 15th – Hardest thing to work out, the truth
and sincerity of a given performer, given that the business is built of a
foundation of bullshit and bravado. It’s all to do with the confusion factor
and, as I’ve noted once before, the curse of the king’s new clothes.
Most folk have a real fear of being made to look foolish (not
me, I’ve made a cottage industry out of looking stupid) or feel as though they
aren’t quite up to speed with new trends and fashions (not me, again; one look
at my jumper collection and iTunes playlist would swiftly disabuse anyone who
had mistakenly classified me as being hep).
Back in the day this keeping up with trends was easier. The way information was
traded was, to say the least, slow. Snail-mail was the principle method of
communication coupled with the ever-growing installation of the telephone into
homes that could afford both the cost and the space, telephones back in the
30’s being the size of a medium-sized footstool. The postal service was, by and
large, excellent, reliable and cheap; yes, there was a time when all three words
could be used to describe this service without being stunned under a hail of
invective and derision. You could be in London
and post a letter to Glasgow
So, the information technology of today. Do you know how long
it took for Psy’s Gangnam Style video
to reach its opening play audience of 500,000? 1.2 seconds. Shortly after, with
just one tweet about the Gangnam video and performer, Britney Spears sent the
connect information out to 1.3 million followers who all tweeted to their followers…
Did you notice how quickly it became the dance of the moment?
On the evening of the release, kids in clubs were doing it, every dance class
on the week-end following the release had it as part of their programme and
every panto in the country had a section where it was part of the routine… Now
the obvious question is;
Why?
How does something this infantile and simple become such a
global phenomena? I mean, if you wrote them all on slips of paper, you couldn’t
find a building big enough to hold the number of times the word, Gangnam, was
used in the month following its release; the promoters alone had access to 2.5
million subscribers and they each had their own address books. So, here we have
something as simple and as childish as a guy in long coat and sunglasses
bobbing up and down to a playground chant of music and it takes over the
fashion-consciousness of billions of people; let’s trade up a little, let’s
look briefly at the use of propaganda to alter public opinion.
I’d like to think that, whatever it is, you’ve formed an
opinion about Edward Snowden. I’m not about to tub-thump my own opinion, I just
want to look at the way language and social media has been used to alter the perceived
game plan for each side involved. Depending on whom you listen to:
Snowden leaked the
information about US
but
The US government stated that Snowden’s action has
done grave damage to US
Whichever way you see this cat’s cradle of an impasse, both
sides have resorted to various social media to get their message across and
both have used phrases and language to emphasise the rhymes and reasons for
their actions and in real-time too; no waiting for the post, we got their announcement
immediately it left their lips of laptops. (As an aside, I did think that Mr. Obama’s
refusal to meet Mr. Putin because Mr. Snowden was, at that time, staying in the
transfer lounge of Moscow airport, was ill-advised and childish in the extreme;
I really thought better of him than that – but, you know, there’s probably a
gaggle of necromantic arms-dealers and weapons manufacturing share holders
pulling his strings… like I say, I really thought better of him, thought he was
his own man, like Tony Blair).
Anyhow, what I wanted to illustrate, and have probably completely
buggered up, is the way we can get suckered into taking things at face value,
taking the word or the vision as a given…which it surely isn’t. Because I’m
away with the fairies most of the time most stuff passes me by (how away am I? I found out today what the
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were…yes, of course I’d heard of them, if I was
that out of it I would have been sectioned…no, I mean I found out today what
they were and did…I had no idea. What I couldn’t quite equate, after the
explanations, was how a mask could possible disguise a six-foot,
sword-twirling, bipedal turtle but…let that pass). A couple of things I have
learnt are; when someone in power tells you that what they’re doing to you is for
your own good, be very suspicious, and also, never forget that the key words
used in the oft-quoted entertainment phrase;
the land of make-believe
are the words make and believe.
James Brown. Done just about everything in the biz; singles,
albums, tours, films, religion, massive fan-base, fainting on stage but
dragging himself back because of his commitment to his adoring fans, regular
abuse (both physical and emotional) of the several women in his life…
The loyal performer who projected the image of self-sacrifice
and religious fervour, which was marketed as him being just a one of the folks performer, was
discovered to be a closet lady beater…to the point where, on this day in 1996,
a New York women’s shelter turned down the money raised from a benefit concert
because Mr. Brown was on the bill.
Hell hath no fury like a woman who believes a man’s trying to
hoodwink her…
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