by Paul Klemperer

Music in the Culture of Celebrity

Recently, while playing a ritzy West Austin wedding reception, I found myself on break scarfing down some wedding food in a rec room adjoining the main banquet area. There was a big screen TV blaring away with the latest on the JFK, Jr. tragedy. Periodically people poked their heads through the doorway and asked: Did they find anything else yet? I would mumble around a mouthful of food: Just the airplane wheel and a headrest. Meanwhile Dan Rather blathered on about a country in mourning, while the price tag for this spectacle climbed by millions of dollars per advertising block. Next to me my drummer mused: If you or I got lost how much do you think they would spend trying to find our bodies?

Later that week I was stuck in traffic on the way to a rehearsal, calming my nerves by listening to NPR's Fresh Air. The guest was Tom Rosensteel, author of America In The Age of Mixed Media and president of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. After so much opportunistic Kennedy scavenging by the media, Rosensteel's perspective was refreshing. He drew a parallel between the news media and Hollywood: with the proliferation of media targeted at different demographic groups, each with a small share of the overall market, the appearance of a "blockbuster story" represents great profits since it can sell to many different demographics. News stories become like major motion pictures, and chart-topping songs: crossover hits.

It is common knowledge that we live in a celebrity culture. It has often been said that movie stars are America's royalty. But sometimes it is surprising just how deeply ingrained is our attraction to spectacle. Whether we stare at the lost souls on Jerry Springer, slow down to gawk at traffic accidents, or sheepishly investigate the tabloids in the checkout line, as a culture we resemble moths fluttering toward the intoxicating blue light of a bug zapper.

Living in a democracy built on principles of equality, one would think we would glorify the achievements of the "common man," and occasionally we do, when an ordinary joe jumps in a river to save a drowning child, or inner city neighbors join together to turn a vacant lot into a community garden. It's natural to celebrate these things. But why do we also glorify the obscenely rich, the anorexic supermodels, and the rest of our circus of stars? Do we have an innate need to vicariously share in the lives of the powerful and famous? Some would say yes: psychologists, folklorists and other researchers into our collective subconscious have pointed to the myth-making tendencies of all human societies. We like to deify and demonize things. They become cathartic focal points for all that unresolved tension bubbling beneath the conscious level of our daily lives. Well, that seems easy enough, if slightly pitiful. We are spectators to mythical actions which we rarely if ever experience directly in our own lives. Disgruntled employee guns down boss and co-workers. We would never do that, but somehow the idea is cathartic. Mick Jagger marries supermodel one-third his age. Well, that could still happen to me.

An alternate cultural view runs more along the lines of conspiracy theory: We are programmed to be voyeurs, to feed emotionally off of spectacle, as a substitute for real experience. Perhaps we are the pawns in a giant corporate chess game, trained from birth to turn emotional experience into a commodity, a financial transaction. Perhaps it is the trajectory of our messianic, monotheistic culture that seems to organize our experience into leaders and followers, stars and voyeurs.

What does this have to do with music? We can see the same relationships recreated in music. The most obvious example is the rock star, who occupies the pedestal next to the movie star in the shrine of our subconscious. What makes the rock star a cathartic focal point? Is it the music, the skill and artistic depth? Hardly. The "twenty year overnight success" pattern exposes that lie. A performer works for twenty years, playing to small crowds, building a following. Finally he gains major industry backing and is transformed into an overnight success. He plays stadiums instead of bars, with huge sound and lighting systems. He becomes a spectacle and is consequently deified. His shows, which involved a direct interaction with a small audience, now become settings for group catharsis, important (and expensive) life events for the audience. One has to ask if it isn't the sheer numbers in the audience and size of the production that make the experience cathartic.

In other words, like the death of a Kennedy, a rock star's life is a "blockbuster story," resonating on a mythical level in our cultural subconscious. In fact, if a public figure doesn't resonate, the corporate media machine often compensates and tweaks the figure until he/she does. If you're a star you can be deified or demonized, but you can't just go about your business.

However, the cultural landscape isn't all this bleak. It isn't all about misplaced veneration and cheap thrills. There are many examples of ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary things and being honored and appreciated accordingly, not as mythical figures, but as representatives of our potential, of the best that is within us all. I see this every day in the music world, in the relationship between teacher and student, and in the humility of wonderfully talented and hardworking musicians who, rather than get swelled heads with success, respect those who support and appreciate them.

It is important to remember that music is in itself cathartic, both for the performers and for the audience. Music doesn't need huge concert halls and laser shows to have a deep emotional impact. The less we depend on spectacle, on "blockbuster" marketing to define what is meaningful in our lives, the more we can open up to the emotional depth and beauty of our everyday experiences.