reviewing a review.
30 June 2007
i haven’t read andrew keen’s the cult of the amateur yet, but its topic interests me; in an age where things like digg make the whole world think that the obsessions of tech nerds are the most important stories out there*, and the “most e-mailed” list of cnn stories, which is always full of lurid video, dictates cable-news coverage, is there a need for so-called “experts”? and where do you find those people, if only to rescue culture from the endless parade of related-to-one-another white guys who make the rounds on cable chat shows? anyway, my interest in the topic is probably why its review by michiko kakutani in yesterday’s times had a few moments that made me cock my eyebrow:
By undermining mainstream media and intellectual property rights, he says, it is creating a world in which we will “live to see the bulk of our music coming from amateur garage bands, our movies and television from glorified YouTubes, and our news made up of hyperactive celebrity gossip, served up as mere dressing for advertising.”
which, you know, fine. the continued existence of perez hilton can pretty much support the last half of that sentence. (especially the ben-sherman-as-bagman clothes that he outfits himself in, which he does simply because they’re free.) according to kakutani’s review, though, he goes on to say:
For one thing, Mr. Keen says, “history has proven that the crowd is not often very wise,” embracing unwise ideas like “slavery, infanticide, George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, Britney Spears.”
i’m not going to get to the first three items in that list–except to say that it was odd to me that a writer would try and make the case that ‘the crowd’ embraced the iraq war, until, of course, i realized that said writer’s from the weekly standard–but really, britney spears? if anything, her pop success was designed and executed by these so-called gatekeepers; she came out of the mickey mouse club, for chrissake, and was pretty much the engine of the pop economy for a good couple of years. i don’t think that the “unwiseness” of any crowd should be held up for mockery if said unwise decisions are led along by the cynical, profit-driven machinations of those people who control it, and i think that the reactions within the music industry over the past few years have been, in large part, a reaction to those gatekeepers’ attempts to coax profit out of every single possible orifice; bonus editions, greatest-hits packages for an artist who’s been around for five years, etc. a more interesting book would have looked at the music industry today and tried to figure out the reasons why the “crowd” has seemingly dissipated since the disney-pop era, but maybe that’s up to me to do.
* seriously, have you ever looked on digg’s music page? all the stories are either about a) the riaa sucking, b) how to get free music, c) LOL @ RAP, or d) trent reznor. ugh.