reviewing a review.
30 June 2007 | maura dot com | 3 Comments
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.
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Maura,
I think you’ve hit on the weird angle that comes through in the reviews of this book: the man really wants and trusts gatekeepers. He even apparently (I say, having not read the damn thing) goes so far as to worry about how we might start to lose trust in the reliability of advertising information! I mean, ads have always been true, right?
Meanwhile, the rest of us don’t really want gatekeepers all that much.
I have similar recurring discussions along the lines of “podcasting vs. radio” or “why listen to radio if I have a fully-stocked 80GB iPod.” And I always wind up coming back to the idea of “curators” as distinguished from “gatekeepers.”
There’s only so much independent discovery and assessment one can reasonably do, given the glut of content in the world. A good curator (with or without formal training or position) provides a context and creates juxtapositions and exposure that might not otherwise occur, hopefully bringing perspective and depth to the field. (The concept most naturally fits the arts, but it works in other areas.)
The “user-generated content” world will fail miserably if it becomes little more than mob rule. But personal contributions in the global process of “sifting and winnowing” do make a positive difference. Access to multiple curatorial sources allows for greater perspective and balance rarely achieved by the mob.
An author can’t really defend such a dull, logical position if he or she wants to move units off the shelves … regardless of what that author truly believes or experiences.
“All this may be: the People’s voice is odd;
It is, and it is not, the Voice of God.”
Ah, Alexander Pope, you short-arsed genius. The allusion is to vox populi, vox dei, and there were objections to it back in the 700s, if VoxPopiPedia is to be believed.
Picking up on SKM, there are a bundle of inherent paradox in the gatekeeper phenomenon. Perhaps the group-mind, with enough tools, will find you that obscure band with three demos and a gig that is the equivalent of your perfect lover. Or perhaps John Peel (RIP) will introduce you to a world of music that tweaks and expands your tastes.
Or, alternatively, we’re resolving towards a world that that makes it easier than ever to find out who performed that just-edgy enough track in the ad or TV show you just watched, even as the outlets for music attenuate themselves into atomic strands.
Or, one more: spam evolves faster than spam-filters, and spam music evolves faster than the means to evade it.
And no matter what, we’ll still be attached to the bands that we loved in our late teens and early twenties.