There’s an article in the Times today about Michael Jackson, and how no one will ever be as big as Michael again. The article presents an interesting historical look at some other big names in the show biz. According to the author, we have too many choices for any single star to capture an entire public’s imagination as people did back in the day.
Many pundits have presented this same view. I agree with them. We only have one President of the United States, so Obama was able to capture our attention, but for artists and others, there are just too many choices and options competing for our attention. David Brooks wrote a column about this a while back, where he talked about about how we all listen to different music these days.
For Asian American culture, this will be interesting given that the only really universal AA writer whom everyone knows is Amy Tan. These days, an Asian American writes a book about about Asian people trying to ingratiate, I mean, assimilate, and no one cares about the next big Asian American thing. It’s like, “Read that, done that.” What will life be like in an age where it’s all about choice?
Don’t get me wrong–choice is good. But how can we get a mass conversation going with such a large variety of choices? I don’t mean this to be rhetorical–I believe it’s something we’ll have to figure out.
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Currently, I am reading a book entitled Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch. I just started reading it so can cannot elaborate on it at length. But to an idea of what it’s about here’s a sample passage:
First, a new vocabulary, because our ways of talking about culture – how it works, how it changes, how it influences us and what we hope for from it – often do not serve us well. We talk about “the culture” even though culture is always cultures, plural: full of diversity, variety, and history. We talk about culture as if it were primarily a set of ideas when it is primarily a set of tangible goods. We talk about “engaging”, “impacting”, and “transforming culture” when in fact the people who most carefully study culture tend to stress instead how much we are transformed by it. If we are to be responsible agents in the midst of culture, we need to learn new ways to speak about what we are doing.
There are sections entitled:
The Horizons of the Possible
Diagnosing Culture
Spheres of Culture
Finding our place in Cultural Diversity, etc.
For Asian American culture, this will be interesting given that the only really universal AA writer whom everyone knows is Amy Tan. These days, an Asian American writes a book about about Asian people trying to ingratiate, I mean, assimilate, and no one cares about the next big Asian American thing. It’s like, “Read that, done that.” What will life be like in an age where it’s all about choice?
Don’t get me wrong–choice is good. But how can we get a mass conversation going with such a large variety of choices? I don’t mean this to be rhetorical–I believe it’s something we’ll have to figure out.
You just gotta do your thing and not worry about that. This is rather like putting the cart before the horse.
But if I had to pinpoint a great liability in regards to Asians competing in the great marketplace of ideas is that we tend to unquestioningly accept the basic rules of the game, that others have set, even when those rules are ultimately work against our benefit. We usually don’t challenge the rules. We’re like Davids facing cultural, mainstream Goliaths but instead of engaging Goliath asymmetrically we insist on engaging Goliath on mostly on Goliath’s terms. This manifests itself supremely in the many discussions regarding Asian-America’s dilemma versus Hollywood, for example. The proper response would be to subvert Hollywood (and I use that term “Hollywood” in the same sense as “Main Street” or “Wall Street” – these terms represent an entity rather than a specific geographic location). But instead we wring our hands about why oh why Hollywood doesn’t give us AA’s a fair shake. Ridiculous. For all the talk and whinging about the Disparity, I have yet to see an Asian guy Black woman couple in NYC walking around wearing a T-shirt that declaring “Not a Cliché”on it. You get the idea. I could go on and on come up with many more examples.
This tendency kills innovation. You cannot “fight” the mainstream when you’re busy wringing your hands about not being more part of the mainstream. Our stance should be basically counter-cultural. Bitching about why we don’t see more Asian-Americans in Hollywood movies is NOT being counter-cultural. It is a failure to think outside of the box.
If you want to stand out from “all the choices” then you gotta be more creative, innovative, outside of the box, moonwalk, bust some moves no one’s ever seen before, and perhaps even be somewhat controversial.
What the article seems to miss is that people have more CHOICES now. We don’t need to be writing an obituary for the death of mega-starom –how much real good did that do us anyway?
It was one thing 30 years ago when Michael OWNED MTV because it was the one and only music station out there. Lucky MTV!
It’s one thing when there were only 3 networks and NO other media avenues, but Michael’s mega-stardom was as much the triumph of limited mass media venues as it was it was his own talent. A captive audience can make anyone a superstar.
What we’re seeing now is changing landscape in which Andy Warhol’s prediction is finally coming true. Everyone who can get their “15 minutes” is, with sad results for the development of society. When there’s more media outlets people will not merely wish to see different fare, they will want to see THEMSELVES specifically.
We’ve gone from the days of the media icon to the sad age of the media whores.
And the viewership is even more pathetic.
Hell, it’s the triumph of a market that now has the power to say, “Tell us only what we WANT to hear! Better yet, let US do the talking even if we don’t really have anything to say or any particularly intelligent way to say it!”
People used to seek out the informed, even if they weren’t always right. Now, they’ll merely seek out whatever they feel flatters their narrow and self-reverential view.
Idiocracy, here we come!
Mega-stardom is not dead, nor is it dying. It’s simply taking on a different definition.
It is UBIQUITOUS stardom, that eclipsed everything else that is dying. We’re seeing the rise of macro-stardom. Wonder if anyone has trademarked that one yet? I could become FAMOUS!
Sarcasm DRIPPING!
kobukson and neutral,
Thanks for the comments!
So here’s a question–without the big media distribution channels creating superstars, how does one change the world? How does one reach all the people that need to be reached? For example, think of the good things that Wong Fu is doing. They’re reaching a lot of people, but how many people are they NOT reaching. Someone supported by big media, however, can reach everyone.
I wonder about these things. Ten years ago, everyone said that computer retail was dead because of Dell’s internet distribution. Now Acer is started to take market share because of their focus on retail. Distribution could be a real issue.
(Granted, some things will continue to die because of tech–record companies, for example. Movie theaters on the other hand could continue to grow. Rock concerts? Hmm.)
So here’s a question–without the big media distribution channels creating superstars, how does one change the world? How does one reach all the people that need to be reached? For example, think of the good things that Wong Fu is doing. They’re reaching a lot of people, but how many people are they NOT reaching. Someone supported by big media, however, can reach everyone.
There’s always a constant trade-off between artistic integrity and commercial success. Is “superstar-dom” necessarily a desirable goal? I think doing what you love, what you are passionate about is far more important than making the top 10 list. One can be a mainstream success but it will come at a price and always not to your liking. A superstar, by definition, is beholden to the Beast. In the case of Michael Jackson, he had to have “cross-over” appeal to make it, which is code for “has to meet White people’s standards”. In his case though it mostly worked out for the better, except for the part about him actually physically transforming into a White woman, but that’s another story.
Examples abound. The state of hip-hop music is a great example. When Britney Spears first said she wanted to save it for marriage, I think she meant it. But the Machine turned her into a slut. Etc.
I recently came across a NYTimes article about the story behind the popular Sriracha Chili Hot Sauce (a must-read). I think this story serves as a kind of “case-study” dealing with the issues you raise, since the Sriracha Hot Sauce can conceivably be considered as a cultural artifact (and a highly successful one, at that) of the Asian-American community. The article mentions many examples of the fact that this hot sauce is very well known and popular both within and without the AA community and attempts to fathom why. The most poignant comment, though, appears at the end:
The Tran family has taken it all in stride. “We’re happy to see these chefs use our sriracha,” said Huy Fong’s president, William Tran, the 33-year-old son of its founder. “But we still sell 80 percent of our product to Asian companies, for distribution through Asian channels. That’s the market we know. That’s the market we want to serve.”
Kobukson:
There’s always a constant trade-off between artistic integrity and commercial success. Is “superstar-dom” necessarily a desirable goal? I think doing what you love, what you are passionate about is far more important than making the top 10 list. One can be a mainstream success but it will come at a price and always not to your liking.
I had my own struggles with that very question earlier this year. I was actually going to do a blog post on the topic about two months ago. Then things got busy, and it didn’t get done.
The question for me was this: who do I write for and where do I want to go with it? Even though I don’t publish my creative fiction here, I think it’s clear from this blog that I mostly write for Asian American folk. I wouldn’t say I only write for Asian American folk–I still love reading and responding to comments from the non-Asian participants here, and I hope more non-Asian folk come since it wouldn’t be nearly as fun without them–but Asian folk are clearly my main intended audience.
Now I clearly prefer distribution over non-distribution. If I could write a bestseller while staying true to my audience, I would. If I could find a publisher who would be responsible for putting my book in bookstores, I would. I know for myself that I would never be comfortable writing something that was artistically pleasing to me and then hiding it in a drawer. The more distribution, the more ability to change the dialogue, and therefore distribution would also be a goal for me.
That’s why I’m somewhat lamenting the End of Superstardom. I say “somewhat” because, as you’ve mentioned, there are downsides to that too. Not that I would be a superstar, but it would be nice if some Asian American could. For me, distribution is clearly part of the goal. I’ve never had a publisher or agent, so I have no idea what a publisher would ask an Asian American activist to write or not write. I guess we’ll see.
Do you guys want to look into Bono of U2??
Do you think he is a close second to Micheal Jackson?
Or is Bono going to be phased out? The rise of Britney Spears??
She really does carry the economy too, but Ashton Kutcher has a point.