barney’s notion of the cultured world, and it’s music, reveals with such clarity how our understanding of other cultures is essentially no more sophisticated than what we teach to our children via television. but then sophie said very softly: how can you expect the children to know otherwise? which was not the point rachael was (excellently) making but cuts to the crux of what is perhaps more the point: barney controls (the boundaries of the world of) his friends. what’s instructive about the barney example is to see not merely that the vision of the world is childish, but how that world is presented. other cultures are marketed to children as images that can be recognised to fit the mould of a stereotype – complete with traditional costume, instruments and dance – and thus any understanding of these cultures will exist only on the level of an image that fits a type. if the image hasn’t any depth then how can we expect our understanding of other cultures to have any depth?
this flattening of the world into images is, of course, what the medium of television does, which is precisely why we should ask how does the medium that presents us the world construct our understanding of the world? television is a good example to use because it’s easy to demonstrate the way in which it’s presentation of the world is a constructed reality. let’s stick with barney and “friends” for this. barney’s set, his world, is a theatrical facade in which a series of scripted and staged events take place. the events are staged to teach the children watching something whilst being disguised as fun. the kids might be learning – through the combination or images and sound – the name of a colour, or a number, or a letter, etc. but something else, just as fundamental, is being taught here. and that lesson is this: by engaging with television – and with images – you are engaging with the world. they are being trained to passively consume information in the form of images and sound projected from a box. that box is not the world, but they are being taught – and we have been taught – that the box is a way to access the world. so, the point i’m making here is that our understanding of reality is constructed through the medium it is presented to us in, in other words, the way it is framed.
what the fuck is this guy on about?!
well i attach this thinking about medium because i think it is pertinent to the domain of music, and in particular, this idea of “world music”. when we grow up surrounded by the most visible and saturating forms of popular culture – the mainstream – we tend to be entirely oblivious to the fact our entire frame of reference about music is governed by the commercial interests of the companies that release it. in fact, so strongly do commercial interests frame this culture’s idea of music that the ambitions of musicians and the type of music they make is not only subordinated to the commercial interest, but actually becomes that commercial interest. in other words: the celebrity. of course, the celebrity musician – the arsetralian idol – thinks they are an artist, with artistic integrity and all that, but you only need to hear a dickhead like dicko talk for five seconds before it becomes obvious that his notion of good music is that which sells units. i’ve heard dicko say, straight-faced as a corpse: that’s not the kind of voice that will sell a million records. the celebrity factory that is idol demonstrates perfectly the process by which an artist is manufactured – smoothing out the rough edges – to becomes a saleable commodity.
arsetralian idol is too easy a target here, because, it’s bare-faced commercialism is so easy to hold up as a fake opposition against which you claim the shit you’re into is the real shit. of course, there’s more authentic forms of popular music that idol, but the authentic reality of that music is still presented to us through largely the same mediums. it’s still recorded in a studio, still manufactured into cd’s, still distributed through record stores, still marketed through images and the labels the marketers give it. now, i’m not arguing here that the medium is intrinsically wrong, actually forms of media and the ways in which groups of people use them are now so diverse and dynamic that any generalisation about the media landscape is going to look idiotic in 2007. what i am arguing is that the way music gets to us – it’s mediation – plays a hugely significant part in the creation of notions about what music is, and does, and stands for. in other words, there is a structural mode by which western culture represents music to itself and the world. and so when western culture goes to represent the music of the (other exotic) world, it does so using, naturally, the forms of mediation it knows how to use. but the other culture it seeks to record and bring back to the western world might not, traditionally, use these modes of representation. the role of music in this other culture might not be that which is recorded and manufactured into an object and then sold as a commodity. the meaning of music in this other culture might be part of essential everyday rituals that are related to particular tasks, and the music is intrinsic to that task (the music might show how the task is done). so there is a tension here between music as recorded – that is to be listened numerously out of time and place – and music that is intrinsic to the lived social world. it is out of this tension that anxiety grows about, not only the validity, but the possibility of representing other cultures in this way. that anxiety becomes amplified when the commercial interests that lay behind the recordings are brought into view. even with the best artistic intentions there are profound differences between forms of musical representation in cultures, differences which need to respected, thought through and negotiated. what i’m trying to suggest is that such a negotiation needs to think through this issue of medium and media, as well as, of course, the commercial interests behind it. and this is the great problem with something like eurovision. it’s form, medium, structure – whatever you want to call it – is totally homogenous. every act, no matter where it comes from, must yield to the formula of the pop spectacle. and in this flattened, one size-fits all representation of the world, the real differences of people and cultures are nauseating stereotypes, all smiling friends of barney.
