Rebecca Black has set the new cultural landspeed record from nowhere-dom to superstardom. Andy Wharol's fifteen minutes are officially obsolete. As the thirteen year-old Ms. Black told Jay Leno, on the Tonight Show, [paraphrasing] "One day I am coming home from school and it is 4,000 views, the next day its four million, six weeks later I am on network television." Ms. Black rise was unprecedentedly meteoric, even in the age of viral video, yet, in her Leno interview she seems remarkable well-adjusted, even wholesome. Although, perhaps it has all happened so fast that she hasn't yet had the opportunity to become jaded.
She has debuted stronger on i-Tunes than Justin Bieber's latest single.
The feeling here is that Rebecca Black does not so much signal the coming of a new paradigm, she symbolizes the triumph of new modes of cultural transmission that have already quite securely taken hold. From American Idol to Twitter to Google's sponsorship of the World's First Online Science Fair, direct routes to the top of the Q ratings and a global platform have appeared where no such passages previously existed.
And really, just how different is Rebecca Black's single from say that of a Miley Cyrus who took a more traditional route to global superstardom (nepotism).
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3 comments:
I hadn't heard of Rebecca Black til I read this post, so I went and watched the video you linked to. At first I thought, this must be the parody, where's the original? But it became sadly evident this was the original. Then I thought, maybe after conquering Jeopardy with Watson, IBM's new project is a computer that writes pop music?
How else could a song like this be generated? Unless some beast-god from the nightmares of H.P. Lovecraft has finally found a medium for its toneless flute-hymns?
There is much, much less creativity and complexity in this song than there is in the Twilight novels, Dora the Explorer, or the jingles for discount mattress retailers.
I pray that you and Andy Warhol are right, that 15 minutes from now I can disinfect my brain so it is never again tainted by the perversity of this un-music. But if I ever find myself singing in a robotic monotone: "yes ter day was thurs - day - but to day is Fri - Day - to morrow is Satur Day - Sun day is a diff rent day..." I will hold you responsible!!
-Seth
http://www.hulu.com/watch/229352/late-night-with-jimmy-fallon-stephen-colbert-sings-friday-with-the-roots?from=fb_share
~Joy
The distance between parody and original has been shortened to nearly imperceptible. Glad you appreciated it.
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