There is no doubt that American society has become – and is still becoming – more equal. Specifically, the most progress has been made concerning issues of race, gender, and sexuality. And we can see real results of this in politics, such as the presidency of Barack Obama, the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, and legalization of gay marriage, respectively. But many Americans just don’t care about politics. This past week in New York City, just 22% of registered voters bothered to show up to the polls (Smith). Therefore, to better investigate the effects of changing equality and to decipher the true politics of the people, we should turn to the things that people actually like. That is, we need to look at popular culture and entertainment, for everyone enjoys doing activities such as listening to music and watching TV or movies (at least on some level).

But since mass culture is such a vast structure, for this essay I would like to focus in on one aspect of it: TV comedies. So what can TV comedies tell us about our culture? Well, right off the bat, it would appear that TV comedies have followed the increase in equality. Shows like Friends and Full House that feature exclusively white characters living joyfully in the capitalist system have become less frequent. In their place, more diverse shows have cropped up like Blackish and Modern Family. With that being said, there is another facet of America’s changing equality that I’ve neglected to point out; while social norms have improved, income equality has digressed. We often hear the term: “the rich are getting richer.” Consequently, a new populism has arisen in the form of groups like the Bernie Sanders crew. So what kind of an impact does this change have on our culture? To consider this question, let’s inspect the TV comedy Baskets.

Baskets has an oddly satisfying humor despite its frequent sadism. It stars Zach Galifianakis (who also co-created the show with Louis C.K. and Jonathan Krisel and is an executive producer) as Chip Baskets, a free-spirit who’s dream is to be a clown. Initially Chip goes to France in order to be trained as a clown. This of course goes downhill as he has little money and cannot speak French. So Chip returns to his native Bakersfield, CA, and his struggles continue. He becomes a rodeo clown at a local rodeo arena, which consists of him being gored by bulls. However at the end of Season 1 the rodeo shuts down, leaving Chip completely lost. In essence, Chip does not fit into the capitalist society. His desire to be a clown is removed enough from the norms of the system that it’s extremely difficult for him to be free. Furthermore, the consequences of Chip’s quest to be a clown generate strong Utopian elements in the show.

Now, before we jump into Baskets, I want to discuss what I take to be a fair analysis of how art and entertainment operate. The idea comes from a cultural theorist by the name of Fredric Jameson in an essay titled “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture.” Jameson does a fantastic job of assimilating the theory of Adorno, who believed that mass culture is manufactured to reproduce the ruling ideology of the capitalist system in the minds of consumers, and the theories of thinkers such as Bakhtin, who put forth that mass culture gives people an image of transcendence and brings out their yearning for a more equitable and Utopian society. He basically melds the two theories together and asserts that they both exist together, and that we must consider both aspects to get the best picture of culture: “Works of mass culture cannot be ideological without at one and the same time being implicitly or explicitly Utopian as well: they cannot manipulate unless they offer some genuine shred of content as a fantasy bribe to the public” (Reification 144). This takes on an Adornian stance as Jameson contends that the Utopian element often supports the manipulative/ideological element by fooling the audience even further by giving them hope, while actively subverting that hope as their places in society is cemented. Nevertheless, the idea that there is a continuing dialectic between the two aspects appears to be more accurate than considering a cultural item to be solely ideological, or solely Utopian. And taking this idea, I am inclined to chime in that although these two aspects coexist, there still is a spectrum wherefore every type of artwork will have one aspect more prevalent over the other (or maybe they could be in equal form). For example, Jameson thinks that art in mass culture is influenced more heavily by ideology, in fact he asserts that ideology dominates the Utopian element and puts it to use for its own purposes. But one could also think of a scenario where a work of art is characterized more strongly by its Utopian element. And such a scenario manifests itself in Baskets.

To start this analysis of Baskets, I want to consider Chip’s mom Christine Baskets, played by Louie Anderson who, to be a little blunt, is a heavy-set old man. One particularly Utopian episode is Season 2 Episode 4: “Ronald Reagan Library.” After the rodeo closes down (among other things), Chip is devastated, so he becomes a hobo and starts riding the rails. Eventually, he joins a crew of transients who end up getting arrested for trespassing. So Christine has to come and bail Chip out of jail. Okay, so, in the jail’s waiting room, she happens to hit it off with the father of one of Chip’s hobo friends. And this man, named Ken, happens to be an elderly black man. So the scene is already surprising in its embrace of freedom and equality, where we have an obese white woman (played by a man) flirting with an elderly black man. To make things more entertaining, Christine invites Ken to tour the Ronald Reagan Library, because of course Christine is a huge Reagan fan. Thus, not only are gender, age, race, and body image norms overturned, but the framework of political stance is also thrown out the window. In this instance the Utopian vision comes from the fact that it is conceivable and even normal to the audience that something like this would happen, and that it’s a good thing. It also exemplifies the shift in equality that America has experienced, for something of this nature would have been alien a few decades ago.

Often a Utopian ideal will include some aspect of anarchy; a situation where there are no rules or laws. Now, humans do not always do what is best for themselves and their communities, so anarchy can become destructive. Baskets is quick to snuff out this scenario as an element of its Utopianism. To see why, let’s dive deeper into what transpires when Chip joins the band of hobos. In short summary, Chip is initially overjoyed to have found some like-minded friends. These people turn out to share a love for performance with Chip; they each have some schtick that they perform for audiences on the street. But the joy starts to melt when Chip, along with the viewer, begins to realize that the other hobos are doing bad things. They shoplift. They trespass. This culminates when the group breaks into an empty house for a night. The members go straight to the drug cabinet and start shooting up substances and pop random pills. During this whole process, Chip is utterly frightened and the viewer gets the same feeling, the feeling of shock and stomach-dropping fear when something good turns sour. In this way, the viewer is made very uncomfortable about the idea of complete anarchy. Therefore, the Utopian aspect of Baskets is not meant to feature a dangerous sort of anarchy, but rather a type of warm freedom of equality and what we will see next as a freedom from the banality of a capitalist society.

What I want to close this study of Baskets with is an examination of how the show views our society. As I mentioned earlier, income inequality is very high here in the U.S, and while America is the land of opportunity, life isn’t fun and great for everyone. We will see that Baskets plays off of this fact. First off, there are two characters that indicate the show’s stance towards capitalism. There is Chip’s friend Martha, who has one of the most boring and trivial jobs one could conjure up: she works in the insurance division of Costco. Additionally, Martha comes across as an extremely boring person; she has a monotone voice and doesn’t do a whole lot in general. She’s just your average robotic cubicle worker. And then there is Chip’s twin brother Dale (yes Zach Galifianakis plays both roles, and yes they are named after the Disney chipmunks). Dale is the “dean” of Baskets Career College (probably not accredited) which offers classes in various disciplines such as ice cream truck management and ketchup kreation; and Dale himself actually was a student at his own college where he earned a degree in college management. So just think of it as a slightly worse Trump University. This spoofing of small businesses further parodies capitalism. Dale is also a very materialistic person, gaining pleasure from consumable goods. He also is in the middle of a divorce with his wife, and his kids are not fond of him. But the biggest break from capitalism comes in the final episode of Season 2. Christine’s mother passes away and wills all of her property, including her house, to Christine. She then proceeds to sell the house and purchase an Arby’s, because at this point Chip is working random birthday parties as a clown and Dale actually loses administrative control of his business, so both boys are in need of jobs. So she undertakes this new business operation in the hopes of bringing her family together. But she soon realizes that Chip is very depressed, for he has no opportunities to be a clown. Thus, she takes the initiative and sells the Arby’s franchise. She then proceeds to buy the old rodeo arena. In other words, Chip can finally live out his dream of being a clown on his own terms – he won’t have to be trampled by bulls or humiliated by 10-year olds any longer. On a deeper level though, Christine’s decision is a rebuke of corporatism (through the symbol of Arby’s) and the banality of that culture. Instead she chooses the happiness of her son, a happiness that could not readily be satisfied by capitalist society. These examples are all facets of Baskets’ Utopianism, for they aren’t satisfied with present condition, and want something more out of society and life. They also coincide with modern populism and disenchantment with the staggering wealth gap in America.

Generally, given the evidence, Baskets is heavily Utopian. There is of course the accompanying ideological element, for Baskets is a for-profit show produced by a firm in the culture industry and it’s setting is within the capitalist system. And surely one could argue that there are aspects of Baskets that reinforce societal norms and the power of the ruling ideology. I am of the impression however, that Baskets has enough pro-equality, anti-capitalist, and other Utopian elements to outweigh any argument to the contrary. In other words, Baskets is on the Utopian side of the spectrum, not the ideological side. Now I would like to make a bit of educated speculation: mass culture is shifting Utopian, and its creators are lessening the domineering grasp of the culture industry upon the people. Backing up this assertion is the growing equality of many societal facets, the backlash of certain populist groups against growing income inequality, and, importantly, shows like Baskets. Of course, this hypothesis must be tested upon many more cultural items to lift it out of being a speculative theory, and I do stress that it is speculative. But it’s also a logical assertion, for it holds with the evidence that has been presented. Then again, the situation is undoubtedly more complex, so more study is needed.

 

Works Cited

Jameson, Fredric. “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture.” Social Text, no. 1, 1979, pp. 130–148. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/466409.

Smith, Greg B. “NYC’s Dwindling Voter Turnout Hits New Low.” NY Daily News, 9 Nov. 2017, www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/nyc-dwindling-voter-turnout-hits-new-article-1.3620122.

 

BoJack Horseman is a sad show. Its characters are unhappy with their lives; its viewers are often dejected upon seeing an episode’s downer conclusion, which is the kind of ending the series prefers. It actively punishes the audience for rooting for its characters. Most critics identify the despairing mood: Ian Crouch of the New Yorker describes the show as “incessantly bleak”¹. But the reasons they give for this despair – the depression of the main character, the cruelty of some of his decisions – do not fully capture why the show is so emotionally powerful. BoJack Horseman succeeds at making the viewer miserable by offering a sincere vision of happiness and rejecting it. Twenty-five minutes watching a depressed anthropomorphic cartoon horse win a game show will convince you that glimpses of utopia can make you sad.

Heavy stuff, particularly for a show with a premise as silly as BoJack Horseman’s. The show’s eponymous protagonist is a large cartoon horse who walks, talks, and feels like a human. He is a former sitcom actor who, having made more money than he knows what to do with, mostly spends his time drinking to abuse while watching episodes of his old TV show. He is severely depressed. The first season chronicles his attempt to return to cultural relevance by writing a best-selling book, an endeavor he undertakes because he believes becoming famous again would make him happy. He is unsuccessful in his attempt at happiness, but does manage to re-enter the public eye; he is cast to star in a biopic about Secretariat, which is where the second season begins. The eighth episode of the second season, titled “Let’s Find Out”, finds BoJack on a trivia game show for celebrities hosted by his cheerful rival, Mr. Peanutbutter. (Mr. Peanutbutter is a yellow lab who also acts like a human; in the world of the show, all animals act like people.) The show is on a network run by BoJack’s girlfriend, an owl named Wanda.

“Let’s Find Out” makes BoJack into an anti-hero, someone who, despite being constantly embarrassed and defeated, is able to show surprising resilience. Anti-heroes are “weak”, “ineffectual”, and “inept”, which certainly describes BoJack during the first segment of the game show². He gives a series of wrong answers to astoundingly difficult and trivial questions (“what is the average rainfall in Bora Bora?”), for which he is mocked mercilessly by Mr. Peanutbutter. He has his alcoholism exposed on national television. When he attempts a witty rejoinder to some of Mr. Peanutbutter’s abuse, he is booed loudly by the studio audience. The ultimate embarrassment comes in the form of a surprise: the show is joined by a second, “big” celebrity, the actor Daniel Radcliffe, relegating BoJack to the status of “little” celebrity. When BoJack tries to greet Radcliffe, whom he’s met before, as equals, he is snubbed – the “big celebrity” has forgotten they’ve ever been introduced. It’s this sense of slight, of injustice, that provokes empathy. The viewer roots for BoJack because of his perseverance in defiance of humiliation.

But BoJack is not depicted as stupid or weak, no matter how many questions he answers incorrectly. Instead, he is presented as a smart victim of an unfair system, which allows the show to shift its critique from its character to the society he exists in. The absurdity is apparent from the game show’s first segment, a “small talk round” during which BoJack is punished for his correct descriptions of his activities the night before, and continues through the trivia questions, as when he incorrectly selects “D, all of the above” for a question whose answer is “A and B, with C also being acceptable”. Daniel Radcliffe, his adversary, gets to answer questions about colors (“blue and yellow combined makes green”) and snatch cash out of the air while BoJack is given a minute to write an essay on European history. His thesis statement is strong and reveals a surprising amount of knowledge about the causes of the French Revolution, but this doesn’t matter: his essay is tossed in the trash and his humiliation continues. His intelligence is irrelevant; there is seemingly no way for him to win. In ensuring its protagonist is a victim of circumstance instead of his own personal failings, the show uses the anti-hero as a way to gain identification from the audience, who can empathize with the experience of unfair treatment despite adequate qualifications.

This identified injustice sets the show up for a utopian solution. Utopian moments in film address inadequacies in society with an idealized remedy, an example of what a better world would look like³. In “Let’s Find Out”, Bojack is informed of Mr. Peanutbutter’s “tell”: whenever the dog gets excited, his ears flop upwards, giving away the correct response to the trivia questions. It allows for a montage of Bojack shouting zany answers while Daniel Radcliffe and Mr. Peanutbutter look on incredulously. The show works here on a utopian level, BoJack’s mistreatment in an absurd system corrected by the cleverness that had been previously stifled. It imagines, briefly, an ideal world where a competition of knowledge is won by the smarter person.

But the show rejects this notion of utopia almost as soon as it appears and replaces it with a different one. During a commercial break, BoJack’s girlfriend Wanda approaches him to ask for a favor: she needs him to throw the game. In coming dangerously close to winning, he has upset the game show’s viewers, who are rooting for Daniel Radcliffe and whom she needs to satisfy as part of her job at the network. This request might seem narrative interrupting the ideal world, a betrayal of the previously-extended utopian vision; that’s because it is. It’s explicitly a return to the unjust former state, where the game is rigged to favor the undeserving. A different form of utopia is offered in its place, one that could be described as dealing with “representations of interpersonal relationships”⁴. This kind of utopian scene imagines what relationships would look like in a freer, better world, unconstrained by patriarchal or capitalist notions of self-interest. Wanda’s asking allows BoJack the opportunity to deepen their relationship by performing a selfless act. The utopian dimensions are clear: the viewer watches the character they identify with ameliorate his isolation by incurring a cost to himself to move close to another person, a decision that addresses real alienation by showing them a better world, one in which someone will sacrifice for you. Before BoJack flubs the final question on purpose, sentimental music plays as BoJack glances at Wanda. His selfless act will presumably be rewarded.

It is not. The show refuses to honor its utopian promise. The question BoJack intentionally blunders away is about Secretariat, the horse he is playing in an upcoming movie. For this mistake he is ridiculed endlessly by Mr. Peanutbutter and laughed at by Daniel Radcliffe and the audience, a humiliation that is too much for BoJack to endure. While he at first protests meekly, asking Mr. Peanutbutter to quickly move on, the continued mockery turns him cruel, leading him attack Mr. Peanutbutter by saying the dog’s wife took a job in a war-torn country just to escape their awful marriage. It’s petty and harsh. Whatever benefit he got from his utopian moment is shown to pale in comparison to the pain of the mockery he had to endure after it.

This can be seen as narrative intruding on utopian moments, a circumstance that, in Dyer’s writing on the subject, did not diminish the importance of the utopian scene itself⁵. To the contrary, such disruptions throw the moment of utopian solution into stark relief: this is how much it stands out when compared to the world we live in today. But “Let’s Find Out” denies the viewer the comfort of this interpretation. At the end of the episode, BoJack is offered an opportunity to redeem himself for his bitterness. If he answers a question correctly, the game show will donate a million dollars to charity; if he gets it wrong, the show will set ablaze the half-million it had already pledged. The question is an easy one: who played the titular role in the Harry Potter films? It’s clear that BoJack knows the answer, but pretends to be confused, mirroring Daniel Radcliffe’s earlier ignorance of his name. The answer he gives, over dramatic music, shocks everyone: “Elijah Wood?”. The sheer cruelty of the decision to burn a half-million dollars for charity to make a point in a petty feud is astounding, and would be depressing enough on its own. But the fact that the decision is clearly made to parallel the previous moment of utopia makes it especially devastating. When BoJack answers a question wrong to make Wanda happy, it is about a movie he is starring in; when BoJack answers a question wrong to spite Daniel Radcliffe, it is about a movie Radcliffe starred in. In both circumstances, the camera cuts, accompanied by music, to Wanda looking expectantly in the tunnel before focusing back on BoJack’s face as he answers. The parallels are the show’s way of equating the two decisions. The fleeting moment of utopia cannot last, and the vulnerability it required exposed BoJack to abuse harsh enough to engender intense spite. The decision to give an incorrect answer can be seen as a dark utopian moment, a fantasy for the viewer where they have the power to take out their justifiable frustrations in the most destructive way possible. This fantasy is never corrected; it is the note on which episode ends. The utopian moment of interpersonal happiness is snatched away and replaced by cruelty.

“Let’s Find Out” complies with the notion that art works by giving its audience an idea of a massively better world, but does not use its utopian vision to the same effect. In most entertainment, the utopia is meant to be savored, shown in contrast to the inadequacies of the society they inhabit. BoJack Horseman provides a glimpse of a freer, more intimate society only to crush it viciously. It complicates  the utopian theory of culture by proving utopian visions can be used to make people sad. Some art argues that better world is only possible in your imagination, and that your fantasies only deepen your inevitable despair upon being crushed by the society you actually inhabit. When a huge pile of cash is dropped into a roaring fire, the audience’s utopian hopes drop with it. The world offers to give money to charity and burns it out of spite.

Music is a powerful element of popular culture that not only influences what we do with our spare time but the way we talk, associate, and relate to each other. It generates a feeling of unity by reminding us that all phases of life such as heartbreak, happiness, and love are universal experiences. How then could it be possible to believe that music comes solely from the elite?  Our ancestors and the humans from decades ago have long communicated, celebrated and fought through life accompanied by musical hymns. Music is incredibly human. Examining more contemporary popular music, we see a transformation in music through a music industry that focuses on producing a hit a song that will contain a melody catchy enough for the radios and the online streaming programs to play it over and over again. This version of music is frankly depressing as strips away the creative humanity of music.  There is hope, however, at the end of the tunnel through underground artists and singer-songwriters. The most successful story which has resulted in the #1 most listened to artist on Spotify and arguably one of the most popular artists on this planet, Ed Sheeran.

Edward Christopher Sheeran was born in Halifax, England in 1991. Since his childhood he had always felt like an outsider in his “preppy, sporty, competitive private primary school” due to his humble background with his father being an art curator and his mother being a jewelry designer.(Chesterton) Additionally he was bullied for his weird-looks and strange behaviors (though not diagnosed, it was most likely ADD). (Chesterton) While there were many difficult aspects of his infancy as he recalls that he had never won at anything, he began to learn how to play the guitar and learned to sing in the local church choir discovering music as a natural vehicle for happiness.(The Famous People)

As soon as Ed reached adolescence his hardships were only amplified by teenage angst and rebellion. His father John Sheeran, the no-nonsense son of Irish immigrants, grew tired of his son’s attitude having always pushed his children to be academically driven. He played the biggest role in influencing Ed to take initiative and work hard at the one thing he truly loved the most; music. (Chesterton) Rather than getting in trouble, Ed was driven to musical gigs of artists like Bob Dylan so that he could gain inspiration from those that made a career in music. (Chesterton) Validating his father’s determined efforts, Ed has dreamed about becoming a pop superstar since he was 13 and has never taken a day off in accomplishing this dream. (Chesterton)

Rather than turning to the entertainment industry as what could provide knowledge and guidance on making it big, Ed began to study music with the organization ‘Access to Music’ and the National Youth Theater. (The Famous People) While studying music he began to produce his own music with the sole focus of making enough to live from his passion. In his own words his first dream was “to make enough money from music to pay the rent and sell 100 CDs.”(Chesterton) By the time Sheeran was 14 years old he had already released two CDs ‘Spinning Man’ and ‘The Orange Room’ independently. (The Famous People)

Although it had been his father’s aspiration for Sheeran to get a proper education, he dropped out of high school at sixteen and began to move from place to place until 2008 when he finally decided to move to London.(Chesterton) As soon as he arrived at London his life was governed by  his search for “gigs, attention and somewhere to spend the night.” (Chesterton) While searching for recognition of his own lyrics and melodies he was homeless for two and a half years famously having slept a couple of nights outside an arch of Buckingham Palace. (Her) Rather than giving up and retreating to Hallifax, Ed made it work by making important connections, “I knew where I could get a bed at a certain time of night and I knew who I could call at any time to get a floor to sleep on. Being sociable helped.” (Her) Furthermore, he formed a precise sleeping schedule allowing him to sleep on Circle Line trains after gigs waiting until around 5 am to be able to sleep on the line until 12 pm to then go to another session. (Her) While this lifestyle was incredibly troublesome it also taught him invaluable skills of determination and the ability to associate with others in an organic “human” manner. He stated that one of the keys to this was drinking at bars to socialize a technique that could potentially conflict with what any PR manager would recommend but allowed Ed to navigate the London gig circuits as an independent musician. (Her)

Yet Ed Sheeran did not only involve himself in musical gigs but also auditioned for “Britannia High” a British musical drama television series hoping to find some money. (The Famous People) Furthermore in 2009 he was accepted into the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford. (Chesterton) The key here is that while he could have received a proper music education he dismissed the opportunity contending that he could teach them a lot more about music than they could teach him, most likely due to his real life experience with performing in gigs and songwriting abilities. It was through this refusal from academies and educational institutions that he became recognizable figure in London’s gigging circuits allowing him to form relationships with artists in Hip-hop and other entertainment acts.  (Chesterton) However, one of the most important steps that he made in his career was uploading his music online. It was through one of these videos that he was able to establish an invaluable connection with Example, a british rapper, singer,and songwriter. (Biography.com) Example was able to discover Ed Sheeran through online media and granting him the opportunity of performing as his opening act which drove his musical fan base and inspired him to write more songs. (Biography.com)

Nonetheless, despite his hard work and passion for music Sheeran was still without a music contract. Thus, he took another bold step in his career by moving to Los Angeles with no contacts in 2010. (Chesterton) Through his performances and musical self-promotion, Sheeran landed a gig at an all-black R&B open mic night in Los Angeles. (Chesterton) It was there, as the ginger outsider, where Sheeran was spotted by Jamie Foxx’s manager who introduced him to Foxx letting him stay in Foxx’s home but also letting him make use of his recording studio. (Chesterton) With a new fan, Sheeran was invited to make an appearance on Foxx’s Siriusxm Radio Show gaining more international recognition.(Biography.com)  The following year he released his last independent EP which reached No. 2 on the iTunes Chart even though it had not been advertised for in any way. (Biography.com) This drew attention from many record companies and with that he was signed onto Atlantic Records that same month. (Biography.com) When the 2012 Brits Awards came around Sheeran won the Best British Male Solon Artist and British Breakthrough Act of the Year awards crowning him as a key player in the British music business. (The Famous People)

Getting back to the point, however, what is fascinating is identifying what is truly the key to Ed Sheeran’s success in popular music and its importance particularly in context to his story having been a partially homeless singer-songwriter. Now that the background is established, it is important to emphasize what distinguishes Sheeran from other popular music artists. Yes, he did not move to Hollywood with hopes of being manufactured in a particular way so that he could satisfy a particular target audience in the entertainment industry, in fact, it is much more than that.  Ed Sheeran has quickly become the voice of the Millennial generation having collaborated with mega-artists like Taylor Swift, Pharrell Williams, The Weeknd,and Harry Styles. (Beaumont) Moreover, he has written hit songs for Justin Bieber, One Direction and the X Factor all while being the most streamed artists online in the entire world through his own music. (Beaumont)  What’s exciting here is that he has taken the music industry by storm through his authenticity and sincerity with music reflecting his identity and his own truths.

One of the ways that Ed Sheeran does this is by writing about the mundane; utilizing lyrics that mention sex, drinking and love all which are incredibly real and human. (Chesterton) Take for example one of his most recent hits “Thinking out Loud ” where he sings “When your legs don’t work like they used to before/And i can’t sweep you off of your feet/Will your mouth still remember the taste of my love?/ Will your eyes still smile from your cheeks.” In this song he writes about the great but also ordinary fear of ageing and living through it all while in love. Many of us have seen this through the lenses of our grandparents, parents or maybe are even beginning to see it through our own relationships, regardless, it is a mundane topic that is incredibly touching and relatable–Ed Sheeran’s magic.

Furthermore, the specificity of Ed Sheeran’s lyrics, specifically in mentioning day-to-day products, allows for the listeners to embody themselves in Sheeran’s situations through relatable emotions all while legitimizing his stories and lyrics. (Chesterton) In the song “Don’t” which talks about a celebrity love-triangle between Ellie Goulding, Niall Horan and Ed Sheeran, he mentions eating a takeaway pizza singing “And for a couple weeks I only wanna see her /We drink away the days with a takeaway pizza/ Before a text message was the only way to reach her/ Now she’s staying at my place and loves the way I treat her”. In own of his newer songs “Galway Girl” the same technique was used; “I walked her home then she took me inside to finish some Doritos and another bottle of wine.”

But criticism coexists with every successful act and one of the biggest critics of Sheeran happens to be Noel Gallagher, the lead guitarist from Oasis, who has declared that Ed Sheeran has essentially killed Rock and Roll music. (Hodgkinson) His reasoning behind this theatrical declaration you might ask? He argues that this new generation of singer-songwriters are unlike any other musicians before them having never struggled with their own music.(Hodgkinson)  These new musicians tend to have middle class or upper class privilege that has granted them the resources to support their music dreams resulting in shutting down of major music studios.(Hodgkinson) Additionally, he critiques the millennial generation contending that, “No fucker wants to be in a band anymore because it’s too much of a struggle. So we have a generation who all studied music at college, they all had media training, and the head of PR at the major label they’re signed to told them all what to do. The generation I came were never afforded that luxury, which is why we were scallywags. We were coming up against the system rather than being a product of it.” (Hodgkinson) His argument, however compelling is completely unfounded when looking at Ed Sheeran’s life story. While his family did do their best to support him, his father was also an alcoholic and one of the main reasons why Ed decided to flee his home at age 16. From this time he was essentially on his own resulting in various encounters with homelessness all while struggling to supporting himself with his music.  This story does not radiate privilege in fact it screams hard work, preparation and the seizing of opportunities. In defiance of musical institutions Sheeran himself never graduated from high school nor a musical institution in fact he picked up most of his skills through experience and mentorship.His ability to reach the top 10 of iTunes charts without a record label is the complete defiance of being a product of the music industry.

In the meantime Ed Sheeran makes sure to emphasize his authenticity not only through his lyrics but through his personality and presentation as a pop artist. As Christ Williman from Billboard states, “That’s his way: He’s the scruffy guy who doesn’t care what he wears, but turns up on the red carpet of the Vanity Fair Oscar party; the open-mic songwriter who has come up with the biggest hooker-themed radio hit since Sting sang about Roxanne. And, let’s face it, being the only guy onstage is a smart business.” (Willman) He was GQ’s Worst Dressed Man of the year in 2013 because he “still wear(s) skater hoodies, jeans and skater shoes.”(Chesterton) Now this is not a marketing ploy it just signals that he wants others to focus on what truly matters; his honest and pure well-written music.

Works Cited:

 

Beaumont, M. (2017). 50 Things You Didn’t Know About Ed Sheeran – NME. NME. Retrieved 15 November 2017, from http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/50-things-you-didnt-know-about-ed-sheeran-1999240#DVdK6uJUw4uvRTm1.99

Chesterton, G. (2017). How Ed Sheeran became the biggest male popstar on the planet. Gq-magazine.co.uk. Retrieved 15 November 2017, from http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/ed-sheeran-new-album-divide

Ed Sheeran. (2017). Biography.com. Retrieved 15 November 2017, from https://www.biography.com/people/ed-sheeran

 

Her. (2017). Ed Sheeran Reveals He Was Homeless for Two and a Half Years | Her.ie. Her.ie. Retrieved 15 November 2017, from https://www.her.ie/music/ed-sheeran-reveals-he-was-homeless-for-two-and-a-half-years-186472

 

Hodgkinson, W. (2017). Ed Sheeran is killing music | Little Atoms. Littleatoms.com. Retrieved 15 November 2017, from http://littleatoms.com/film-music/ed-sheeran-killing-music

 

Who is Ed Sheeran? Everything You Need to Know. (2017). Thefamouspeople.com. Retrieved 15 November 2017, from https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/ed-sheeran-29882.php

 

Willman, Chris. “ED SHEERAN UN-ZIPPED.” Billboard – The International Newsweekly of Music, Video and Home Entertainment Apr 12 2014: 24-9. ProQuest. Web. 12 Nov. 2017

Pop music takes a lot of grief. “It’s too loud”. “Too much autotune”. “There’s no skill”. “It’s all the same”. Many, specifically those of an older generation, are quite up-in-arms about what music has come to in the modern era. They say today’s brand of music isn’t nearly reminiscent of what theirs is or used to be. To some, today’s popular music resides at a lower level of sophistication, quality and value than the beloved music of yesteryear. Conversely, modern popular music is not something to be deduced to good or bad, or even confined by the title ‘genre’. There’s a quality to modern popular music that makes it obviously discernable from genres like folk, country, metal and jazz to anyone remotely familiar with modern music. It’s difficult for many to put a finger on, but this difference has important implications in our impression and interpretation of today’s popular music. The identity of pop music, its implications and its value in our current society can be readily investigated through Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner.

Vega’s 1989 single found success among indie and alternative circles throughout the 90’s, featuring solely her vocals without the support of instruments. Her voice rhythmically runs over a spoken beat as she recalls a morning in a local diner in New York City. Vega’s voice registers more like talking than singing as she rarely abandons a moderate tone and pitch. Vega’s piece was a well made song and was beloved by many listeners, but anyone could tell you that it wasn’t pop music. Its subdued stylistic techniques along with an emphasis on storytelling compel us to categorize this work as alternative or indie. Many likely appreciated the artistic aspect of this song rather than its aptitude for mutual enjoyment and listenership.

Moving forward, Tom’s Diner’s intersection with pop music comes not at the hand of Vega, but through the work of two British music producers, who refer to themselves as DNA. This duo produced a remix of Vega’s piece a year later, taking the original’s ad-libbed outro and transforming this beat into the song’s driving hook. Employing digital music production to morph her 5 seconds of spoken beat into an incredibly catchy remix, they overlayed thumping bass, building synthesizers and a snappy snare to send Vega’s niche, indie work atop the pop charts. Their piece peaked at the second spot in the UK charts and the fifth spot in the US Billboard charts in addition to reaching the top spot in 3 European countries. Billboard tagged this new take on her work as pop music and few would stand to argue with this categorization as the song’s listenership changed and appeal grew. Now, the question is this: What changed? If Vega’s original work was ‘un-pop’ and this new version was received with open arms into pop music’s upper rankings, the changes made by DNA must be close to what defines pop music.

So now, pop music seems to be nothing but the electronically produced version of acoustically made songs. But it can’t just be that. Songs can’t be all layered with identical features to create hits. Similar additions to other folk songs along the same vein of Vega, like those by Tori Amos and Sinead O’Connor, and many of Vega’s own songs would sound wrong and jumbled with additions similar to these. The changes that DNA enacted on Vega’s original work are a reflection of an inherent quality of certain works referred to by popular music scholar Motti Regev as the ‘rock aesthetic’. Regev defines this as production “based on the use of electric and electronic sound textures, amplification, sophisticated audio craftsmanship, and ‘untrained’ and spontaneous techniques of vocal delivery”(Pop-rockization of Popular Music). While not a fully fleshed out description of this quality in my mind, as I would propose the addition of a characteristic that works back towards some of the blues/swing qualities within modern music, this ‘rock aesthetic’ serves as a valuable tool when talking about what defines pop music.

Furthermore, when we look into the elements of the ‘rock aesthetic’ we can draw back on the history of what we now define as pop. Regev’s comment on ‘untrained’ vocal technique as a characteristic of rock music is a loaded statement. What he classifies as ‘trained’ vocals would be classically trained, as in opera skills, vocal range and consistent pronunciation across notes. What is classified as ‘untrained’ would be much of what we now see as rap, blues, scat, jazz and rock, as these styles are far from his definition of traditional. Now, when looking at his ‘untrained’ vocal categories, we can see that this is associated with forms of music rooted in African-American tradition. Amplification and electronic music also have roots in the work of black pioneers like Jimi Hendrix as well as in big band jazz. And, when Regev notes on sophisticated audio craftsmanship, he refers to sounds that, although now associated with electronic music and DJ’s, share associations with the blues in their focus on bass-central rhythm and non-traditional sounds, thus pegging this definition to the start of blues music in the post-emancipation south, another inherently African American quality.

Additionally, the history of the rock aesthetic can be traced parallel to the history of the rock and roll genre. Obviously, the rock aesthetic sort of defines what we interpret as rock and roll, but looking into the history of rock and roll allows us much more depth and clarity on the actual roots of both. Rock historians, although finding conflict in some minutia of the growth of this genre, reach a general consensus on the basic origins of rock music. Rock music’s roots can be traced back to the blues movement in the post emancipation south and the birth of jazz music in early 19th century New Orleans along with the growth of swing and soul music. These styles morphed, mixed and worked with European-American styles of music like country and folk music to create the sound we now recognize as rock and roll. Many people, though, have serious grievances with the fusion of black and white music and accuse early white musicians like Elvis Presley of ‘stealing black music’. Although many white artists did in fact remake versions of earlier black songs, the integration of black and white music was more of mutualistic than parasitic. In his essay “The Church of the Sonic Guitar”, music writer and professor of American Music at the University of Mississippi, Robert Palmer argues for the positive, mutually beneficial relationship between black and white music during the dawn of rock and roll through the detailed history of the electric guitar. He argues, “Rock ‘n’ roll was an inevitable outgrowth of the social and musical interactions between blacks and whites in the South and Southwest. Its roots are a complex tangle … but the single most important process was the influence of black music on white.”(Present Tense). Palmer argues that the outgrowth of rock music was a positive result of black music transforming white music. He elaborates further in his piece saying that many of the defining characteristics of rock music noted in the aforementioned rock aesthetic are inherently black characteristics. Palmers argument allows us to concretely peg both rock and the rock aesthetic as the influences of black music.

Now, looking back to the earlier topic of Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner and its subsequent ‘popification’. This would often be seen as a bad progression. To take a song that was so beautiful on its own right and turn it into mainstream, consumable pop would be heresy for many listeners. But, as we just broke down, the transformation of Vega’s piece wasn’t the commercialization of her work. The elements added to Vega’s work were inherently black features of music. What we initially interpreted as ‘popification’ was actually the ‘blackification’ of her work, but not in a manner that cheaply appeals to black listeners or those with tastes for black music, but in a sense that channels the roots of african american musical culture. In this way, the pop culture appears to not be a cheap channel for reproduced, identical music, but rather a place for integrated music to flourish without the title of black or integrated.

Furthermore, pop music serves an immensely beneficial purpose for society. Popular music, which we can now mark as music featuring the fusion of black and white musical elements, presents integration of the races in an incredibly positive light. This normalizes diversity in all aspects as it allows the product of racial integration to bring simple joy to the listener in a catchy beat or a hook that makes you get up and dance. When the mainstream listenership is exposed to versions of racial integration that positively reinforce diversity’s role in society, society is likely to benefit from decreased racial tension and increased acceptance of more diverse forms of culture.

Finally, what we saw in Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner is able to inform, define and evaluate pop music. DNA’s recreation of her work allowed us to concretely identify what separates pop music from other genres with the assistance of Motti Regev’s rock aesthetic. After looking further into the history of rock and roll music along with breaking down Regev’s claim, it became relatively obvious that what we interpret as pop and rock music leans heavily on African-American musical styles, revealed by Palmer’s take on the development of rock and roll. Now, it’s easy to see that despite the common gripes that today’s pop music is cheap and lacks skill, pop music remains a solid example of how popular culture should function as it positively associates racially integrated works to the listener. What popular music already does can be applied to other areas of popular culture. Movies can depict comical characters of color to follow a similar vein, allowing the viewer to enjoy integration subconsciously, or a television show can build lovable, diverse characters, relatable to the viewer on a basic level. Pop music’s, and further pop culture’s, role isn’t and hopefully will never be one that lacks substance, but one that attempts to depict and promote a more accepting culture.

 

We’re all consumers of the same culture here in the big USA. Whether you live in New York City, or on the farms of Nebraska we all watch the same movies, hear the same songs, and read the same books. But how many of us really take it in and become obsessed with it? Geek culture, as in Trekkies/Jedis/Potterheads/etc., definitely does.  If you watch a documentary about the conventions that the superfans of these movies attend, you’ll realize why you fell out of your love for Star Trek in the 7th grade–these people are crazy! Most Trekkies have watched all of the episodes and movies, and know the language of the characters, Klingon, and can tell you exactly what every outfit should look like. So, why is it important to be a superfan when it seems dorky and outlandish?

Fan fiction is a way for Star Trekkies, and other sci-fi fan bases, to express themselves. There are many different genres of fanfiction that allows for many opportunities to simply create. Slash fiction takes two characters from the movie, often male, and explicitly illustrates the relationship between the two. This relationship never actually occurs in the movie, but is completely fabricated by the viewers. In Star Trek, the authors of slash fiction describe the intimacy between James T. Kirk and Spock. Although the writers and its audience are mostly female, there has been an increasing number of male viewers. Authors are allowed to do whatever they want with Kirk/Spock, whether it be an extremely pornographic short story or an abstract poem. Within the confines of the stories having something to do with Star Trek, fans are able to invent something completely new.

Conventions, on the other hand, attracts a different kind of fan. While the authors of fanfiction can hide behind a screen and express their devotion anonymously, conventions require you to be present. At these conventions fans dress up as Klingons, Vulcans, Andorians, and all of the other characters in the movie. The meticulous detail that these hand-made costumes have is close to lunacy. Their costumes are exact replicas of the costumes from the original movie down to the stitch. This may seem as though the culture industry has them wrapped around its finger because they’re so invested, but in reality, they often make their costumes their own at these conventions. Geek culture “prompted cross-pollination across geek interests; for example, at the Dragon*Con parade you might find a zombie stormtrooper, mixing Star Wars and Zombie genres” (McCain). Even at these conventions that seem like the people cannot get more culturally brainwashed, you see them making the movies they watched their own.

A common thought is that Star Trekkies are too indulged in culture. According to Henry Jenkins, a professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at USC, “fans are routinely cast as excessive, over-enthusiastic consumers, too heavily identified with and invested in the media texts they build their fandom around” (Bray). The NBC Saturday Night Live episode called “Get a Life!” expresses the view that “fans don’t have enough critical distance, that they are too immersed, too removed from reality” (Bray). Being removed from reality isn’t always a bad thing. If it means having a mind of your own that doesn’t let everything you watch go right past you, then I want to be removed from reality as well. As weirdas the people at these conventions may seem, their community is one of very few that are able to let their guards down and embrace culture. This community can write fanfiction in their own forms, reflecting their personal tastes and fantasies of the movies we watch so passively.

I’ve been talking a lot about sci-fi movies, and how the fans of this culture are far from passive, but what about the majority of us normal people? Are we passive? On the surface, it may seem so. Yes, there are the Star Trekkies who make their own slash fiction, but the majority of people aren’t a part of this “geek culture”. How many of your friends call themselves a Trekkie, a Potterhead, or anything of that vein? Now, how many of them admit to liking just about any other movie like Ferris Bueller’s Day off or Forrest Gump? I assume most would be on board with the latter simply because a.) they aren’t associated with comic cons and b.) there are so many genres besides sci-fi that people are into. It’s hard to have an incredibly devoted fan culture that Star Trek has with the fan base for Forrest Gump because the consumers of Forrest Gump aren’t dressing up for conventions. This does not mean, though, that they have to be passive because it isn’t a sci-fi movie. If you search, “Forrest Gump fanfiction” on google, hundreds of fanfiction websites will pop up (this works for just about any movie). Even though they aren’t dressing up for conventions, consumers of these other movies are creating their own piece of culture. Mainstream culture provides a medium for self expression, and allows us to xpress how we view any media thrown at us.

But what happens when this culture becomes mainstream? If fans are creating their own form of the culture given to them, isn’t it possible for that form to become the new mainstream culture? Pop culture is, in fact, steered by the tastes of the masses. Take Fifty Shades of Grey for example; this movie was based off of fan fiction from the movie Twilight and is now one of the most popular films. I’m sure this isn’t the only time new movies were made off of fan writing. Even though the consumers aren’t being passive, they are creating the new mainstream. Something about that feels wrong, like we’re being tricked into thinking we’re doing our own thing when we’re actually just creating more of the same.

Catherine Tosenberger mitigates this thought. She, along with other fanfiction writers, wonders why stories like Fifty Shades of Grey are the ones that get their debut when there are so many other stories much better than them. She says that, “many of the best fan stories (as well as many of the mediocre and the worst) are completely unpublishable for reasons that have nothing to do with nebulous assessments of literary quality, and everything to do with the fact that fanfiction is often so deeply embedded within a specific community that it is practically incomprehensible to those who don’t share exactly the same set of references” (Tosenberger). This shows that there is a sort of sacred bubble around fan fiction that cannot be touched that belongs uniquely to the members of that community. Even though there are cases where a story makes it out, for the most part it’s totally their own and can’t be touched.

Popular culture can be constricting, but it can also be freeing at the same time. If you use your creativity to write fanfiction and attend conventions then it gives us a way to be creative. But if we just let it go right through us and keep consuming without making it our own, then it will forever control us. It’s your choice which you want to pick.

References:

 

Bray, John Patrick. “‘There’s Too Many of Them!’: Off-Off-Broadway’s Performance of Geek Culture.” Theatre Symposium. University of Alabama. Oct 2014.

 

McCain, Jessica; Gentile, Brittany; Campbell, W Keith. “A Psychological Exploration of Engagement in Geek Culture: e0142200.” Public Library of Science. Nov 2015.

Tosenberger, Catherine. “Mature Poets Steal: Children’s Literature and the Unpublishability of Fanfiction.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly. Johns Hopkins University. Spring 2014. Page 4-27.

As long as popular culture has existed, so have those who seek alternatives to popular culture. These theorists tend to worry about the mass-produced culture that comes from an elite minority. In the search for an alternative, traditional American music has come to hold an important place in the world of cultural theory. It’s an exciting prospect; any one of us can become culturally enlightened just by buying some bluegrass records and maybe making a trip to a music festival in the Appalachians. Unfortunately, that those sort of supposed engagement miss the mark, because folk music is not always what it seems to be, and there are a lot of conflicting perceptions and misperceptions. The soundtrack to the Coen Brothers film O Brother Where Art Thou? thus comes into focus as one of the more notable and recent segments of a long line of thought about traditional American music.

The quest for an ideal form of culture starts with Matthew Arnold, who agues that Great Books are the form of culture that make people better and improve society.[1] Drawing on the work of ballad-hunter Cecil Sharp, F.R. Leavis proposes Appalachian society as an example of people who, mostly outside the evil influence of the Industrial Revolution, are masters of the “art of social living”[2] without needing literature to achieve perfection. But for those not in the Appalachian region, Leavis says, preindustrial literature is the only way to achieve perfection. Raymond Williams dismisses Leavis’s emphasis on literature as “an emphasis on minority culture” but extends Leavis’s praise of Appalachian society to all working working-class people around the world.[3] As he continues to write that “culture is ordinary,”[4] Williams means that the it is not studios in Hollywood, the publishers in New York, or the record labels in Los Angeles who create culture, but instead the farmer in the rural South and the worker in Appalachia who create shared meanings and values. Relating back to Arnold, Williams believes that culture in the correct form builds a better society, and that form is a democratic culture in which “all of its members are engaged in creating in the act of living.”[5] This is where traditional American music comes in, as the most obvious form of democratic culture. The explicit link between democracy and folk music comes not from Williams but from a rather unlikely source: The Communist Party.

The political use of folk music started in Russia with Lenin using Russian folk music to energize what became the Communist Party. As the party moved to America, its leaders, who were very much out of touch with the working class base of the party, needed a strong cultural symbol to the mobilize and unite the party.[6] The party deemed folk music to be the most American form of music and therefore the best way to link American democracy and communist ideals. The lack of commercialization in folk music was also beneficial for a party opposed to capitalism. As the Red Scare and McCarthyism came into effect, the Communist Party lost any hope of being a part of American politics, but the music had created a subculture that took off after the Cold War ended. For example, The Weavers, a group that started as a musical act for the party, toned down their liberal views and got into the commercial scene after backlash against groups with Communist affiliation had died down.[7]

It is worth pausing here to discuss the definition and authenticity of folk music. This is a discussion not a declaration because a standard definition does not exist and authenticity is impossible to determine. The most basic method is to define folk music by what it is not, and that is popular music. By this definition, folk music has no clear title or writer and also no professional musicians. The International Folk Music Council in 1954 adopted the standard of oral transmittance, with emphasis on the changes that occur as a part of this process.[8] The council accepted that the music could be the product of an individual as long as oral tradition led to or resulted from the product. Ironically, the Council then changed its name to the International Council for Traditional Music, in part because of the difficulty of defining “folk music.” For lack of a better term, I will use “folk music” to refer to traditional music from the Appalachian and Southern regions of the United States. As folk music relates to Williams’s ideas, the most important factor is that the music originates from ordinary people, not the elite minority. Authenticity of recorded folk music becomes tricky under the oral transmittance definition because once it is recorded, it has been forced into a final form. For this reason, autochthonous—meaning arising naturally from the native people—is the best standard in that it focuses on organic creation of music by the people.

It would seem, based on Leavis, Williams, and the Communist Party, that the way to promote a democratic culture is to let working-class people share their culture so it can take over the nation. By extension, it would seem that the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack is the perfect way to do so, and many people believed that it accomplished this. The reviews describe the soundtrack in a similar fashion to the way the Communist Party had described folk music 40 years ago, reflecting the romanticized notion that the Appalachian sound is the authentic American sound. One critic praised the album’s ability to “accurately reproduce… country music’s roots,”[9] while another gave the soundtrack credit for the “power and authenticity” of the film itself.[10] One review even attempted to link Appalachian music to preindustrial England by noting the use of banjos on the album and then erroneously claiming that the instrument has British origins when it is in fact African.[11] This disregard of African American influences on Appalachian music is a very common misconception, according to Appalachian Studies professor Ted Olson.[12] The fact that the album was very popular despite receiving virtually no radio airplay helped fuel the narrative—one that newspapers loved to cover—of a class conflict in which ordinary people flocked to this music despite, or maybe even because, the radio executives tried to keep it away from them.

What these reactions fail to perceive is that the music they are describing is not the folk music of the left-wing politics. When folk singers were performing traditional folk songs at Communist rallies, the music was still, more or less, in the hands of the people. It’s hard to know exactly what Williams would say about such use of traditional folk culture, but based on his connection between working class culture and democratic socialism, it is reasonable to infer that the use would fall in line with his ideas. Once the folk revival came around, the music was no longer rooted in masses in the same way, with professional singers and commercial recording becoming the norm.

The even greater fallacy of these reactions is the idealized notion of Appalachian culture that goes back to Leavis. In his book All That Is Native and Fine, David E. Whisnant argues that cultural missionaries—a group that includes Arnold and Leavis—have painted a romanticized picture of Appalachia for the purpose of “systematic cultural intervention,” which means using and changing parts of a culture, usually for monetary gain.[13] Whisnant calls into question Leavis’s idea of uncorrupted culture in Appalachia by criticizing ballad hunters—a key source in Leavis’s argument—for promoting the “ironies and confusions that have characterized most organized cultural work in the mountains.”[14] Another example is the White Top Folk Festival, whose misguided display of Appalachian music resembles the approach of O Brother. The festival, held in Virginia, was meant to highlight local music, but the organizers decided to make it a competition, and as a result, many Appalachian musicians performed songs that were handed to them minutes before they went on stage.[15] With this point, Whisnant supports the standard of oral transmittance and observes that Appalachian people were singing what someone thought was Appalachian music is clearly not a true representation of that culture. The perception of an Appalachian society where people make music all day stands in contrast to the harsh reality of a neglected population that works in coal mines.

The album’s success is unusual in the music world but falls into the broader theme of Appalachian culture becoming popular. In an article from the same time, Appalachian novelist Lee Smith calls attention to successful novels and films that highlight Appalachia.[16] In a more recent example, the video game BioShock Infinite won the award for Best Song in a Game with a new recording of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”[17] Smith says that “mainstream American culture is becoming “Appalachianized,””[18] but a more accurate statement would be that Appalachian culture is being Americanized, and by Americanized I mean commercialized. T Bone Burnett, the producer of the O Brother soundtrack, engages in cultural intervention as he successfully commercializes the music. Writing for Rolling Stone, music critic Robert Christgau draws contrast between O Brother, where songs are “concocted in the studio,” and Inside Llewyn Davis, another Coen brothers film, where Burnett has the actors performing on set.[19] While actors are obviously not common people, one could argue that in this case, they are closer to Williams’s idea of the common person than are the professional bluegrass and folk singers on O Brother.

The creators of the album also have misconceptions in regard to its so-called authenticity. Ethan Coen, one of the film’s creators, attributes the album’s success to its evocation of an era “when music was a part of every day [sic] life and not something performed by celebrities.”[20] What is ironic is that the songs on the soundtrack are performed by celebrities of the folk music world. Dan Tyminski, who provided the Grammy-winning vocals in “Man of Constant Sorrow,” has vaguely Appalachian roots but now has “one of the most recognizable voices in acoustic music,”[21] which is to say, he is a celebrity. After being featured on EDM artist Avicii’s hit song “Hey Brother,” one would be hard pressed to call him a “common” person.

The alternative to the O Brother soundtrack is an album like American Epic, a soundtrack that uses original recordings of similar songs. These recordings come from the 1920s when ethnomusicologists like Alan Lomax traveled Appalachia and the south, making recordings of rural and working class people who knew songs from the oral tradition.[22] The music in these recordings is autochthonous because it originated in oral tradition and is being performed by ordinary people. The recording technicians called it “catching lightning in a bottle,” which reflected both the one-take method mandated by the equipment and the nature of the music.[23] Just as lightning is a powerful force of nature, folk music is a force of the democratic culture. By using commercial recording methods—multiple takes, editing—O Brother fails to achieve the characteristics of live recordings. That American Epic has received only moderate attention and sales in the six months it has been out while O Brother had gone platinum by that time would suggest that people actually do want to hear celebrities or professionals performing.

It is also important to distinguish music that comes from Appalachian culture and music that is influenced by Appalachian culture. Gillian Welch, who performs on the O Brother soundtrack, released two albums of her own around the same time. Her use of Appalachian music styles created controversy as critics thought Welch, who was essentially born into the music industry, had no credibility in the realm of folk music. Music writer Tom Piazza argues that this criticism is unfounded because “Gillian Welch is not playing, or claiming to play, “traditional music,” any more than Bob Dylan was.”[24] When singing her own songs influenced by Appalachian music, Welch avoids the cultural intervention in which she participates in O Brother. From Piazza’s argument, one can also make a distinction in intention between O Brother—modern recordings of traditional songs—and the folk revival—modern music in the traditional style. The folk music used by the Communist Party falls somewhere between these two, with groups like the Almanac Singers performing both folk standards and their own folk-influenced creations.

If we are to believe Leavis’s assessment of the problem, then we are facing the end of Western civilization due to the industrialization of society and promoting democratic culture is of the utmost importance. As we have seen, projects like O Brother fail to achieve democracy despite popular reaction, but there is still a chance for other forms of culture to blossom. Dissemination of original content, like American Epic, is a possible solution, but it needs an update. Perhaps the answer is more projects of recording technicians traveling the mountains and the South collecting recordings in the spirit of Alan Lomax. Or maybe schools should teach all students to square dance. If we take one lesson from the songs of O Brother, it is that, in the pursuit of a democratic culture, we must “keep on the sunny side.”

 

 

[1]. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 5-16.

[2]. F.R. Leavis, “Literature in Society,” in The Common Pursuit (London: Faber and Faber, 2011), 190-191.

[3]. Raymond Williams, “The Idea of a Common Culture,” in Raymond Williams on Culture & Society: Essential Writings (London: Sage, 2014), 34.

[4]. Raymond Williams, “Culture is Ordinary,” in Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism (London: Verso, 2007), 4-7.

[5]. Williams, “The Idea of a Common Culture,” 34.

[6]. R. Serge Denisoff, Great Day Coming: Folk Music and the American Left (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971).

[7]. Richard A. Reuss, American Folk Music and Left-Wing Politics, 1927-1957 (Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2000).

[8]. James R. Cowdery, “Kategorie or Wertidee? The early years of the International Folk Music Council,” in Music’s Intellectual History (New York: Répertoire International de la Littérature Musicale), 808-811.

[9]. Jim Caligiuri, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” The Austin Chronicle, January 19, 2001, accessed November 14, 2017, https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2001-01-19/80243/.

[10]. Evan Cater, “O Brother, Where Art Thou? [Original Soundtrack],” AllMusic, 2001, accessed November 14, 2017, https://www.allmusic.com/album/o-brother-where-art-thou-original-soundtrack-mw0000106868.

[11]. Ted Olson and Ajay Kalra, “Appalachian Music: Examining Popular Assumptions,” in A Handbook to Appalachia: An Introduction to the Region (University of Tennessee Press, 2006), 164-165.

[12]. Ibid.

[13]. David E. Whisnant, All That is Native & Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 13.

[14]. Ibid

[15]. Ibid., 183-261

[16]. Lee Smith, “Mountain Music’s Moment in the Sun,” The Washington Post, August 12, 2001, Final Edition ed., Sunday Arts, G01 sec.

[17]. Elton Jones, “VGX 2013: The Full List of Video Game Award Winners,” Heavy.com, December 07, 2013, accessed November 14, 2017, http://heavy.com/games/2013/12/vgx-2013-the-full-list-of-video-game-award-winners/.

[18]. Smith, “Mountain Music’s Moment in the Sun”

[19]. Robert Christgau, “The Lost World of ‘Llewyn Davis’: Christgau on the Coen Brothers,” Rolling Stone, December 4, 2013, accessed November 14, 2017, https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/the-lost-world-of-llewyn-davis-christgau-on-the-coen-brothers-20131204.

[20]. BBC News Online, “O Brother, Why Art Thou So Popular?” BBC, February 28, 2002, accessed November 14, 2017, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1845962.stm.

[21]. Jewly Hight, writer, “Dan Tyminski On Mixing Electronic Dance And ‘Southern Gothic’,” in All Things Considered, transcript, National Public Radio, October 19, 2017.

[22]. Legacy Recordings, “American Epic: The Collection & The Soundtrack Out May 12th,” news release, April 28, 2017, Legacy Recordings, accessed November 14, 2017, https://legacyrecordings.com/2017/04/28/american-epic-collection-american-epic-soundtrack-may-12th/.

[23]. Ibid.

[24]. Tom Piazza, “Trust the Song,” in Da Capo Best Music Writing 2000 (Boston: Da Capo Press), 301.

 

Any Gilmore Girls fan will tell you that Lorelai and Rory are living the life in Stars Hollow. Personally, I can vouch for this. Every time I am sad, having a bad day, or just need a break from reality, I turn to an episode of Gilmore Girls as my relief. The quick, witty humor, the perfectly quirky town, and the close relationships between characters make this show a refuge from our own daily hardships. As viewers buy into the surface level utopia provided in this show, however, they are actually allowing themselves to buy into deeper utopias — the show offers a variety of different sub-level utopias in order to create an overarching one. I predict that many of these “deeper” utopias are ones that most viewers, including myself, would not like to admit that they actually buy into. This leads us to the question of how does seemingly harmless popular culture, like Gilmore Girls, allow consumers to buy into its more harmful creations of utopia?

Figuring out the basic level utopia that different pieces of popular culture offer is the initial step to answering this question. Using Gilmore Girls as an example makes this easier. The utopia is set up starting with the first episode.  First, there is the opening scene, which shows Loralei crossing the street of a small town to a coffee shop, while all around her people stroll through the town, children ride their bikes, and people sit in the town square (complete with its white gazebo). This is the small town utopia that many imagine when they think of close-knit community suburbs. People happily play and walk through the town on a cold brisk day, and as Lorelai Gilmore crosses the street toward her warm cup of coffee at the local diner, she gets to be a part of this gleeful town experience. But why is this our idea of a utopia? Taking Darren Webb’s description of utopia (which is itself based on ideas from other writers), it becomes clear; he describes a utopian text as something that creates a non-existent society that is better than the one its readers live in. In this way, the town utopia is something that we have been taught to value since we were little from all the images of the perfect white picket fence surrounded house that are constantly being portrayed throughout the media, and which stand in contrast to many of the negativities occurring in our real world. This reality does not really exist anywhere, besides in the media, but the idea of a close-knit community in which kids have the freedom to be kids and there is a local diner where all go to eat is seen as the epitome of the “good life” in America and a bastion of comfort and happiness.

This next basic utopia that I describe may seem silly, but it is almost equally as simple and important to answering our question. Most people (especially those who come from well-off families) have had it drilled into them since they were little that it is important for them to eat healthily. However, the utopia would be to not have to eat healthy (in other words, be able to eat as many waffles, slices of pizza, burgers, etc. that you want), yet still look beautiful and have no health complications. Take almost any episode of Gilmore Girls and you will see Rory and Lorelai eating pizza, pop-tarts, Chinese food, or some combination of the three, but hardly ever will you see them exercise or eat a salad. Many would call this a utopia: being able to lead a sustainable life while on that diet and still be super skinny, beautiful, and not have diabetes. Fredric Jameson describes a utopia as a sort of “fantasy bribe” and the utopia explained above fits this exactly. It is a bribe from the culture and fast food industries to eat their delicious, albeit unhealthy, food, yet experience none of the consequences from doing so.

Gilmore Girls also gives its viewers a utopia through the easy solutions it provides to the problems that the characters in the show encounter. A utopia does not necessarily mean that the people that exist in it do not encounter struggles (at least this is the case in many pieces of popular culture, including Gilmore Girls, because without struggle there would be no interesting plot line). However, it can mean that the problems encountered are more easily solved than they would be in a real life situation. An example of an easy solution to a more complicated problem is present within the first thirty minutes of the inaugural episode. When Rory is accepted to Chilton, a prestigious private school, everyone is excited, that is, until Lorelai realizes just how much money it will cost to send Rory there. Yet the solution comes easily, as Lorelai’s parents happen to be millionaires. People are not usually afforded this privilege; most people do not have millionaire parents who will just give them 50,000 dollars a year in exchange for weekly Friday night dinner with them. Even if the child happened to be the next Albert Einstein, a school like Chilton would simply be out of the cards for most families existing in our world. Rory is smart, but certainly not the next Albert Einstein, yet just like that, she is able to afford a Chilton (inset the name of any other elite private school here and it will be equivalent) education. It is in this way that Gilmore Girls gives viewers its feel good vibe. By “good vibe,” I mean a feeling that makes people who are having a bad day want to watch it: that is, problems are easily solved, there is a caring, happy community supporting your every move, and many of your actions lack the consequences that they have in the “real world.”

Now that we have established some of the contributants to the surface-level utopia presented in Gilmore Girls, a more important point is looking at the deeper utopias that Gilmore Girls subconsciously convinces its viewers to buy into. First, there is the consumerist utopia. This show is a full-on advertisement for consumerism that would make Adorno and Marx roll over in their graves. For example, the first episode is full of consumerist overtones, whether it be the big bags of makeup that Lorelai pulls out from under the table when Rory asks for chapstick, or the references to CDs, rock and roll, and movies made not only in the first episode, but throughout the entire show. The Gilmores, as well as many other characters in this show, are fully absorbed into the consumerist world. For example, Season 4, Episode 15 is titled “Scene in a Mall!” While there is some fun being poked at consumerism, I nonetheless found myself wishing that I could go to a fancy mall and shop my stress away as I bought everything I wanted, just as Emily (Lorelai’s mother and Rory’s grandmother), Lorelai and Rory decided to do this episode. Rory and Lorelai go to the mall to go window shopping because they cannot afford to actually buy anything, but soon discover that window shopping is not all it is built up to be because they cannot exist as a consumer in one of the most consumerist places on earth. They then run into Emily, who is shopping her stress away by buying the most expensive things that she sees. The idea of consumerism as a utopia is perpetuated in a subtle way; while Lorelai and Rory do not seem to be having fun in the mall, the assumption is that if they had enough money to actually buy things, their day of shopping therapy would work perfectly.  Thus, consumerism is the utopia that viewers are subconsciously wishing they existed in while they watch this show.

The second utopia that viewers subconsciously subscribe to as they watch and enjoy this show is the utopia of a class-based society. This show supports the idea of education as a means to an end and money as one of the defining factors of success (it can also be argued that the show puts emphasis on love and relationships). In other words, this show reinforces the idea that those at the top of society, particularly those with an elite education, are going to be better off in the world and that this success is the ultimate utopia. This starts with Lorelai and her desire for Rory to go to college and get a good education (something that she did not have to opportunity to obtain). While Lorelai repeatedly says that she would not change the way her life turned out, throughout the show she also emphasizes how important it is for Rory to have an elite education. The biggest fight that occurred during the series was in Season 6 when Rory decided to drop out of Yale and instead go live at her grandparents’ house. Thus, the series supports the idea of happiness and success coming from, among other things, an elite higher education., The classes in Gilmore Girls society are also made clear. High-class society is represented by Rory’s grandparents, while Lorelai, Rory, and other people in Stars Hollow (like Dean, Rory’s first boyfriend who works stocking the local grocery store) represent the middle classes. Gilmore Girls takes for granted that these classes will exist and makes no effort to emphasize an idea of social mobility. For example, Lorelai will always act inappropriately at her parents’ cocktail parties. She will always be a member of a lower class with instincts of a lower-class citizen, as evidenced by the first episode where she resorts to her middle class ways as she cleans dishes to relieve her stress (while in Richard and Emily’s house, that is a job for the maid). At the same time, Emily and Richard will remain a part of high society, a status that is mainly obtained through money and birth. Thus, Gilmore Girls viewers believe the concept of stratified society being a utopia.

Finally, two of the most harmful utopias that Gilmore Girls perpetuates is its exclusive feminist utopia and its utopia of the life of the white middle class. There are countless articles online that talk about Gilmore Girls as “‘sneakily feminist’” or list Gilmore Girls top feminist moments, but in reality, this series perpetuates a very homogeneous, privileged feminist utopia. While Rory and Lorelai are strong women who should be admired, the show should not be considered the “end-all-be-all” of feminism. The problem is that many do consider it this. Those who buy into this idea are confining their ideal feminist movement to one that is led by white, middle-class women. This utopia blends in with another utopia that the show portrays: a white suburb. There is pretty much no diversity in this show (one of the sole exceptions being Lane, Rory’s Korean best friend), which explains why the feminist utopia portrayed is that which only includes the white middle class.  Those who seek refuge in this show are seeking refuge in a white feminist world where those of other races are underrepresented and not seen to be a part of what people consider to be their ideal society and life.

Thus, popular culture like Gilmore Girls does allow consumers to buy into its more harmful creations of utopia. A generalized answer cannot be supplied by simply analyzing Gilmore Girls, for Gilmore Girls itself a conclusion can be reached. Gilmore Girls causes us to buy into deeper level utopias including those of white feminism, classism, and consumerism, by making it seem like the show is simply an escape from reality for the duration of each forty-five-minute episode. It is more than an escape from reality because the show unwillingly causes people to come to a conclusion about what their perfect life would be, perpetuating the problematic idea of what is utopic. Often that vision is one that they would never admit to themselves or others as being true.

Read by Sarah Tully.

Sources:

• Bradley, Laura. “Explain Why Gilmore Girls Is ‘Sneakily Feminist.’” Vanity Fair. (accessed

November 9, 2017)

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/09/gilmore-girls-feminist-lauren-graham.

• Garis, Mary. “34 Feminist Moments In ‘Gilmore Girls’ Season 1 That Not-So-Secretly

Empowered Us.” Bustle. (accessed November 9, 2017)

https://www.bustle.com/articles/178002-34-feminist-moments-in-gilmore-girls-season-1

that-not-so-secretly-empowered-us.

• Jameson, Fredric. “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture.” Social Text, no. 1 (1979): 144.

doi:10.2307/466409.

• Webb, Darren. “Bakhtin at the Seaside: Utopia, Modernity and the Carnivalesque. Theory,

Culture, and Society, no. 22 (2005): 132.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276405053724.

I’m sure that you can think of countless films that draw upon World War II and the fight against fascism. The Nazis are a recognizable evil against whom protagonist can fight. And while this fighting normally presents itself in the form of combat or military action, The Sound of Music comes at it with a different approach. As the name implies, The Sound of Music relies on song and dance to work through its problems. But then the question becomes, how can something so gentle as singing overcome the evil of fascism?

Let’s start with the obvious: in the film, the Nazis try to force Captain Von Trapp to take a place in their military forces, but he refuses and manages to evade their demands by escaping from the country. This is effectively defying the Nazi forces that are overtaking the rest of the nation. The foundation of this escape, though, is the Von Trapps’ performance at the folk festival. Had they not had the excuse of singing in the festival, the captain would have been taken away immediately to fulfill his duties. In contrast to the success of this plan, which was all about singing, their original plan, which involved sneaking out quietly, was a complete failure. This distinction of singing having a positive outcome and silence having a negative one communicates the idea that song will save you.

Possibly more impactful than their actual escape though, is their defiance of the Nazis in the performance itself. Despite Herr Zeller saying that the family was singing “only because that is the way [he] wants it to be”, he is visibly unhappy that they are performing. And Edelweiss, which Captain Von Trapp performs, is not just any song, but is meant to evoke feelings of love for the old Austria, that is, one which is not under control of the Nazis. In this way, not only is the very act of them being there an unhappy sight for the Nazis, but the song being performed is outright bad taste in their view.

One particular moment of interest in this song is when the Captain, singing alone, chokes up, presumably because he is either so sad that the nation he knows and loves has been lost, or fearful that he won’t be able to escape and will have to submit to the Nazis. Either way, he is visibly overwhelmed by the outcomes of the Nazis’ actions. But Maria steps in to sing along with him, and they get not only the children to join in, but also the entire audience (excluding of course the Nazi leaders). Here, the performers and the observers become one and have joined together to sing a song that disregards the Anschluss and temporarily unites everyone into the non-fascist nation that they previously were. Maria joining in allows the Captain to rebel against the threat of the Nazis just as the unification of the audience and the Von Trapps allows everyone in the theater to temporarily break free from the hold of the Nazis. It is through the collective effort of ordinary people that they are able to rebel.

But it is no secret in the film that the Von Trapps were rebelling against the Nazis. What is subtler is the fascism, which is ultimately destroyed through singing, that exists within the family itself. When Maria shows up, the family embodies a fascist regime. As Raymond Knapp describes, it is “run by an autocratic, militaristic captain blind to the individual needs of his own children”. But Maria’s arrival changes all of that. It is through teaching the children how to sing that she is able to help liberate them from their unhappy life under the demands of their authoritarian father.

The first thing she does is ensure that they are all on the same level. She does not demand that the children see her as their superior. Right off the bat she tells Liesel that she will just be her friend if she would like. And when the thunderstorm strikes, they all climb into Maria’s bed together and sing. When they are sitting in the bed, they are physically all at the same eye level and act as though they are all friends. It is in this first song, “My Favorite Things”, that Maria establishes a collectivity and begins to tear down the fascism that this family is drowning in. The children get a taste of what it is like to play and they recognize for the first time how freeing music is. Maria is teaching them that through singing they can overcome their fears and get through tough situations.

And she isn’t just teaching the children this, she is telling the viewers as well. It is nearly impossible, at least for me and those I have watched it with, to see this scene and not want to sing along too. It makes the viewer feel like they can be a part of it and it allows them to be temporarily freed from their own anxieties and fears. The songs in this movie make those watching want to be “active participants and not merely observers” (Flinn). In this way, everything that is happening in the film is more directly influencing us because we are so tightly drawn in through the music. The music liberates both us and the children. When Maria teaches them to sing, she is giving them a tool that they can use to break the ranks as soldiers in the house and just be kids, while at the same time teaching us to similarly deal with our own problems.

But they aren’t just singing and playing, they are singing and playing in bad taste. This bad taste largely originates from Maria. Everything about her reeks of it. As a nun, she is constantly late and doing things she shouldn’t. An entire song is dedicated to a debate about her disobedience. As a governess, she stands up to the Captain within the first few minutes of meeting him and criticizes the way he runs his family. Considering that this was the 1930s, this would have been particularly poor taste, as it is a low-class woman condemning an elite naval officer. She couldn’t care less what other people think about her actions. She sings “I have confidence in me”, demonstrating that it is through songs that she has the courage to rebel against her superiors.

Similarly, once the children begin to sing, they act in fits of liberating bad taste. Not only are they wearing clothes made from curtains, an idea that is absolutely appalling to the Captain, but they also act in ways that aren’t conducive to their regimented lifestyle. When the Captain drives by kids hanging in trees, oblivious that they are his own, he states that they are “just some local urchins”. By urchins he means mischievous, raggedy children, i.e. kids who he thinks are acting in bad taste. From this it becomes clear that singing liberates you to act in ways that defy your superiors and disregard the social norms that they value.  In fact, in one scene, Maria doesn’t just rebel against the captain, she switches roles with him entirely. When Maria again acts in bad taste and argues with the Captain about his relationship with his children, he actually calls her “Captain” by mistake. It is clear that he didn’t mean to say it, but interestingly he never takes it back.

And right after they have this argument, he goes in and sings with his kids for the first time in many years. This act of singing together is a pivotal moment for the structure of the family, for when the song is finished, the Captain hugs all of his children. The embrace is something that was inconceivable only a little while before and altogether destroys the fascist environment of the house. It would not have been possible though, had the song not acted as the means of overturning the relations within the household.

Thus, just as song is used to rebel against the Nazis, it is used to rebel against the fascism within the Von Trapp family. To clarify though, the film is not trying to convey that fascist regimes can be completely toppled by everyone singing and dancing through fields. Instead, it is saying that fascism on the individual level can be overcome through song. A person or group of people can push out the fascist within them or individually defy greater fascist powers. Maybe, just as with the crowd at the festival, song can even allow an entire crowd to temporarily revolt against fascism. What’s more, if this is true with fascist ideas, the same can just as easily apply to all forms of evil. The film, by drawing the viewers in through song, is providing you with the tools to overcome any demon in your life, at least temporarily. And these tools don’t require you to be high class, wealthy, or well educated. If you can sing and have confidence in confidence alone, The Sound of Music argues that you can overcome anything.

One of Marvel Entertainment’s newest films for action-seeking viewers is Logan and that is what it may look like on the surface, a film for thrill-seeking Wolverine, and more generically, X-Men fans that are looking for their satisfactory dose. However, this film also displays a general conclusion from Richard Dyer’s chapter “Entertainment and Utopia” in the book Only Entertainment. The conclusion from Dyer’s chapter is that entertainment exemplifies facets of a better world to us as viewers. The movie does seem to underscore something that is entirely unrelated to the slashing and killing of Wolverine’s usual victims, individuals that are typically against and trying to takeover human society. This film provides a bit of a twist though, rather than the dignity and prominence of humankind being in jeopardy, it is the mutants who are condemned, strictly because of their differences from humans.

Logan is a film that stars Hugh Jackman as an old, washed-up version of Wolverine. Initially, he is trying to live a fairly normal human life, aside from his occasional trips across the border to aid Professor Xavier, as old age is taking its toll on him as well. The trick to this film is that there are new mutants that are ultimately genetic descendents of those prior, like Wolverine. Though these mutant children are held captive in the confines of the hospital that they are ‘engineered’ and raised in, they still retain many basic human qualities, as they are practically a family, which leads one nurse to want to spare their lives. This is what really leads to the chaos that ensues throughout the remainder of the film. These mutant children are released into the world, they’re given a sense of hope, they just need to get to Eden, which is where they seek to congregate prior to achieving safety. Before I go on, I want to recognize that their are religious resemblances in this film, but those are deserving of a different exploration entirely.

Continuing on, what really sets the movie in full swing is one girl in particular, Laura, who is genetically similar to Logan. She’s the ‘person of interest’, using the term in its most literal sense. Those tracking her, as well as the other mutants, act as if they’re going to save the world by recapturing them, as if they’re saving the world from some utterly destructible force(s). They make themselves seem like they’re the heroes and once they realize that Laura and Logan are linked, that’s when all hell breaks loose.

To any novel Marvel fan, this may seem like the next great film, a film of continuous and inescapable action-packed fighting. Honestly, that isn’t necessarily a false statement. The question I then ask though is, who are they fighting against? It is clear that they are fighting for their own survival, as one would expect them to. Right from the beginning of the film, we are instantly led to side with the mutants, pulling for them for the entirety of movie. But do we recognize who we are pulling against? The answer to these two previously asked questions is humankind, our own kind. And what do the mutants represent? They represent those people who are different from the mass population. Logan, who is clearly still mutant, provides a simplistic example of how they differ from the general population right at the beginning of the film when he’s awaken by men trying to remove pieces from his car. Initially he tries to handle the situation humanely, but these men fight back, which cues the inevitable… out come the claws … and the rest is history.

The journey for Logan, Laura, and, at least for some time, Professor Xavier begins as they begin their trek towards Eden, a trek that Logan himself is skeptical of and initially doesn’t see as worthy. His human-side has taken a toll on him. Mentally, he has shifted out of the mutant mindset, going off of the idea that few, if any, mutants even exist anymore. That’s one of the reasons he doubts that Laura is even worth their time from the beginning. His human side, and his want for normalcy, leads him to move away from seeing himself as a mutant, as Charles Xavier is really his remaining point of connection, while it also guides him to conform to their standards; I mean, why would a ‘former’ superhero become a driver for people? Other than that, he seems disinterested in his mutant past and the possibility that there are still mutants who do exist.

As the movie progresses, however, Logan realizes that he may be the last sense of hope that mutants have. He may be the only one who can help save them and prevent them from being extinguished from society, from being removed and dictated by humankind. After all, many of the remaining mutants are only children, who lack the leadership and brute strength to fend off their oppressors. The injustice shown towards certain people is no stranger to the real world as well and, unfortunately, for some, the world would be a better place without a particular race, religion, or social group.

In our world today, including the past, there are plenty of examples of social and religious extremist groups that seek to get rid of certain populations and cause disruption entirely. From their perspective, the world is a better place without these people or they see them as some kind of threat to their ideal society. They’d rather live in a world, bluntly, where these people don’t exist, which is part of their own personal utopias. As is the case in Logan, humankind is trying to restrict and maintain mutants, seeing them as a threat to their states of ideality. Think about the Nazi’s for example. In the mid-1900’s, they believed, or at least some believed and others followed suit, that the extermination of the Jewish population would resolve many of the issues of their world, which is incomprehensible in its own right. But a similar situation is prevalent in Logan as well. Humans act as if the world would be a better place if mutants were extinguished. But is that what the film is really showing us?

In Mikhail Lyubansky’s article “The Racial Politics of X-Men”, he states that “the viewer is expected to ultimately accept the assumption that it is the mutants (and, by extension, gays, lesbians, and people of color) who must somehow make themselves fit into mainstream society”. Keep in mind that this is regarding prior X-Men movies before Logan, but as they are predecessors of the film, you’d think some themes would still apply. However, as viewers of Logan, this doesn’t necessarily seem to be the case. Interestingly enough, Logan does initially seem to conform to societal standards, but that doesn’t explain his eventual return to his mutant side. If we, as viewers, were expected to interpret this movie in the fashion that Lyubanksy argues of the other X-Men films, then why would they even put up the fight? If these are the last remaining mutants, then why don’t they succumb to ordinary society and their oppressors? It’s because they shouldn’t be expected to.

Lyubansky also argues that, “Xavier’s mindset would’ve blamed Jews in Nazi Germany and Blacks in the antebellum South for their victimization–and would’ve expected them to make accommodations for the sake of peace”. If that were the case in this film, however, then why would Xavier want Logan to take care of and help Laura, especially if he could anticipate that it would cause further disruption, the opposite of peace.

What really throws this whole idea for a spin is that the mutants are the ones who prevail. They fend off those who have an ideal world where mutants don’t exist, those who seek more power and control. The mutants do this in defense of the continuation of their own selves. So then, what is the film really showing us? It clearly isn’t that the removal of different types of people is the answer. If that was the case, then humankind would’ve simply defeated the mutants. We, as viewers, are then proposed an entirely different set of utopian standards and expectations. Through the success of the mutants, who I remind you are the ones being oppressed, just as white supremacists attempt to oppress African-Americans, we can see an entirely different answer to this film’s image of a utopian world. Logan, who serves as the leader in the fight against those who are trying to rid the world of mutants, is a Martin Luther King Jr. esque figure in this film. He eventually comes to realize the injustice that is being shown towards mutants and conjoins with the others to fight it together. That pushes us as the viewers to see something much different, a world that is built and structured off of equality and justice, where no one should be subjugated due to their uncontrollable differences from the overarching masses.

As the battle concludes and ultimately Logan himself is killed and buried, many of the kids, whom he has touched through his leadership and will to fight, including Laura, hold a burial ceremony. Initially, they create and place a cross at the head of his grave. But, as everyone proceeds to leave the scene, Laura emotionally turns that cross to an ‘X’, signifying that their fight as mutants for respect continues, that the fight must continue, even if their most trusted leader has been defeated. One thing I didn’t initially realize but was introduced to through Ignatiy Vishnevetsky’s critical analysis of Logan titled “A cross on its side: Logan gets religion” is that Logan’s “relationship to Laura could almost be called a religious relationship. She’s Logan’s afterlife”. He sacrificed his own self for the mutant children, especially Laura, considering all that he went through for her, so that they could live there lives and have their own experiences in the world, so that they could carry on the mutant ‘species’.

From the mind of an oppressor, the extinguishing of a different culture, religion, class, race, etc will lead to a better world, or else why would they be so driven to try and get rid of these people? But Logan shows us something else. The mutants, who symbolize those different cultures, religions, and races succeed. They fend off their oppressors… and that’s the nice way of putting it. What Logan really displays to us is that a utopia can be achieved by standing up to the cultural, racial, and religious oppressing mindsets, that a better world is achieved through consistent unity between individuals, ignoring whatever differences that they may have. Ultimately, Logan shows us a different way that we can see the world, a way that the world can be made more utopian. I mean many of us were cheering for the mutants right from the beginning, cheering for the outsiders. We wanted those who had differences to succeed and defeat those who were treating them unjustly… and claws aren’t needed to do that.

*This essay was read by Cory Lund. It is not a first draft.

Works Cited

Dyer, Richard. Only Entertainment. Routledge, 1992.

Lyubansky, Mikhail. “The Racial Politics of X-Men.” Psychology Today, Sussex

Publishers, 5 June 2011, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/between-the-lines

/201106/the-racial-politics-x-men.

Mangold, James, director. Logan. Marvel Entertainment, 2017.

Vishnevetsky, Ignatiy. “A Cross on Its Side: Logan Gets Religion.” Film,

Film.avclub.com, 7 Mar. 2017, film.avclub.com/a-cross-on-its-side-logan-gets-religion-1798258715.

Nothing depicts the American Dream quite like green lawns, white picket fences, and white neighbors. This depiction, for many people, seems like the natural progression of American Society yet we are still recovering from the consequences of this abnormal story. The story of suburbanization and housing is the story of Americans; I Americans and Americans of color. This story is still being determined; through the present distribution of subsidized housing, neighborhood funding of schools, and zoning laws that disproportionately expose communities of color and low-income white folks to harmful toxins. Depending on where you are positioned in the social hierarchy of America based on race, class, gender, and sexuality, your take on each chapter of this story is different from those of another position. For some, the struggle for decent housing is still pending while for others the “good ol’ days” seem to be gone. Enter The ‘Burbs, starring Tom Hanks and directed by Joe Dante, showing the last great strides Anglo-Americans took to preserve their luscious green lawns, as well as their rising property values from, Cannibal doctors? If you follow me through this, I’ll hopefully show you how a seemingly heart-warming film about an average Joe, or Ray Peterson for this matter, protecting his neighborhood from strange new cannibal neighbors is actually a self-atonement for the mistreatment of non-Anglo’s in suburbia during the 60’s and 70’s.  Yes, the 60’s and 70’s, of the 20^th century, of course, meaning the era when your parents or grandparents were either trying to move into suburbia or trying to keep people out. And, Yes Tom Hanks, the guy we know and love from movies like Forest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, and The Terminal.

The Suburbs, I think, can be analyzed as the last ‘great’ struggle by the Anglo-Americans to maintain their socialized foothold in wealth and racial superiority. I’m not going to argue that this is the only method used, as aspects of white supremacy have, and still manifest itself through the prison industrial complex, school to prison pipeline, food apartheid and many, many more issues. Instead, I am arguing that suburbanization was based on previously conceived frameworks of racism in so far as it also created new foundations for massive disparities in housing, schooling, food, and health access that moved the realm of racism into a seemingly ‘non-racial’ topic.

By the end of the second World War, the American Veterans were returning to a post-war economic boom. The government implemented the 1944 G.I. bill helping aid many veterans in their path towards new careers, college education, and buying their first homes. Suburbanization took off as G.I loans provided low-interest rate and small down payment; As the highways cut through thriving non-white neighborhoods to allow for quick commutes into the city, along with more cars being used with the continual decrease of oil prices, and as Levittowns keep springing up that relied on non-unionized workers building houses in an assembly line fashion created the perfect setting for suburbanization. The American standard of living was rapidly rising. But the same story was not true if you were black. In The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein explicitly shows the condoning and enforcing of neighborhood segregation. The G.I bill, for the most part, excluded non-whites and further engrained the entrance into potential markets for wealth accumulation. Banks did not loan to families in black neighborhoods so they had to buy homes in installment plans, which often lead to numerous evictions. If black families were able to get loans, they could not move into many suburban homes because many of their neighborhoods had racist housing covenants that excluded renting or selling to non-whites. And if they were able to buy disregarding the covenant the local government yielded its power to enforced the racial convents oftentimes evicting residents. But, even after all of that, and a non-white family managed to move into a suburban neighborhood, they faced a lot of social and physical harassment. In the documentary film, Crisis in Levittown, reporters interview residents of Levittown Virginia who are having a black family move into their neighborhood. There are those that support the new family claiming, “They will not bring down property values, the majority; white families, not wanting to buy homes near them will impact the values. The values are determined by the majority no the minority.”  While others responded to a similar question by saying they should “get them out” or that they have heard rumors that NAACP had paid them or that the reds had paid them. In the end, the reporter poses a potent question, “If a negro family can afford what you are having, how do you justify your feelings of superiority?”, and Rothensiten makes the claim that “If young people are not taught an accurate account of how we came to be segregated, their generation will have little chance of doing a better job of desegregating than previous ones.” (The Color of Law, 199).

Enter the first iteration of the suburbs though The ‘Burbs, a quite Anglo neighborhood being depicted through Mayfield Place; similar to Mayflower (but this connection might be a stretch) is troubled with some new neighbors who keep to themselves, don’t maintain a nice green lawn, and have strange rituals. They have become the talk of the street without being introduced for the first 15 minutes. The ‘protagonist’ of the film is Ray Peterson, a middle-class male with an entire week’s vacation played by a young Tom Hanks.

Supporting characters are Art Weingartner, the invasive neighbor who is a gun-wielding suburbanite willing to go to any extent to protect his property from the crow that was only bothering him,

and Mark Rumsfield, a gun-wielding veteran with an intense jealousy of his Walter’s, his neighbor, lawn.

All three men’s whiteness and belonging is not questioned in this suburban setting. The implementation of racist government policies allowed for their exclusive Anglo neighborhood to flourish, while the exclusion of people of color, Jewish people, and other marginal European communities made claims that allowed Ray, Art, and Mark’s presence to go unquestioned. This natural position is juxtaposed with the determination by the viewer and the cast, of the Klopeks’ Foreignness; Ray immediately, after learning his new neighbor’s last name asks, “Klopek, is that Slavic?”. The directors really went out of his way to ensure the Klopek family was embedded with difference, making them strange, dirty, and a family of only men while depicting Ray as the average suburbanite with a wife, child, and dog. Apart from their familial structure, the occupations of the Klopek are unknown. Even after finding out Werner Klopek is a doctor they still question what type of doctor he is and the reliability of his credentials, all while the viewer is given no information about the Mayfield neighbors’ own occupation. To really hit this foreignness home, the three men are depicted as non-Anglo’s; Their accents show their foreignness with the English language, their food shows a less western European tradition with tea being supplemented with sardines; which were eaten by many poor Eastern Europeans, and the Mark keeps calling them the Huns or the foreigners.

When the Mayfield neighbors see Han, one of the Klopeks, for the first for the first time, the whole street stares at him and Art asks, “what is that?” (14:20). This embedded foreignness grows as the viewer and the Mayfield neighbors start to learn more about the Klopeks. Instead of learning more by uncovering truths, the movie moves us into more suspicion. The Mayfield neighbors witness the Klopeks drive their trash down their driveway in the middle of the night, and then cram it in with a hoe. Ray also sees the Klopeks digging in their backyard in the middle of the night, then Walter randomly goes missing and there is no sign of him. Finally, Ray finds Walter’s wig when they are all are visiting the Klopeks and this convinces them to intrude the Klopeks home while they are away. The only expression of wrongdoing in this situation is Art’s sarcastic comment on “breaking and entering” after Ray breaks the glass of the Klopek’s back door. This form of intrusion is what gets normalized through the film. This is the normalization of white suburbanites being able to re-appropriate the state’s claim to the “monopoly of the legitimate use of violence” early on Ray jokes that the “only thing [they] need to do is to burn a cross on their lawn” (27:00). You already know how that’s not a great joke… The rationalization of the Mayfield neighbors’ intrusion is coupled with the strange action of the Klopeks, leading them to believe the Klopeks killed Walter and will find out for themselves.

When the Klopeks leave for the day, Art, Ray, and Mark break into their home. When they begin to find nothing, Ray gets desperate and keeps digging deeper in the basement until he accidentally penetrates a gas line which explodes the Klopek’s house. By this point, the Klopeks had come back home with the police and find their home burning to the ground. At this point, the first look of sorrow is expressed in the film; Ray might be dead because he was inside the house during the explosion, and the Klopeks lost their house at the hands of nosy neighbors. But somehow Ray manages live through it and Art quickly presses him to tell everyone he found the bodies, and this time Ray snaps,

“Remember what you were saying about people in the ‘burbs, Art, people like Skip, people who mow their lawn for the 800th time, and then snap? Well, that is us! It’s not them. It’s us! WE’RE the ones who are vaulting over the fences and peeking in through people’s windows. We’re the ones who are throwing garbage in the street, and lighting fires… we’re the ones acting suspicious and paranoid… We’re the lunatics. US!!! Not them!!! It’s us.”

And for a second, everything seems solved. The reality seems that the Klopeks really weren’t cannibals and that the paranoid suburbanites are the problem. For a second, the viewer also feels guilty but not more than a second. As soon as Ray is getting settled into the ambulance Dr. Klopek enters and reveals that he did kill people and he needed to kill Ray because he thought Ray saw his skulls. Ray manages to escape and bump open the Klopek’s car trunk full of skeletons proving that once and for all, the actions Ray, Mark, and Art did; nevertheless questionable, justified their actions. And for white suburbanites of the 1980’s, the neighbors of Mayfield became their darling. He is what they were, and just as his harassment was justified, so was theirs’.