Stephanie Bennett's Blog

What does it mean when one says that popular music has been commodified? Does the place of music in our society as a product rather than an expressive process strike anyone else as problematic? Does EVERYTHING we humans do have be subsumed into the umbrella called "commodity?"

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Sometimes a friend can really prod a person or say something seemingly insignificant that becomes a springboard for things we think about that might lie dormant otherwise. This happened to me today.

He was expressing disappointment in the way Christian music artists and songwriters so often find their talent pressed into the mold of mainstream music strategies, becoming pressured to "go solo" when their strengths may best be expressed through ensembles or ...simply writing the songs.

Specifically, he wondered aloud:

"Why, whenever someone shows exceptional talent in a
certain area, the industry immediately pushes them to be a 'solo' act.
Why do they comply?"

My reply contains the mark of years in the industry; I am aware of that. I told him:

This doesn't just happen in Christian music -- as I'm sure you know. It happens in mainstream music too; in fact, the Christian music industry copies the world and THAT'S how the disappointing phenomenon began. I am old enough to remember how and when it began, and actually worked in the industry through the period of it moving from being primarily a "ministry, flow-through-us, Lord" mentality to a money-making venture.

There are many theories on this subject, but the most compelling (as far as I'm concerned) involves the cultural fixation on celebrity.

The emergence of celebrity came to a high pitch with the introduction of the television to our society, but it started long before that. Silent pictures, radio, -- mass media in general-- worked together as a catalyst to provide the populace with a false sense of "knowing" others. This accomplished several disappointing things.

First, it brought people's personal lives (although fictionalized, for the most part) RIGHT into our living rooms. Having the lives of unknowns splayed across our screens, entering our domiciles -- the very heart of where our lives take place --- created a false and completely illusionary sense of what it means "to know" someone.

With that, the concept and experience of "intimacy" completely changed. Through television we became privy to the details of people's private lives. With our own eyes we could now take in a vision of what it looked like to be close. -- Very different than reading novels where the imagination is front and center. Now, "the image" dominates our collective consciousness and it has created a false sense of reality that plays over and over and over again in our minds.

Next was the change in collective cultural perception of who and what is important. It used to be that people were known for being heroes. Doing something noble or heroic would be reason for someone's popular acclaim. With the rise of modern media people began to be known... just for being known. As a culture, we largely replaced our heroes with celebrities. Once the world did that, Christianity followed. Instead of setting the pace for the purity of expression through music, literature, art -- and, in general -- the beauty of participating in the creative process of God, the Church clamped up the flow, frustrating artists and musicians by separating the secular from the sacred. The Church relegated music and art to the sidelines, taking more of a utilitarian view of the importance and place of art, in general. Music became instrumental, not in the sense that it was being produced without words, rather that its purpose and value was found in the its usefulness to spread the Gospel message. In other words, as long as one uses one's gifts to put some scripture to melody, make a JESUS bracelet, or paint a crucifix, it was "okay." The subtle message became the one most informative in the social processing and management of meaning in the Church.

The creative process as a God-given gift was despised and denigrated (still is, for the most part). The commodification of music is the natural result of this.

(Daniel Boorstin's classic book, "The Image" provides a powerful study of this process. The more subtle, "Humiliation of the Word," by Jacques Ellul is also an excellent explication of this, but he was a Frenchman and the translations available make the work a bit .... thickish, if you know what I mean. Also, the stellar writings of Francis Shcaeffer are helpful here, too. His wife, Edith wrote a doozey too, called "The Art of Life." What a great book!)

Just scratching the surface here, but I wonder if anyone else has ever felt thwarted by the traditional and professional boundaries placed around the making of music? We always have a choice, you know. Celebrity isn't all it's cracked up to be.