Cultural Churning

The term "churning" in broker parlance means buying and selling stocks merely to generate a commission, and is an action undertaken by a broker for the express purpose of augmenting their paycheck. It is never in the best interests of the client, and it inevitably leads to unnecessary losses in the client's account.

Given this terminology, I've come to a certain realization about American culture: it is churning itself. Specifically amongst the creative industries from which America entertains itself. Having been in the theatre district on the west side of Manhattan last night (to see the great and still electric Alice Cooper), I passed by the following Broadway plays: The Color Purple, Jersey Boys, and The Times Are A' Changin'. To those of you not terribly informed on these three plays, let me sum up: The Color Purple was a book made into a movie, and now into a Broadway play. Jersey Boys is the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and Times is a Broadway play based on the music of Bob Dylan. In recent years, Broadway has had long running hits in the form of The Producers (based on the 60's movie, starring Gene Wilder), The Odd Couple (starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in the movie version, Jack Klugman and Tony Randall in the television version), and Annie Get Your Gun (based off of an earlier Broadway play), Movin' Out (based on the music of Billy Joel). If you don't sense where I'm going with this, I'll clarify: Broadway producers have no interest in getting behind anything that doesn't already have automatic cultural recognition and already proven marketability. I certainly can understand this, as producing a Broadway play is one of the most speculative endeavors a venture capitalist can take up. But the end result is that, again, this is a form of churning. American culture has already discovered and enjoyed The Odd Couple, The Producers, and The Color Purple. What is the sense of turning a movie and/or a television show into a Broadway play when most people who are going to go see it have already seen it on the big/small screen several years before? The sense, clearly, is money. It certainly isn't creativity.

This hardly extends to Broadway. American cinema is littered with big budget movies, sprinkled with guaranteed marquee appeal via mediocre remakes of movies past. Of course, there's always the three or four sequels that come out from a successful movie (Saw I,II,III; Batman (five or six sequels), Superman, The Fantasic Four (sequel currently in production). Heck, they even remade The Manchurian Candidate (it was awful....the sequel, that is). Solomon once said there's nothing new under the sun. Ain't that the truth.

Then, of course, we have music....an absolute wasteland of retreaded riffs, lyrics, subject matter, guitars, amps, and poses. I can't even get into rap because to call it unlistenable is an insult to unlistenable music. Ornette Coleman was unlistenable, but at least he was original. Listening to sheet metal cut by a buzz-saw...that's unlistenable. All these are preferable to listening to, say, DMX or Ludacris. But...I digress.

This all crystallized in my mind the last 24 hours because I realized after seeing Alice Cooper last night that the man is still viable, still writes catchy, deviant heavy pop, and he puts on a wholly original, fun, rockin' show. Alice can't fill Madison Square Garden thirty-three years after his apex, but he still has enough appeal to fill Roseland Ballroom with two or three thousand sickos. (Like myself and my brother.) Alice was a groundbreaker in his day, both musically and theatrically. So was Bowie, and so was Peter Gabriel. All three were primary movers in turning a rock concert into rock theatre, and all three had groundbreaking music. The question I have, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, is whether it is due to a lack of creativity on the part of the music business (and the theatre and movie businesses) that nothing pushes the boundaries anymore, or whether there are no more boundaries to be pushed. Has the soundscape of music been completely surveyed and accounted for? Are there no more original riffs to be had? Is there no more subject matter left to be explored? Are there no more voices, no more original chord progressions, to be put together? And on a wider scale, is there no more dramatic subject matter left to be explored?

Has music, theatre, and cinema finally confronted everything that can be confronted, written about, and played? Retread plays, music, and movies makes money for the suits, no doubt. But maybe, just maybe, they don't really have much of a choice in the matter; perhaps it is the "artists" who've let down the suits.

1956

October 23rd marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Hungarian revolt against Soviet repression in 1956. This has particular resonance with me, as I've actually been to Budapest (in 2000) and felt and saw the long term ripple effect of this event. One cannot avoid it in Budapest, particularly on the Pest side of the Danube River. Building walls still bear the pock-marks of exploded artillary damage, as well as bullet holes from the fire-fights between Hungarian freedom-fighters* and the repressive Soviet Red Army sent there to crush them. It was a haunting city in that it was only emerging, even in 2000, from forty-five plus years of Soviet repression. This pictoral history tells the story of the Hungarian revolt of 1956.

*Just to clarify: one man's terrorist is not another man's freedom fighter. It's hard to say you're a freedom fighter when your ultimate goal is absolute power over the masses. Ergo, people like Che Guevara and/or Yassir Arafat were not "freedom fighters". They didn't fight for freedom; they fought for repression, power, and the ability to exploit the masses, not to give them a democratic, free life.

Sting Says "Rock Is Stale"; Spitfire Says "He's Right"

I've been decrying the utter lack of creativity and originality in rock for some time. Sting obviously agrees with me. For me, the last gasp of anything remotely creative in the rock idiom was probably the Grunge movement in the early 90's. That said, I think that Nirvana were the single most overrated band of the day.

Who Owns The Middle East?

Depends on who you ask. This map (very cool, by the way) tells the story of who controlled the Middle East dating back to 3000 B.C.

Back...Somewhat

Between vacation, recovery from said vacation, work, moving into a new apartment, and having little-to-no access to a computer (outside of work, of course), blogging has somehow fallen through the cracks in terms of "stuff to do". I'll try to rectify that in the coming weeks, as I'm in the process of getting a brand new Apple computer, as well as alot of household items, like garbage cans, furniture, lights, etc. That said, a quick breakdown of news, sports, music, and other "earth-shaking minutiae":

• Sometimes it is easy to forget how deeply Christian this nation is, but on my trip back from Cincinnati, I saw roadside billboards with Bible tracts at least five to six times per 200 miles. Living in NYC kind of gives one the impression that Christianity doesn't even exist, but it is encouraging that out in the "heartland" that there's still a strong faith in God. Five years ago I wouldn't have really paid it much mind, but 9/11 has changed my perspective on a number of things, not the least of which is our shared Judeo-Christian heritage here in America, and how important it is for us to remember who we are and how we got here. Bush has remarked that there is, perhaps, a "third Great Awakening" underway in this nation. Could be. And if there is, I'd say the Islamo-terrorist threat that is upon us is a primary reason why. If you care to find out about the history of "Great Awakenings" in the history of this nation, you can read about them here and here. Without these events, this nation would've never even materialized, much less seen the abolition of slavery, which was, for the most part, prompted by people the Left now scorns (i.e. evangelicals, as well as Christians of various other Protestant demonitions). Read about it here, here, and here.

• I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but former President Clinton's performance on Fox was quite an event. Many have speculated that his flip-out was contrived. I vehemently disagree. He may be quite an actor, but that was rage on his visage. He had to have known the question was coming, and he might've been champing at the bit to disgorge his pent-up rage, but I don't think his anger wasn't genuine; after all, the interview came about a week and a half after ABC's compelling Path to 9/11 docudrama, which didn't exactly paint Clinton's administration particularly well. The problem with Clinton is that, while I'm not a hater of the man, he's just plum full of sh*t. During his presidency, his prevarications didn't really bother me, because in the end, all politicians "gild the lilly" to some extent. But what Clinton fails to understand these days is that his canards can be easily disassembled through a mere click of a computer mouse. In the old days, one would have to go through a mountain of microfiche to check a politician's statements. But we're in the internet age, and Clinton's contentions don't stand up to scrutiny. Many bloggers and pundits have deconstructed Clinton's assertions for the last few weeks, so you can take it upon yourself to shop the internet for them; I'll not bore you with them given this circumstance. But Clinton's cowardice through the 90's, and his subsequenty efforts to re-write history has really made me reassess the man's presidency. I've written in the past that history unfolds years after the actual events. Things that seemed great at the time wind up looking awful years, or even decades later. Conversely, things that seemed awful at the time wind up looking much better through the prism of history. Lefties years back were fond of saying that Clinton left the White House with the highest approval rating of any exiting executive in history. Harry Truman left with perhaps the worst approval rating. In the end, who do you think history is going to favor?

• One of the more annoying sayings that people express is that "religion is responsible for all the killing and war through history." This is one of those insipid comments that people with no historical perspective make to make themselves sound smart and sophisticated. Of course, what these people always fail to take into account is the eighty years of slaughter that occurred at the hands of communists, who were atheists. I've had discussions with defenders of communism about this, and their default position is always that atheism is only an ancillary principle to the ideology. Nonsense. It is central to their ideology. To wit: "Our ancestors left us with the two most essential heritages, which are atheism and great unity", and "If we let all Chinese people listen to God and follow God, who will obediently listen to us [i.e. the CCP] and follow us?" These quotes were uttered by Chi Haotian, Secretary of Defense for the Red Chinese, in 2003. If you need to get an idea of what atheism, vis-a-vis communism, has cost the world in terms of human carnage, look at this graph.

• Recent concerts attended: Jeff Beck and (what's left of) The Who. To my mind, Jeff Beck smoked the venue, playing all of his greatest material (Led Boots, Star Cycle, Blue Wind, etc.) and brought out a band that absolutely rocked. My take on The Who is considerably less sanguine. Though I still love 'em (I saw them on the last tour with John Entwistle in 2000...a story in itself), I have to say that I didn't sense alot of energy coming off the stage. To me, the thrill is gone. I've resisted seeing them the last few tours since the passing of the great Entwistle on bass, and after having attended their show at Madison Square Garden, I have to say that I was probably right in resisting. Worth seeing, but only as a last hurrah.

• Well, the Yanks are in the playoff, as are the Mets. We might get another Subway Series here in NYC. Not exciting for the rest of the nation, but we dig 'em. Here's to hopin'!