Celebrification, commodification!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2014

Reintroducing the Beatles: We were never Beatle fans, although we’ll acknowledge we knew some.

When the mop tops arrived in the U.S., we were high school juniors in the San Francisco suburbs. For us, Bob Dylan had already hit.

One month before the now-famous Sullivan program, Dylan’s third album had been released. At the time, it was hard to get from The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll back to I Want to Hold Your Hand.

Even as the lads evolved, we never really found our way to their work.

Fifty years later, we watched the bulk of Sunday’s tribute program. As we did, we were struck by two things.

We were struck by something Jon Pareles mentions in his review of the program. The Beatles “crammed [their pop singles] with ideas,” Pareles writes in today’s New York Times.

As we watched on Sunday night, our reaction was a bit more specific. We were struck by the way they had crammed their singles with positive ideas.

Has anyone ever given young men better advice than Paul McCartney did in Hey Jude, to cite one example?

“Remember to let her into your heart?” The idea is explored in various ways in the song. We were struck, again and again, by how positive the lads had been.

As we watched, we were also struck by the overpowering celebrification of modern mainstream culture. On Sunday’s broadcast, those positive songs and ideas were tricked out and sold through the drug of celebrity validation.

By now, those positive songs and ideas couldn’t be allowed to stand on their own. They had to be sold through endless two-second cutaways to the gaggle of celebrity hacks who had been assembled to sanction their re-performance.

Predictably enough, some of the hacks were extremely attractive younger women. Some of the hacks were rather unsightly older men, survivors of the rock wars.

Rather plainly, the appeal of the latter group lies in the way they’ve been ravaged through decades of hard-drug living. These are the somewhat pitiful rules of this low-IQ cultural game.

(How many millions of dollars were spent, we wondered, on the cosmetic-and-clothing ministrations which animated the bulk of those cutaways—which made the people shown for two seconds suitable for TV?)

At one time, those songs and ideas had appealed to people on their own. In modern celebrified culture, no song or idea can exist on its own. All offerings must be commodified, then endorsed by a vapid royal court.

We had a somewhat similar reaction to last night’s scandal news on cable. If we tried to explain what we mean, you’d think we were being sour.

We’d say this was good sound advice: We’re not showing the full lyrics. But we’d say this was good sound advice, good advice all the way down:

Hey Jude, don’t make it bad.
Take a sad song and make it better.
Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better.

Hey Jude, don’t be afraid.
You were made to go out and get her.
The minute you let her under your skin,
Then you begin to make it better.

And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain,
Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders.
For well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder.

Hey Jude, don’t let me down.
You have found her, now go and get her.
Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better...

Younger men rarely get such good advice. For the full lyrics, click here.