Marco Roth, editor of N+1, has recently complained about sociology. His beef is that
sociology has lost its power as a critical tool and has instead become the lens
through which most art is judged:
Sociology has
ceased to be demystifying because it has become the way everyone thinks.
Discussions about the arts have an awkward, paralyzed quality: few judgments
about the independent excellences of works are offered, but everyone wants to
know who sat on the jury that gave out the award. It’s become natural to
imagine that networks of power are responsible for the success or failure of
works of art, rather than any creative power of the artist herself.
Roth is reflecting upon the ideas of the
great French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. In his book Distinction, Bourdieu claims there is no such thing as pure
aesthetic judgement. He argues that differences in taste are instead the result
of, and help to reinforce, stratifications of social class.
What
is true of sociology is also true of media studies. Its viewpoints are no
longer restricted to academia; they now have a wider reach. One example is the
study of audiences. There is a long tradition within media studies (plus sociology
and cultural studies) of ignoring that artist’s role in creating works of art and
instead concentrating on how audiences re-appropriate those artworks. Although
these disciplines are concerned about class clichés, they have been happy to
undertake their own research on a class basis. In an attempt to elevate working
class audiences, and suggest that they are not prey to the ‘shit of capitalist
production’, theorists have argued that these audiences creatively rework the
products of mass society. The idea of the creative consumer is there in Stuart
Hall’s theories of ‘articulation’, Michel de Certeau’s idea of ‘textual
poaching’, John Fiske advocation of ‘resistance’, and Henry Jenkins’s work on
‘participatory culture’.
This
idea has also taken root amongst boy bands. At some point in the current
century, these pop performers stopped talking about artistic creation and
instead began to talk about what they owe to their fans. In boy band
interviews, you will hear these acts say that they are ‘humble’, rather
than glory in being stars. Gone, it seems, are the days when pop acts claimed that they were born to boogie or were kings of the wild frontier. The new bands don’t claim to make art, but suggest instead
that their fans make them. The debt, it seems, is wholly one way. Take, for
example, a recent interview with One Direction that Tom Lamont conducted for
the Guardian. The band members stress
the role that chance has played in their success. ‘We’re normal lads’, says
Louis; ‘we’re normal guys’, says Zayn. And this is what they say about their
relationship with their audience: ‘it’s great to give back to the fans’, says
Zayn; it’s all about ‘giving back to the fans’, they point out collectively.
The
band’s relationship with their fans is, of course, also the focus of
publications such as the Guardian,
whose readers aren’t necessarily interested in One Direction’s records, but are curious about sociology and media
studies. All the same, this doesn’t stop the band from toeing their ‘giving it
back’ line in every media forum that they appear in. One reason for this
outlook, perhaps, is that they don’t have any outlet in which to talk at length
about their artistic endeavours. As Lamont points out, they have a different
relationship with media than stars of old:
One Direction is
the first mega-band of the social media age, and this has a direct knock-on
effect for me: the boys have very little incentive to promote their wares
through old institutional channels such as the press. They don’t give long
interviews; they don’t need to.
All of this probably makes the media theorists
happy: the rest of the world has cottoned on to the fact that it is not artists
who matter; what’s more important is the creative practices of their fans. And
this includes the fans and artists themselves: they both know who is doing the
real work.
I
can’t be so sanguine about this. On the one hand, I have an outdated faith in
artistic creation. I even want to see it in boy bands. These groups have
millions of fans and so their work ought to
be good. If you are hugely successful, you should have some sort of statement
to make. Fans certainly have a part to play. Their input can help move artworks
to a higher and more interesting level. However, I believe that it stands a
better chance of doing so if: a) the fans are given interesting material to
work with in the first place; and b) the worth of this material is
acknowledged. The quality of dialogue that surrounds works of art can be of as
much benefit to audiences as the works of art themselves. One Direction
certainly talk to their fans: there is an endless stream of tweets and
instagrams. This dialogue isn’t always inspiring, however. They are usually
telling their fans that they have a new product out. No wonder they feel
indebted to them.
The
textual poaching of the fans isn’t always inspiring either. It can range from
the mundane (Lamont watches Liam tweet ‘very interesting day today’; this
message is soon re-tweeted 55,000 times) to the threatening (when the magazine GQ ran an unflattering portrait of One
Direction, a fan articulated her anger by saying ‘GQ needs to shut up before I break my glass nail file in two and
stab them in the eyes’). Here she is clearly doing something with the artwork
beyond the original intention of the artists, but is it really what we need?
Ultimately,
we need more art, and more talk about art, from the boy bands and from their
fans. The media theorists like to think that they’re looking favourably upon
audiences when they describe their work as being ‘creative’. However, it is
usually only a certain type of fan whose behaviour is described in this way.
Marco Roth is wrong about the complete takeover of a sociological perspective.
For example, when the Guardian explores
the work of opera singers or jazz musicians, its analyses are different to its
analyses of One Direction. There’s more talk about the artists’ intentions, and
less about the activities of fans. As a consequence, opera and jazz are still
musics of ‘distinction’. Conversely, despite Bourdieu’s exposure of the
stratification of taste groups, there’s still little cultural capital to be
gained from being in a boy band or being a fan of a boy band. Audience studies
have, in fact, helped to reinforce social stratifications. It is usually only the
‘lowest’ forms of art that are approached by looking at the fans’ perspective
first. Sociology and media studies are not the way that ‘everybody’ thinks;
they are instead the preserve of an elevated sector of society. This sector
likes to analyse other audiences, but rarely stops to consider that it is an
audience itself.
