The Likely Lads Test

‘No Hiding Place’, broadcast in 1973 as part of the first season of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, is one of the most memorable episodes of a British sitcom. If you have seen it, and have an interest in sport, you are unlikely to have forgotten it. The premise is simple. The English football team is playing Bulgaria in a game that kicks off at midday. The television highlights of the match won’t be shown until 10.00 in the evening. The ‘likely lads’, our Geordie heroes Terry and Bob, try to avoid hearing the result so they can enjoy the full drama of the game when it is shown on TV.

            This is not easy. A hairdresser tells them they’ll ‘never make it . . . there’s the radio, evening papers, television news’. On top of this, their friend Flint gets wind of their media blackout and enters into a bet with them that they won’t escape the score. Terry and Bob make a good go of it. They run for home, so that they can flee Flint and his radio that is broadcasting the game. Home isn’t safe either. The phone rings, but rather than pick it up, out of fear it will be someone wanting to talk about the game, they seek sanctuary in a church. Flint tracks them down there and is about to announce the result when a vicar appears. This intervention provides Terry and Bob with an opportunity to escape. On the run for the rest of the day, they avoid news of the game by giving blood and attending a talk on flower arranging at the local Women’s Institute. Eventually, they settle on their sofa as the TV broadcast is about to begin. But they’ve left the front door unlocked. Flint enters. They let him win the bet, with the proviso that he leave without telling them the score. They then turn on the TV. It is showing ice skating rather than the football. Terry and Bob look dumbfounded. And then a commentator explains that the England v Bulgaria game has been postponed because of a waterlogged pitch.  

            This is the likely lads’ ‘longest day’, one they describe as being ‘endless’. They live in a world where the news is everywhere – on radio, on television, in the papers, on the phone. Avoiding it is like avoiding life itself. ‘No Hiding Place’ is still worth watching, and not only because it’s such an elegantly constructed sitcom. To see it again is to be reminded that media saturation is not a new thing.

But is ‘No Hiding Place’ timeless? The programme has been remade. This century’s most famous Geordie duo, Ant and Dec, assumed the roles of Terry and Bob in a version broadcast in 2002. What’s interesting about this remake is how similar it is to the original. Once again our heroes are told they will ‘never make it . . . there’s the radio, evening papers, television news’.

In some ways there’s been a greater leap between 2002 and 2015 than there was between 1973 and 2002. The world wide web was up and running in 2002, but less than half of UK homes were connected to it, while only 6% had broadband. Wi-Fi barely existed; there were no smart phones. There was no MySpace, let alone Facebook. Twitter was still four years away, and it would be eight years before we had Instagram.

You see where I’m going with this? If ‘No Hiding Place’ were to be remade today, it wouldn’t just be newspapers, TV and radio that Terry and Bob would have to avoid; there would be all manner of social media to escape and all sorts of interconnectivity to unplug. Moreover, if technological futurists are right, 2015 is just about the last time that ‘No Hiding Place’ could be reworked. In a few years time we’ll all have Google glasses wrapped around our faces and we’ll be hardwired to the internet. If we’ve told our machines that we’re interested in football, then avoiding the scores will be impossible.

A side-effect of current levels of mediation is that the story is becoming as important as the game. In Britain, football highlights are still shown in the evenings of a big match day. However, as well as reviewing the game itself, these programmes now feature highlights of the players’ tweets that followed it. Moreover, such is the voracious appetite of social media for content, we’re now weighed down with stories that have nothing to do with the game itself. Gossip rules.

This situation is amplified when it comes to popular music. In sports the results do still matter. In music, it is now difficult to know what the real output of an artist is. Is the gossip there to back up a musical career, or is the musical career there to back up the gossip?

In 1973 it would have been possible to make a version of ‘No Hiding Place’ that focused on pop music rather than football. Flint could have placed a bet with Terry and Bob that they would never make it through a week without knowing what was number one in the charts. This would have been difficult, as the best-selling record was major news at this time. Radio One’s chart show was heard by millions; Top of the Pops, the television equivalent, was watched by even more. The Top 30 was published in the music press, which back then had a vast reach. It was also published in the tabloid newspapers, which in the 1970s were read by the majority of the population.

You couldn’t make this pop version of ‘No Hiding Place’ today. I regularly ask my university students what’s number one in the charts. Despite the repetition of my tests, it is rare that any of them knows the answer. And this is young people who are studying popular music. In the 1970s, most mums and dads would know what was number one. It’s safe to say that hardly any would today.

And yet they may well know what Lady Gaga has been up to, or Rihanna, or Kanye West. Today’s tabloids feature several pages of pop gossip. They don’t feature the charts. And young people aren’t the only ones who use social media. The middle aged and elderly are online. They might not be using the internet to connect to Radio One, but their Twitter feeds may well be telling them about Justin Bieber’s misdemeanours. Have they heard his music? Probably not.

It’s enough to make you want to break out into song. The Likely Lads theme tune will do: Oh, what happened to you, whatever happened to me? What became of the people, we used to be?

Even Simon Cowell Has Got Soul

Simon Cowell is often cast (not least by himself) as the ultimate music industry gatekeeper. He stands sentry over popular music, determining who is allowed in and who is kept out. And yet the truth is that he’s more conspired against than conspiring. Some have argued that the digital age represents the twilight of the gatekeepers – the internet apparently provides open access for all. Nevertheless, there are people out there who are willing to stand sentry against Cowell. From one corner, we have the public, launching their Facebook campaigns in order to stop X Factor winners from having the Christmas number one. From another corner, we have the old guard of the music industry, throwing Cowell sops in order to prove who is really in command.

            Evidence of this comes via the Brit Awards. Looked at one way, they flatter Cowell. The organizers have invented award categories so that his acts don’t go home empty handed. In 2013 and 2014 they included a Global Success award. This was given to One Direction on each occasion, and rightly so. In 2012 they sold more albums globally than any other act. In 2013 their album Midnight Memories was the best-selling album in the world.

            But this record was snubbed in the British Album of the Year category in 2014. In my previous blog entry I pointed out how the winners of this trophy are commonly the purveyors of the biggest selling UK album of the previous year. This was true of Ed Sheeran in 2015, Emeli Sandé in 2013 and Adele in 2012. The exception to this rule are One Direction, who weren’t even nominated for this category in 2014, despite Midnight Memories’ global success. It seems that it is only when Cowell is doing well that aesthetics come into play. His acts were similarly snubbed at this year’s Brit Awards. The consolation thrown to him this time was the one award open to a public vote: British Video. One Direction claimed it for ‘You and I’.

            The BPI uses the Brit Awards tactically. On the one hand, they are a means of showing Simon Cowell how little they care about his music; they reduce his acts to their money-making attributes. On the other hand, in demarcating Cowell as a mercenary who is after global domination, they try to kid us that the regular categories are about art. In reality they are no less money-driven than One Direction’s custom-made awards. 

One Direction for Media Studies

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.