If you have been reading this site carefully, you may have noticed that I have been going through the archives of my old site for material that deserves a another look over here (all Blogcritics are encouraged to do the same).
In June Doc Searls wrote a brilliant essay on the commodification of celebrity and its ramifications for the future of the Internet and the entertainment industry. It deserves another look:
- On the phone yesterday, Howard Greenstein and I recalled a line from the old Joni Mitchell song, "Free Man in Paris": ...stoking the star-making machinery behind the popular songs.
We realized that star-making machinery was what the DMCA was built to protect, and what the CARP/LOC processes have loyally served from the moment they began.
That machinery (let's call it SMM) is not what Internet radio is about, and it is not what the Internet itself is about. But it is what both threathen, and that's why there are veins in the teeth of the RIAA.
Today in the mail we got the latest Biography magazine. As usual I couldn't bear to to look at it; but for the first time I understood why: because it's so obviously part of the star-making machinery. It's less product than factory: one more way the machinery makes its sausage. Realizing it was part of the SMM made me feel like I'd just found a body-snatcher pod in my mailbox.
My stars are in my referers logs. They're in my email, on my blogroll, and in everything I look up on Google. They have everything to do with intrinsic value, with authority, with the possibility I'll be enlarged by getting to know them better.
They have nothing to do with celebrity. They are outside the SMM. And I'm not unique in that respect. The same is true of most of us here in the blogosphere. I suspect it's true to a huge and growing degree in the mass market as well.
Article comments
1 - marilyn
I have found my people at last! *sigh* Sooooo I am not the only person in the universe who sees no talent in most celebrity's or their pim-- uhhh agents and managers. Heh. A place where nothing Britany does is important???? To anybody?? Utopia. And let's not forget gang-banger rap, where talent is not only optional, but often completely forbidden! Get down on my thang, uh sweet baby, killa cop, ya'll. Did I just write a hit rap song? Heh. Glad I found ya. Later
2 - Eric Olsen
Glad you found us Marilyn, although we don't dismiss pop and rap ouright, and celebrity can be a fun or even revealing topic.