15 Minutes of Fame. reply with, It s a painting or a photograph of someone. The Random House Webster s College

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1 Lax 1 Natalia Lax Prof. Overman Eng. 155 Cmp. February 14, Minutes of Fame When you ask someone the question, What is a portrait? their natural instinct is to reply with, It s a painting or a photograph of someone. The Random House Webster s College Dictionary says that a portrait is a painting, drawing, sculpture, photograph, or verbal painting or description usually of a person. Coming from an artistic background, however, I believe the definition of a portrait goes far beyond than that. Many of today s artists, from musicians to TV producers, don t create the same quality work as that of two or three decades ago. These days, there is a high demand for artists, especially musicians, to conform to what their fans want to hear rather than gaining fans, let alone respect, from recording music out of passion and soul. We can simply look at the music of The Who, compare it to Green Day s, and automatically say that The Who dominates when it not only comes to the music, but who puts more passion and drive behind the music. My portrait of America is empty; I don t see anything in it, and therefore it has become completely soulless. Focusing on today s media, especially in music and television, what we see today has turned into a soulless job. When we watch TV these days, almost every show is of the same genre. Whether it be Don t Forget the Lyrics or America s Next Top Model, we see a reality contest show all of which the contestant can potentially win a million dollars. And if the show doesn t involve some sort of competition, then it s MTV s Real World, or VH1's Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. Almost

2 Lax 2 nothing on TV has any meaning or important value to it anymore. Partly because there is nothing good on TV anymore, and partly because people find the need to watch these competition shows, we find ourselves constantly sucked into this vacuum of mind-numbing television. The irony in all this is that we watch these shows because we find the lives of people on TV more captivating than our own lives. Seeming to forget our own talents, we jump into the tube and watch the lives and talents, or lack thereof, of others. The notion that America s portrait is completely soulless is further illuminated in Lee Siegel s essay Reality in America. June 11, 2002 was the first time that America watched the show American Idol. Someone who watches this show subjectively splits the contestants into two categories: those who are there to be known, and those who are there to actually sing and even they are trying to break through. Although he doesn t directly state it, Siegel expands on the idea that we repeatedly see the same things over and over. Siegel writes, Almost all the contestants on American Idol, a talent contest focused exclusively on finding the best singer, are impersonating the styles of famous singers from the past rather than creating an original style themselves (Siegel 170). Peeling off of Siegel s statement, we can look at the words of famous Pop-Artist Andy Warhol, In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, and conclude that people these days are mostly just trying to be famous and make money in any possible way. The number of eyes glued to the television every Tuesday night to watch American Idol has sky-rocketed into the millions. In her article, Lisa de Moraes writes a review on how many people viewed the fourth season premier of American Idol, From 8 to 10 p.m. Tuesday, American Idol averaged 33.6 million viewers... joined the show throughout its two-hour run; by the final half-hour, nearly 37

3 Lax 3 million were... tuned in to TV. It s quite ironic how American Idol gets more viewers and voters than the presidential election. I sometimes question why shows like American Idol were even aired to begin with. My answer is that producers don t have much more to create, so they come up with variations of a reality show, and unfortunately we find ourselves captivated by these mind-numbing shows. Without a doubt, TV has turned into more of a joke than anything. In the same vein, we can look at the mainstream music industry amongst today s youth. The word mainstream here refers to songs we hear over and over on popular radio stations. Two of the most popular radio stations amongst teenagers these days would be KROQ (106.7) and Star (98.7) and KISS (102.7) in a tie. If you spend at least three hours flipping through these three radio stations, you will hear the same song at least twice on each station. In addition to this, odds are you might think it s the same song, but when you listen closer, you realize that this time the chorus has been slightly altered. In other words, many of today s songs sound alike. To a devoted fan, one can distinguish between My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and Panic at the Disco. To someone who thinks they listen to music out of the norm, the only thing they might notice is that one of these lead singers has a higher pitched voice than the next. Unlike Green Day, these three bands started out playing the same genre of music as they do today, but it is quite likely that they were influenced by what the fans wanted. The Who, and other bands of this era, could ve cared less as to what the people wanted to hear; they played what they wanted to, and gained respect and fans that way. Eddie Vedder s article (originally published in Rolling Stone) on The Who shows us how this band was more than just a band, and how they created music that completely blew people away, They became spectacular. Early on, the band was in pure demolition mode; later, on albums like Tommy and Quadrophenia, they coupled that raw

4 Lax 4 energy with precision and desire to complete musical experiments on a grand scale. Referring back to the statement about musicians gaining respect out of what they created is also examined in this article. Vedder writes, They were an incredible band whose main songwriter happened to be on a quest for reason and harmony in his life. He shared that journey with the listener, becoming an inspiration for others to seek out their own path. The difference between today s music and that of three decades ago is quite clear. Today s music industry has completely gone down the drain. The easiest way for me to say this is that the glass isn t half empty, it s completely empty. Not only do current movies follow this pattern of complete emptiness behind them, but they also add elements to my American portrait of how the media in today s society is completely worthless. This empty portrait of the American way of life is further examined through two semi-recent movies. We can take a look at last summer s Superbad and the previous summer s Accepted (2006). Both these comedies portray the lives of young people, including jokes and pranks that we see in just about every comedy that hits the big screen today. These two movies, and other comedies, of course make us laugh. The fact is, however, that it seems like nothing went behind these movies. Producers exhibit the movies just to earn back the money it took to make the film. Movie lovers lose their respect for current films and film makers because the production appears totally worthless. We can view this idea of the soulless media as a yin-yang system. Numerous fans of today s music influence what wants to be heard, and the musicians reply to this request by recording and exhibiting their not-so-amazing music. Additionally, most of the mainstream music mostly attracts both pre-teens and young teenagers who have not had the most extensive

5 Lax 5 musical background and knowledge. We can t only put the young ones at fault here, because the media is all around us and we have no option to, at the least, glance at it. Today s society has morphed into robots when it comes to what we watch and what we listen to. This is to say that because a lot of the media is the same, we are now accustomed to listening to and watching the same things over and over again. Also, we have adapted a narrow-minded way of thinking; in other words, we tend not to see things outside the box anymore, bringing us back to the top of the circle. It isn t only with media that we don t apply ourselves completely, but these days it s with almost everything as well. With reality shows and music trapping us like mice, we can t help but not avoid the media around us. With shows like American Idol and Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, we can t help but avoid what s going on in our lives and pay attention to how these celebrities live their lives. Listening to modern bands such as Fall Out Boy and Panic at the Disco, we can make the claim that there is almost no difference and that the two sound very similar. The media that constantly sucks us in repeatedly shows us how just about no one puts any soul or passion behind their work and everything is driven by making money. Many artists, such as the musicians mentioned earlier, and artists of other sorts simply don t provide us with the same quality work as that of two or three decades ago. From these examples and from observing the media of today s society, we can see how the American way of life has turned into one soulless job.

6 Lax 6 Works Cited de Moraes, Lisa. American Idol Belts Out a Huge Opening Number: 33.6 Million. Washington Post on the Web. 20 Jan Feb < Portrait. Random House Webster's College Dictionary. 2nd ed Siegel, Lee. Reality in America. Convergences. Ed. Robert Atwan. 2 nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin s, Vedder, Eddie. The Immortals - The Greatest Artists of All Time: 29) The Who. Rolling Stone on the Web. 15 Aug Feb <