Stirling S Newberry <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Steven Schwartz wrote:

>>I think it is something to do with trying to find the ultimate social
>>activity with as little effort as possible.  Rock/Pop etc.  IS easier to
>>listen to and easier to scream at, at a concert.  Not an easy thing to
>>imagine a teenage girl screaming at Daniele Gatti in the RAH...  or a
>>teenage boy drooling over a picture of Dame Janet Baker...
>>
>>So forget that social thing - it comes down to sex.
>
>Yes it does come down to sexy.

Personally, i'd cast the net a bit broader than that (though this really
depends on how broadly Steve & Stirling are defining their concept of
sex/y): Clive James's line (written in the context of a Bergman critique)
that it's impossible to overstate the importance of sex, but that it is
possible to overisolate it rings especially true here.

Clearly, CM has lost its appeal to the broad mainstream of contemporary
society (not just the young): the question remains why.  Is it just that
CM performers tend to be either children or middle-aged plus? The success
of people like Nigel Kennedy & Vanessa-Mae in breaking out of the CM ghetto
would certainly suggest so; but i wonder if it's _just_ that: there are
plenty of (very) middle aged figures in professional golf, but names like
Norman, Palmer, Ozaki, Davies or Els are certainly more significant in
contemporary anglophone society than Bell, Richter or whats-'is-name will
ever be.

(Please note that i've carefully kept the name Woods out of this list,
because his appeal seems to belong in another kettle of media)

Would anyone really call Greg Norman _sexy_ (apart from his wife, that is)?
He doesn't exactly look awful on camera, to be sure; & he's superb at his
day job - he's also well-practised in the art of being dignified in both
defeat & victory - but (probably most relevant of all here) he's extremely
good with the media: shove a microphone in his face; & a producer knows
that the odds are better than good that he/she'll get a usable quote for
the evening news.  Producers are like everyone else - they want sellable
product - so they tend to keep returning to people they think will
deliver...  the result inevitably is: the Shark - whether he wins, loses
or goes fishing his namesakes in the waters off Cairns - tends to be the
one of the first to get the microphone afterwards; & his trademark
(literally, in Norman's case: he's almost never seen without one of his
Great white logos) becomes widely recognisable through popular repetition.

Is this analogy relevant to CM? I think so.  Returning to the cases of Nige
& VM (or - to stop picking on violinists - what about Evelyn Glennie?):
like Norman (& quite apart from any perceived sexiness), these performers
have been consumate media performers, unafraid of the cameras' gaze &
perfectly quite capable of filling the key media niches (such as the
10s news grab & the 6m primetime profile) with good, lightweight
entertainment...  not surprisingly, therefore, they also tend (_tended_ in
Kennedy's case, as he now studiously avoids the media he once courted...
& his sales have dropped accordingly) to become the go-to musicians from
the point of view of the mainstream media; & quickly became popular faces
in mainstream culture.  That both were youthful & considered attractive was
obviously a bonus - Glennie had the added bonus of a solid human interest
story in resume, of course - but i'm arguing that this attractiveness was
not a sole cause in the public attention skewing towards them.

(There's also the very real media issue of popularity in itself making
people seem more sexy than they would be if they were the proverbial John
Smith.  According to Cindi Lauper, money changes everything; but then:
so does appearing on TV)

Given that all were perfectly competent as musicians (at least to the
extent of an ordinary listener, who has little interest in charismas of
perfection) & had popular tastes in repetroire, the result was almost
inevitable: CM &/or crossover sales that anyone outside the 3 tenors
could only dream of....

(Speaking of appealing media performers who wouldn't conventionally be
considered sexy...)

It is, of course, possible to be successful in the media without fully
mastering this skill: Star Trek's Captain Picard (aka British actor
Patrick Stewart) can be surprisingly awkward in the unscripted interview.
But it certainly helps if you do have the knack: watching Xena's Lucy
Lawless working over another male interviewer as thoroughly as her
character beats up stuntpeople recently leaves you in no doubt that
her career will be long & (probably) entirely physical.

(This interview also featured an interesting stat: Lawless is currently
considered New Zealand's 2nd most important woman.  No. 1? Another
appealing, extremely media-figure personality: Kiri te Kanawa...)

Media skills _are_ skills; & therefore can be learnt, although some
students are naturally better than others (there is an Australian
sportswoman - name withheld to protect a very sad case from further
embarrassment - who has been extremely successful in her field but is
barely inarticulate in front of the microphone: the woman has bent over
backwards, forwards & inside-out to raise the profile - & therefore
sponsorship potential - of her sport; but has never been able to overcome
the astonishing emptiness which settles over the screen every time she
tries to answer an interviewer's question).  Australian listmembers may
have heard of the red-headed & rather voluptuously built satirist Elizabeth
Gore (aka Elle McFeast), to whom these skills seem to have come down with
the rations: but a few years ago, i caught a Conservatorium performance of
the Britten arr.  of The Beggar's Opera; & one of the singers caught my
eye.  Physically not dissimilar to Gore, she had blatantly built her
performance around EG's on-stage persona...  she even had the distinctive
Gore hairtoss down to a flirt.

The trouble was: it all _looked_ like a copy...  the original EG uses her
mannerisms as part of a selfcontained character, but the singer was just
duplicating a series of well-practised gestures.  To borrow Ms Stein's
unkind dismissal of Oakland, there was no there there; & it looked for all
the world like a camera struck SOB dutifully repeating his/her prescripted
answers in terrified obliviousness to what was actually being asked.  It
was a strange & rather sad experience.

It seems to be acceptable (even desirable) for contemporary artists to be
able to produce plantations of print to promote, clarify & justify their
aesthetics...  why isn't is also acceptable for them to produce a bit of
appealing smalltalk for the all-important media microphone?

All the best,

Robert Clements <[log in to unmask]>
<http://www.ausnet.net.au/~clemensr/welcome.htm>