Received Wisdom Watch Part 1

Another installment of VH 1's "I Love The 80s"aired this afternoon, this episode being "I Love '84."These shows are great for bringing back memories of clothing styles, songs, movies, etc. It's amazing to me, though, how they can enshrine as gospel things that aren't friggin' true.

The case in point for this episode is the canard of Ronald Reagan adopting "Born In The USA" as his theme song, and Bruce Springsteen telling him he couldn't use it. Nice fantasy if you're the people who believe that "The West Wing" represents reality. This episode didn't happen either. And on the VH1 show you have famous social commentator Sebastian Bach, and unpopular sardonic comic who had to start making his money as a character actor Richard Belzer, repeating the story as if it were true. Here's the real quote from Reagan that got the lies started:

"America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside our hearts. It rests in the message of hope (of someone) so many young people admire: New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen."
from Jim Cullen's Born in the U.S.A. / Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition p.5.

Pretty radical far right stuff. I don't know how any progressives could go along with that.

The Polyphonic Spree Redux

I haven't worn this one out yet. Back in the day, as the young people say, I was a member of a Pentecostal denomination. Every summer the big event was the conference Camp Meeting. This was a couple of weeks or so of classes for ministers and church workers in the daytime, and revival meetings at night. In the context of this church, it was a time of renewal, where the members would energize and motivate themselves for the next year.

Now there's a vested interest that a church like this has in seeing their revival services succeed, or in their parlance be "a blessing." Nobody's gonna want to go out to the services if they hear that the preaching and singing just laid there and the congregation wasn't responding. So everything is geared to elicit the response that is being looked for from the crowd. The speakers beam and are enthusiastic. the music is loud, and the singing is energetic, and punctuated with exhortations. All of this designed to create a Mass response-a virtual hysteria in the context of Pentecostal or Charismatic demominations.

There is the template for The Polyphonic Spree. From the time their intro music starts, there are members who come on stage bouncing around, grinning, and whipping up the crowd. A member of a discussion group I read mentioned that the show would have been better if the crowd had been more willing to "jump aroud and act like kids," and implied that the Chapel Hill audience was too cool for that.

The charge of contrived hipness notwithstanding, the idea that an audience should abandon their critical faculties and buy into a performer's schtick from the get go, especially if it's a first show for an audience member, is ridiculous. You can use this argument for improving the crowd dynamic at any show-from Motley Crue to Britney Spears.

Among some of the more enthusiastic supporters of the Spree, I expect that their show serves the same energizing effect that the Pentecostal revival services do. However, it's form without substance, and is a great metaphor for an age that wants the trappings of religion with none of the inconvenient creeds or expectations of changed behavior. It's pop narcissism cloaked in the robes of faith.