I spent the past Friday evening in Chinatown, eating decent enough Singaporean/Malaysian food, then hitting a karaoke lounge to belt out my first tunes in America. Karaoke is a wonderful thing, a chance for one to just sing in the worst voice imaginable in front of other people, and simply not care that it's causing physical harm to others.
The question then is why people feel the need to mangle the songs they hear performed well in other contexts. Karaoke is clearly a case of collective effervescence, a term very popular amongst the Social Sciences students at the U of C currently, where a group of people gather and become so excited by the group socialising that they do things they would not otherwise. I'm not going to go into the details, I've been doing that enough recently. If you're interested, go read 'The Elementary Forms of Religious Life' by Emile Durkheim. Fascinating stuff, really. Read it in the original French if you like, 'Formes elementaires de la vie religeuse'. I imagine it's better. In fact, all the interesting stuff I've read this quarter for my classes would probably have been better in French. And the stuff last quarter would have been better in German. Or at least it would have sounded cooler. What does that mean, really? Why does almost every other language sound more interesting than English? Is it merely that English has become so commonplace that it is now considered vulgar? After all, if it is the de facto language of the world, and every person you are likely to meet is able to speak it, it has little value beyond the practical.
A fetish for the exotic has always permeated the social consciousness in every culture that has ever existed in history. Everyone is interested in what is not familiar, even if there is not always a desire for initimacy with the unfamiliar. The ancient chinese were famously disdainful of all that was not within the boundaries of the central plains of China, but they were curious enough that they sent out expeditions even in the Tang Dynasty that ranged as far as Africa, bringing back strange animals and the like that made the fellow a celebrity. Clearly not celebrity enough, as I seem to have forgotten his name. A eunuch named Zheng He, or something like that. The origin of the curiosity, something that is exotic and unfamiliar, something outside the experience of ordinary society, lies far beyond this, of course. The desire for knowledge of the new runs even through animals, just look at cats as an extreme example. Claude Levi-Strauss addresses this famously in Tristes Tropiques, where he wrote of the European colonialist mentality that simultaneously condemns exoticism and monoculture, as he refers to it. Again, go read the book, it's pretty good. Again, probably better in French, though Claude himself is Belgian. Considering Belgians speak English perfectly well, why didn't Claude write everything in English instead of French? Casting aside the obvious (and probably true) argument that his education was in French, could it not have been the desire to avoid the crassness that is associated with English in the twentieth century? After all, Americans are widely regarded as the lowest common denominators of culture, and English today is associated far more with America than England. The French seem to have some mystical quality about them that confers them with the status of high culture. Maybe it's the wine. Which is good. Or the food, which is also good.
So there is an odd placement of culture and exoticism here. The new, America and English, is considered to be the ultimate in crassness and commonality. The old, European or Asian culture, is considered exotic and unique. Who colonised whom, one wonders? The pre-existing, established languages and cultures are being forced into marginality to the point where they are considered exotic, and their practitioners, so to speak, have to go out of their way to continue their practice, whereas the new language and culture has become predominant to the point where its omnipresence is oppressive, leading to a reaction against it.
Once again, I have managed to completely go off-tangent with my digression. A digression from a digression, if you will. A result of too much reading, insufficient sleep and a touch of alcohol, I imagine. I will try to pick something up from the previous posts, though I doubt I will ever actually manage it.
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