the contrariness of crowds

Watching Eurovision last week reminded me of something I think we're all going to have to get used to - the contrariness of crowds; the fact that large groups of people, hidden behind the safety of numbers sometimes like nothing more than just to fuck everything up, because it's funny.

Of course the Serbian victory wasn't just about that, it was partly regional solidarity, it was partly that different cultures like different music (which we need to learn to accept) but it was at least partly sticking two fingers up to Old Europe and it's notions of acceptable taste. (In the context of Eurovision, which is admittedly a strange place to be talking about taste.)

I think my favourite instance of this was when David Bowie decided he'd perform his greatest hits on his Sound + Vision tour and he'd get people to phone in and vote for what they wanted him to play. The NME started a campaign to get everyone to vote for novelty Bowie song The Laughing Gnome which was so successful they ended up scrapping the voting.

A more recent incidence was the campaign to keep Sanjaya on American Idol. The individual mischievous feelings that we all sometimes get, just wanting to do something contrary and awkward and funny are magnified by these mass interactivity events, especially if something like votefortheworst catalyzes it. It's not quite the same as that activist impulse to subvert some UGC thing, it's more like the dumb, fantastic joy of chanting at the referee. It's about the mischief of the herd. Low effort, high fun.

I wonder if these kind of mass rejections of accepted taste have something in common with the rebellious celebrations  Barbara Ehrenreich talks about in Dancing In The Streets. 

Comments

[Andrew Walkingshaw]

... and people declare themselves Jedi Knights in the Census. Same thing, really.

[John Dodds]

I think in most of the cases you cited there is an element not so much about rebellion against taste but about refusing to be dictated to.

[james]

Bounded permission to transgress is a really interesting idea. I haven't read Ehrenreich's book yet but from what I've heard on the radio it sounds like its picking up the idea of carnival as a necessary balancing part of life. Similar, I think, to its use in critiques of everyday life from people like Bahktin and Lefevbre?

Possibly also similar to the "lords of misrule" idea which crops up in quite a few places including MASH.

TV is hardly elitist and dominating anymore, though. I wonder whether the most interesting thing is that they've chosen a rebellion that is of absolutely no consequence at all.

[james]

Bounded permission to transgress is a really interesting idea. I haven't read Ehrenreich's book yet but from what I've heard on the radio it sounds like its picking up the idea of carnival as a necessary balancing part of life. Similar, I think, to its use in critiques of everyday life from people like Bahktin and Lefevbre?

Possibly also similar to the "lords of misrule" idea which crops up in quite a few places including MASH.

TV is hardly elitist and dominating anymore, though. I wonder whether the most interesting thing is that they've chosen a rebellion that is of absolutely no consequence at all.

[botogol]

I reckon the phenomenon you have spotted is very real, and growing. Another good example was the startling rise of the Jedi religion in the 2001 census.

For a long while now, I've suspected that the effect is manifesting itself clearly in opinion polls: when asked a question the modern responder thinks not "What's my opinion on this?" but "What headline would I like tosee tomorrow's newspaper" and answers accordingly...

[John Grant]

I thought the Serbian lot deserved to win. It was very clever in a music biz sort of way; a boy band song/arrangement sung by a bunch of girls. Personally i preferred several other entries, but I'm not sure they were better, just musically more my taste. Isnt it possile that the wisdom of crowds won here? :J

[olivier Blanchard]

Eurovision is still going on?! No way.

[saibh]

BBC World Service Poll, voted 'A Nation Once Again' (Irish Republican Song) Best Song in the World. brilliant.