Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Plastic=Perfection?

I'm sure everyone was excited to see the half time, to get a break from the boring Super Bowl it was.  I for one, was very disappointed with the fact my favorite band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, only performed for around a minute or two.  I was even more disappointed to find out besides the vocals, everything had been pre recorded.  It seems more and more these days, plastic is perfect.  While it was reasonable why the track was pre recorded, it still saddened me to notice the guitar and bass were unplugged during the concert.  On the RHCP website, bassist "Flea" posted a letter to their fans you can read here which states how the NFL told them it had to be pre-recorded so that the show wasn't ruined by bad sound or technical difficulties.  The band thought it would be better not to pretend and play with unplugged instruments anyway.  We as Americans are willing to throw away the #1 aspect of performing (the performing part), in order for it to look good when people look back at it.
Perfection is something valued a lot in our society.  Musicians practice all day for it, sports teams run drills over and over again to achieve it, chefs try the recipe until they taste it, in short, it's something almost all will certainly try to attain.  To achieve perfection; however, it's necessary to make mistakes.  This is why it is sickening to me that the half time show was pre-recorded.  Our culture accept perfection over reality, with fabulous Facebook profile pictures, photoshopping, and pre-recorded half time shows, we are able to see how America has traded all of its wood and nails for a perfect, seamless, plastic mold to take its place.                                

1 comment:

OC said...

AC, Good job blogging this term (although your total posts are a little low). Your self-assessment was also honest and spot on.

The goal of "perfection" you observe in American culture is important. I'd put that word in quotes throughout because, of course, canned music and photoshopped pix are anything but perfect. They are mechanical, robotic, and suggest a mistrust of the spontaneously human,