Category Archives: Entertainment

Clubs and organizations: “Join or Die”

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A new documentary follows up on the argument of Bowling Alone and why it is worthwhile to join a club:

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If you’ve been feeling depleted and disconnected from a world of diminished meaningful in-person interactions, “Join or Die” explores one reason why, as laid out by social scientist Robert Putnam. Collectively, we’re less involved in organized gatherings. There are all kinds of reasons for that, but it’s a fundamental shift that’s affected our quality of life, because the social bonds that result when you join a club or organization are not just a matter of “warm, cuddly feelings,” Putnam says in the film. “In area after area of our community life, our communities don’t work as well when we’re not connected.” And that, he says, has far-reaching effects not only on us as individuals, but on democracy itself…

Putnam’s thesis is that communal activities build social ties, which have value beyond the immediate satisfaction of just doing things together. It creates a sense of mutual obligation.

I was thinking about some of these ideas as I was reading an article in the Chicago Reader about dog owners letting their pets run off-leash in city parks. Technically it’s not allowed and the practice can be controversial, but the story focused on an aspect I hadn’t considered: “While proximity and green space may have motivated people to start utilizing unofficial areas, the community that forms within is what keeps them coming back.”

This is more or less Putnam’s theory come to life. According to the story, because of the “community-oriented and unregulated nature of the unofficial dog parks, their patrons feel that they look out for each other’s dogs more than people do when at an official (dog-friendly area). The sentiment that ‘we all look out for one another’ was repeated more times than I could count, whether in the context of cleaning up after dogs, calling dogs that run outside the gates and/or begin to wander off and explore new scents, or maintaining space for other park patrons.”…

Putnam says TV is one of the reasons we’re fractured. He calls it “lethal for social connectedness — basically we’re now watching ‘Friends’ instead of having friends.” But I think it goes even deeper. The kind of stories we see on TV reinforce many of the factors he’s citing. Instead of stories rooted in the idea that life is a group project, we’re fed the message that fixing or changing anything is, as Putnam put it, “the business of somebody else” — and on screen that’s usually the police or superheroes, rather than regular people working together to solve problems.

Another way to think about it is that there are collective and individual benefits to joining a club: it can help one’s well-being and improve social connections. At the same time, the social relationships and social networks formed can help tighten bonds and communities.

In contrast, other common activities may not do the same things. Online or social media activity can bring people together – but it can also lead to atomization and relationships that work differently when not regularly conducted in-person. Television tends to be a more solo activity or occurs with a small group, even as mass media has the potential to bring people together to some degree (common experiences, etc.).

I am curious to hear more about the actual in-person component of joining a club and how much this matters for building social capital. As Randall Collins explains in Interaction Ritual Chains, unique things happen when humans are in physical proximity.

Superfans and experiencing “collective effervescence”

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What superfans experience in a community of like-minded people could be described this way:

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Picture a crowd swaying in unison to a beloved song. Everyone assembled feels the same emotion simultaneously, says Paul Booth, a professor of media and pop culture at DePaul University. The euphoria catches and builds.

The experience, known as “collective effervescence,” can feel transcendent, he says, almost telepathic.

“I think it has to do with wanting something in our lives that we can lose ourselves in,” he says. At a time of increasing polarization and cynicism—not to mention that coming election—it’s an especially wondrous connection, he adds…

Fandom asks us to latch ourselves to something outside of us, to allow a person or object we don’t have control over to become part of our identities. How much easier to stay cool and removed, rather than risk having our enthusiasm batted down or betrayed.

Concerts, conventions, sporting events, etc…gather with thousands of like-minded people and the activity and emotions can move people in unique ways. At one point in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, sociologist Émile Durkheim asked:

What other name can we give to that state when, after a collective effervescence, men believe themselves transported into an entirely different world from the one they have before their eyes?

It is not just a place where music is playing or a game or a bunch of activities in a convention hall; it is a particular experience that individuals alone have difficulty producing. It is the product of communal energy.

As the article notes, what happens if people experience fewer collective effervescence moments? Do humans need a certain amount to thrive – or do they suffer ill effects with fewer moments of collective effervescence?

How does a story about a band’s tour bus dumping waste on a tourist boat enter a city’s “pop culture fabric”?

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On August 8, 2004, the driver of the tour bus for the Dave Matthews Band emptied the bathroom waste as they crossed over the Chicago River. The waste fell on passengers in a tourist boat passing below.

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Lots of things happen in big cities. Some stories are stranger or more influential than others. But how might one story get commemorated for years? Which cultural narratives last? One non-profit leader described this particular story:

“The incident is woven into the city’s pop culture fabric, and the anniversary seemed like an opportunity to emphasize that the world has to protect our natural resources, but it didn’t work out,” Frisbie said of the effort.

The article on the 20th anniversary provides some hints on how this story caught on and continues to be told. To go beyond a story that the people involved tell over and over, some help is needed:

-Famous people involved. The music group was well-known with multiple #1 platinum albums under their belt. This was not a random tour bus.

-Criminal charges and a court case. This involves different public bodies and can keep a story in the news.

-The media. A strange but true story – bathroom matters! a famous band! charges! – is a good one to get attention. And can we expect stories on the 25th anniversary, the 30th, and so on?

I am sure it would be hard to measure but it would be interesting to look at how this story stacks up against other stories in the city of Chicago. Which ones stand the test of time? Does this one make it into “official” lore (books, museums, memorials, etc.)? What is the half-life of pop culture stories in Chicago?

90% of songs are about love?

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Music critic Ted Giola considers the content of songs and what music critics tend to write about:

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Music critics are especially ashamed of love songs. Ninety percent of pop songs are about love, as critic Dave Hickey pointed out, but critics prefer to write about the other ten percent.

I would be interested to see quantitative data for this claim. Love is a popular theme – but nine out of every ten songs? Does this mainly involve hit songs, works from major artists and labels and everyone else, and does the pattern hold across time periods? Would the music-selecting algorithms choose love songs across genres and artists? Text analysis of lyrics could look at the presence of certain words and sentiments. Analysis of music could consider whether the musical patterns in songs involving love are unique or follow particular patterns. (And then what is so different in lyrics and/or music in the other ten percent of songs?)

If the claim is true, perhaps we need music that says “Love Makes the Music World Go Around” (in addition to “Love Makes the World Go ‘Round,” “Love Makes the World Go Around,” and “Love Make the World Go Round“).

Cat Kid Comic Club and “I blame society!”

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The baby frogs in the Cat Kid Comic Club series interact with society in this one moment:

How many children have tried such a line throughout time? And how effective is this blame?

And yet is there some societal or social influence in how kids act? If socialization is an important process in growing up, could society often factor into choices?

How many kids can define society and/or describe it?

This is also a reminder that books for kids offer plenty of social commentary – and are part of the socialization process themselves.

The endless search for water in the (fictionalized) origin story of Los Angeles

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The movie Chinatown highlights the ways acquiring water helped Los Angeles grow and hints at what may need to happen for the city and region to keep growing:

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If Chinatown’s ending forces the audience to sit in a feeling of hopelessness, it should also disturb anyone invested in Los Angeles’s future. The history of water in 20th-century California was defined by mammoth feats of engineering and an enduring belief that someone like Mulholland would eventually come along and enable the impossible. Each new dam or aqueduct only guaranteed the arrival of the next one—the population growth allowed by Mulholland’s aqueduct, for example, later resulted in L.A. tapping other water sources, such as the Colorado River. California has had a few good years of rain recently, but the long-term sustainability of the state’s water supply depends on collective conservation efforts: drastically reducing the amount of water used by Big Agriculture, moderating suburban tasks such as watering lawns, regulating the state’s groundwater.

“There is no more water to capture with big projects. There just isn’t. The future is really about much smarter water management,” Stephanie Pincetl, a UCLA professor who specializes in urban policy and the environment, told me. Conservation measures, she argues, are the way forward even if politicians wish they could stump for some grand technological innovation the way their 20th-century predecessors did: “The approach to the 21st century has to be a lot more subtle, a lot more place-based, and a lot more guided by the realization that water is a scarce resource, and so we need to treat it like a scarce resource.”

Finding water in Los Angeles, the Southwest, the West, and the United States more broadly may become more paramount in the coming decades. Which cities and regions would do well in competing for water? Would a lack of water in some places lead to growing populations in places with plenty of water?

While we are at it, why not tell more exciting stories in these categories:

  1. Origin stories of modern places. Take any of the big cities in the United States and put its origin story in a movie or a miniseries. How about the rise of Phoenix?
  2. It would be interesting to popularize more stories about water and other necessary resources in daily life. How about a thrilling tale about concrete? It is hard to imagine modern life without out. Or air conditioning. Can’t have a lot of the global development of the last century without it. Or salt. Where do we get all this salt in our daily lives from?

If Chinatown can entertain and inform about place, why not engage in more storytelling that explains where places have come from and where they might be going?

Three thoughts on pop/rock music about the suburbs

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I enjoyed thinking this week about pop and rock music about the suburbs. As I considered the music of Malvina Reynolds, the Beatles, Ben Folds, Arcade Fire, and Olivia Rodrigo, several thoughts come to mind:

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  1. These genres do not often write directly about the suburbs. They may tell stories about people and situations based in suburbia but the role of suburban places is minimized. Many popular songs do not say anything about where they take place geographically.
  2. Finding songs that portray suburbia in a positive light is difficult. Surely they exist. Perhaps they do not become as well-known? Perhaps music artists tend to associate suburbia with negative traits? Perhaps other genres do this differently?
  3. At the same time, there is plenty about suburban life that could make for compelling music. Millions of Americans, including many musicians, have experience this life. The songs profiled this week included looks at houses, daily routines, remembering childhood, listening to music, driving, and relationships. For all the reasons Americans love suburbs, why not tackle those themes? (I realize it might be hard to write about suburban local government but I am guessing it could be – and probably already has – been done.)

I will keep listening for music that references and is about specific places. This includes the suburbs but also cities and rural areas as place could be a fascinating topic for a new single or album or bonus track.

Ben Folds and “Rockin’ the Suburbs”

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In 2001, Ben Folds released an album and song with the same name critiquing suburban life. From the chorus of “Rockin’ the Suburbs“:

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I’m rockin’ the suburbs
Just like Michael Jackson did
I’m rockin’ the suburbs
Except that he was talented

The song pokes fun at “being male, middle-class, and white” as the protagonist angrily goes through life. Folds highlights one group of suburbanites – what would he do with the increasingly complex suburbia?

Folds suggested the song was done in the style of two groups popular at the time:

The song parodies Korn and Rage Against the Machine. Folds stated of the song “I am taking the piss out of the whole scene, especially the followers.”[1]

This reminds me of a sidewalk square nearby in suburbia that immortalizes “Korn.” Both groups provided music and lyrics that could be used to express discontent about a suburban America.

Arcade Fire and recalling growing up in the suburbs

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In 2010, Arcade Fire released the single “The Suburbs” which shared the same name as their third album. This song references growing up in the suburbs – here is what is in verse two:

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The kids want to be so hard
But in my dreams, we’re still screaming
And running through the yard
And all of the walls that they built in the seventies finally fall
And all of the houses they built in the seventies finally fall
Meant nothing at all
Meant nothing at all, it meant nothing

By the early 2000s, millions of Americans had grown up in suburbs. What was that childhood like? How could it be put into music?

Whether related to their artistry or their view of the suburbs decades later, The Suburbs may be the most decorated music album about suburbia:

The album debuted at No. 1 on the Irish Albums Chart, the UK Albums Chart, the US Billboard 200 chart,[4] and the Canadian Albums Chart.[5] It won Album of the Year at the 2011 Grammy Awards, Best International Album at the 2011 BRIT Awards, Album of the Year at the 2011 Juno Awards, and the 2011 Polaris Music Prize for best Canadian album. Two weeks after winning Grammy’s Album of the Year, the album jumped from No. 52 to No. 12 on the Billboard 200, the album’s highest ranking since August 2010.[6]

One interesting note: the group is Canadian but The Suburbs is based on growing up outside of Houston. How does this mixing of experiences change their interpretation of suburbia?

Folk music about the “little boxes” of suburbia

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The folk song “Little Boxes” written by Malvina Reynolds in 1962 and popularized by a Pete Seeger recording released in 1963 captured some of the concerns about growing suburbs in the United States. The first verse speaks to the song’s message:

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Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same

The rest of the song then describes the people who live in these homes and the ways they follow the same paths.

This song borrows the imagery of new suburban construction – a lot of similar looking homes (“little boxes”) emerging out of open spaces outside cities – to argue the communities and people within are falling into patterns of conformity. This was a common argument in the 1950s and 1960s: suburbanites thought they were achieving the American Dream but they were really getting a dull and common life. Instead of becoming individuals or households that had made it, they were sold a bill of goods.

Even as Seeger’s song became a hit (reaching #70 on the charts), many Americans did not appear to be swayed by this song. They continued to move to the suburbs in large numbers for subsequent decades. Perhaps they might even admit there is conformity in the suburbs in the houses and social life – and they might be okay with that.