The Art that is Happening

I have been thinking about the process of making art a lot recently.  I have also been thinking about whether authentic art can still be made.    However, my thoughts have had a sort of meandering quality.  I wasn't sure where they might lead me, until this morning when, whilst flicking through the channels, I paused to watch Shaheen Jafargholi on Britain's Got Talent.  As he sung, my thoughts about art in the modern age were shaped into coherence.

As I drank my coffee, I found myself entranced by the twelve-year-old boy's performance.  This was an unnerving experience for me.  I was, until this morning, fairly secure in my beliefs regarding Britain's Got Talent.  The producers' apparent attitude towards the elderly, the eccentric and the unattractive is fairly mean-spirited.  I find the reaction shots of Amanda Holden unnerving and manipulative, and the evils of Simon Cowell surely need no introduction. Nonetheless, I sat on my sofa and thought to myself: This is authentic art.   Not just the boy's performance, but the production and the concept too.

I sipped my coffee again and wondered where such a thought might have come from.

I recognised Theodor Adorno's shadow bearing down on me, urging me towards some kind of recognition about the true nature of art.   This, of course, seemed strange.  How could Adorno, the doyen of elitist aesthetic theory and all-round Frankfurt School grump, be encouraging me to write about how ITV is broadcasting authentic art to the unschooled masses?  

It seems logical to believe that Britain's Got Talent functions as the lowest common denominator of entertainment.  It doesn't invite us to think or contemplate.  It asks us to deride or admire a rag-tag bunch of hopefuls.  We laugh, we cry, we cringe.  ITV celebrates the mass appeal of watching people with an assortment of 'talents' and 'gifts' try  to and achieve the non-specific dreams associated with fame, as an unruly crowd goads and applauds, with Brighton's answers to Machiavelli at the helm.  

It is easy to by cynical about the programme.  It relentlessly attempts to sell a manufactured reality to the contestants and the viewers.  Plying us with stories of the performers' struggles as Britain's single parents, factory workers and disenfranchised odd-balls.  You can see a cash register chiming in Cowell's eyes everytime something marketable presents itself on stage. Piers Morgan is on it.  

When Shaheen sang, Cowell manufactured some drama by rejecting the boy's choice of song, demanding he sing something else.  The dream could have ended there.  But as the keyboard intro of the Jackson Five's 'Who's Loving You' chimed, and Shaheen's single mum watched with clenched fists and tears in her eyes, everyone knew that the boy had talent.  Records would be sold; dreams would be realised; life would change.  

All in all, this seems to be exactly the kind of thing that Adorno bemoaned as the crushing commodification of the art of making and appreciating music.  However, even when taking into account that everything is for sale and everyone can be manipulated, Britain's Got Talent somehow manages to avoid falling into the pitfalls of banality, fetish and commodification that shapes so much of our culture.    Shaheen may sell millions of records, his life may change, Simon Cowell may get to buy another house; but none of this has any bearing on the reason why the performance was so moving, so interesting, so much a piece of great art.  

When Shaheen began to sing, we had no idea who he was, we had no idea that there was something to buy.  We simply hoped he could bring us pleasure within the confines of the moment presented by the format of the television show.  He was just a normal, little boy, slightly camp, with cute dimples, defined in our awareness only in relation to the fact that he hoped he could entertain us with a song. When he belted out the first few bars of 'Who's Loving You', it was immediately apparent that he was capable of fulfilling both his intentions and our needs.  He had a great voice.  Everything else was briefly suspended as I enjoyed experiencing the pleasure of hearing a human being create a lovely sound.  It was the fulfilment of a perfect contract between me, the boy and art itself.    

Of course, the cash register lit up behind Cowell's eyes, Amanda Holden showed us how well she could look moved by the dreams of a little boy, Piers Morgan was Piers Morgan; but none of that could touch a perfect art-moment, where nothing was for sale, and the only thing that occurred was creation itself.

That is why Britain's Got Talent can shine as a diamond, even if it is trying its hardest to be piece of coal.  Shaheen may well sell some records, but I doubt he will ever make art again so easily.  The moment he stepped off the stage he became a singer.  Simon Cowell said, "That is how a song can change your life."  He was right.  Shaneen went from a glorious example of the humane power of music and communication to a commodity in the space of a few seconds. 

Fans may buy the album, but they will never get the experience they really want.  The experience that I felt as special was generated in the perfect meeting between a person, audience and format, where my expectation of surprise and mutuality was met by the right person at the right time.  The quality of meeting between Shaheen and I cannot come again.  It cannot easily be bought, and it cannot easily be made.  Most importantly it cannot be sold; because it is manufactured in mutuality between spectator, artist and medium.  Everyone in the moment is a creator, so there is no one left to buy the product.  The only thing to be purchased is nostalgia, and that can't be great art, because we don't want nostalgia to change us; we don't want to learn anything from nostaliga, we only want it to affirm our existing feelings about the world.  

I am still elated by having had an 'art-experience' when listening to a pop song.  I have been reading Bill Drummond's wonderful book, 17.  In it he claims: "All recorded music has run its course.  It has all been consumed, downloaded, understood, heard before, sampled, learned, revived, judged and found wanting." Shaheen's music was recorded, its true.  However, I can't experience the recording as art more than once, so watching it again is pointless.  

Britain's Got Talent has developed a modern medium for mass-consumption that can create a kind of art that taps into some of the most profound forms of cultural communion.   In the end, it may generate products for sale, but we can't buy the experience of 'liveness' at the programme's heart.   Adorno is probably spinning in his grumpy, atonal grave, but I feel good about art today.  I feel good about people.  I feel possibilities for communication arising and evolving. Authenticity is still possible.  The medium is the message.  Shaheen is the messenger.  

But I still can't watch more than ten minutes of the show without wanting to kill myself, so thank God for The Wire.