Mass Culture

The death of mass culture
We have become a vast wasteland
Randall Denley, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Sunday, February 17, 2008
What happened to mass culture? It seems to have died without anyone even noticing. You will no doubt remember when there were songs, television shows, movies and books that most everyone had heard of. These shared cultural reference points helped us communicate by doing things like citing an incident from Seinfeld to illustrate a point. Or Shakespeare, if you are more cultured.

Well, that's disappearing fast and we're all the poorer for it. I blame changes in technology, the stunning lack of talent of so many of today's "artists" and cultural industries that have forgotten how to connect with customers.

Let's start with the lack of talent. The top selling album in the U.S. last year was Josh Groban's Christmas CD. No. 2 was the soundtrack from High School Musical 2, followed by the Eagles album that was released through Wal-Mart. Rock poseur Chris Daughtry and Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus were close behind. Only Groban's album exceeded three million in sales.


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Font:****In Canada in December, the top-selling album was Mariah Carey's latest, which sold 300,000. Superstar Céline Dion hit the one-million mark earlier in the year, but that's still less than three per cent of the population.

The low numbers are not because of downloads, either. Not legal ones, anyway. It only takes 40,000 downloads for an album to be certified platinum. Few are. The numbers in the recording industry are grim. The Canadian Recording Industry Association says that CD sales were down 17 per cent from the previous year and paid Internet downloads continue to be pretty insignificant.

The music industry has become obsessed with people stealing their products electronically, but the real problem is a lack of compelling talent. We lack major figures such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Each redefined pop music and drew vast audiences that crossed generations. Literally no one is doing that now. Few new singers today even have a hope of cracking music's second tier.

Television was the other medium that touched everyone, but that has changed. The curious thing about the recently resolved writers' strike is how little people talked about it. The sporadic availability of our favourite television didn't seem to bother people.

We are still watching TV, although audience numbers are down. A year ago, none of the top 30 shows on Canadian television had fewer than one million viewers. This year eight fall below that mark. The prime-time fare has been so slim that an afternoon soap opera has crept into 25th place.

In the most recent BBM Nielsen ratings, the top regular show in Canada was American Idol, with 2.8 million viewers. The only other show to break the two-million mark was House. It happens to be a personal favourite, but when I mention the show to other people, most have no idea what I'm talking about. Not surprising when one considers that fewer than 10 per cent of Canadians watch.

The idea that everyone used to watch certain popular shows wasn't just an illusion. Back in the 1950s, half the people in America watched Gunsmoke. Even as recently as a decade ago, one quarter of them were watching Seinfeld.

The death of mass culture
We have become a vast wasteland
Randall Denley, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Sunday, February 17, 2008
In television, the wide proliferation of channels has turned broadcasting into narrowcasting. With so much choice, the market is fragmented. That doesn't mean the shows are all bad, but they all face such competition that few garner numerically significant audiences.

While the television communications channels have opened up and dispersed the audience, radio has gone in the opposite direction. Sure, there are lots of radio stations but many of them endlessly repeat the music of the past. The only musical genre with any real vitality is country and that's partly because country acts can still reach an audience through radio.

Books and movies aren't having much success in finding mass audiences, either. What few blockbuster movies there have been in recent years, the ones it seems everyone has seen, are filmed versions of the Harry Potter books or the Lord of the Rings. Sales of books are so embarrassingly small that the publishing industry rarely ever talks about them. A book that sells 5,000 copies is considered a bestseller in Canada. At that kind of number, there is a pretty fine line between a bestseller and a secret. The Da Vinci Code is the great exception. Say no more.


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Font:****Mass culture has provided the common vocabulary that helps us understand the world around us. How often have you explained how life works by citing a sketch from Monty Python? Sadly, mass culture has become a dead parrot, if you know what I mean, even if the cultural shopkeepers are still in denial.

Contact Randall Denley at 613-596-3756 or by e-mail, rdenley@thecitizen.canwest.com




© The Ottawa Citizen 2008