electioneering

If there is a change in Idol's process, it is simply that the test marketing is now conducted via remote technologies of video monitor and cell phone (distanced learning redux!); respondents solicit themselves for participation; and the latter two phases have been brought closer together, such that the voting-with-your-dollar phase begins a bit earlier for the "people." In terms of the making of the pop star, they retain the exact "power" they might have had before; that there are more of them involved sooner does not change the structure of the overall event into something more democratic.

But this is not to say that there is no real novelty in the AI process. There is. Pop Idol debuted less than three months after the MPAA awoke with a start from the industrial nightmare that was Napster, and confronted the new day that dream presaged. The Idol franchise should be understood in no other way than as a specific solution to a historical problem: how to re-monetize pop music in the face of a certain decline sales of both in hardware (CDs, players) and software (songs as such). Idol is perhaps the most successful — and clearest — response to this economic crisis. Whether or not anyone buys the David products Cook or Archuleta, the revenue is shifted to advertising, and to service providers for downloads, online views, and cell phone usage. Which is to say that the reputed "democracy" of the Idol process is nothing other than the industry's monetizing of participation in its own marketing plan.

Jane Dark on American Idol

Stardust Memories

Adam Mars-Jones used to write like this

One gets the sense that Neil Gaiman's rep as a genius must somehow be a reflection on the subculture that has so elected him. Like the water-cooler boor who becomes the office analyst because he read a Jung book in college, Gaiman seems to have raised himself into the empyrean on the narrow shoulders of Joseph Campbell. Campbell is not a very persuasive starting position in the first place: a sloppy structuralism denuded of whatever force it might have had by spiritualization. Stardust, in film version at least, for all its stylized whimsies, seems like the most mechanical Campbelliana imaginable. There are no characters, only positions, in which squat a rather unfortunate set of actors. The little matrix of the hero narrative has been filled with requisitely "original" figures; it's a movie written entirely in a single page Excel spreadsheet.

(Jane Dark on Stardust)

TLS is my first novel. At a time when I was working on Opus -52 or thereabouts David and I shared a house in Stewart Street in Oxford. David had a JRF at Brasenose; I was working on the Oxford Corpus as well as on Opp. -52, -51, -50, -49 & so on & on. We read everything AMJ wrote, regardless of subject. One day: I'm sitting in the kitchen reading the Independent on Sunday. There's a long piece by AMJ about someone called Marc Almond, which I start reading because it's by AMJ. I say: 'There's a piece by AMJ about someone called Marc Almond!' David: 'Mark Almond! I know Mark Almond! I'd no idea he'd become famous. He had a JRF at Jesus, specialised in Eastern Europe -- I suppose he must be very much in demand what with the war in Bosnia.' HD: 'I think this is a different Almond.'

Anyway, Jane Dark reminds me of the days when I would read AMJ reviewing films I did not plan to see. On Stardust here

Economics of HP

A reader in Israel says I should refrain from discussing HP until the international readership of this blog has had a chance to read the book. I then came across a link on Marginal Revolution to an analysis of the economics of the world of HP (Megan McArdle, Guardian July 20). Hm.

Readers who think an article on the economics of magic spoils the fun should not read McArdle. Some unwary Guardian readers seem to have blundered into the article without knowing what they were getting into; the heading

Harry Potter: the economics

Successful magical worlds depend on basic economic principles, and that's where JK Rowling's Harry Potter falls short.

led them astray. Their loss is your gain:

Commenter 713317

You poor woman. Your question is the answer to itself.

You are about things. You want things. You want pieces of paper with high denominations stamped on them. You want shiny vehicles. You want a castle.

You have a very small mind and, as a consequence, a very small world view.

If a person can do magic, why would they want physical things? If a person know the secrets of the universe, of what interest are mere physical objects?

The reason magical people are usually portrayed as poor is because they are mentally about 10 levels above the rat or squirrel like acquisitiveness that is characteristic of most human beings. A rat or a squirrel mindlessly acquire physical objects and bring them back to the nest. Nobody really knows why. They just do.

Maybe you can help us out. Why is your life devoted to acquiring meaningless physical objects to bring back to your nest? Why is that the dominating thought in your mind?


Comment No. 713709

I think this is a terrible article.

Why do people have to try and destroy everything. Could you imagine if some little kid just wanted to go to McDonald's once for an ice cream? Can you imagine what this writer would say? Save it for another occasion. It's just not appropriate to talk about a book like this in this way.

[and so on]

So. If you can imagine some little kid wanting to go to McDonald's for an ice cream, savaged by a nasty, calculating Economist economist who only wants pieces of paper, shiny vehicles and a castle, you will probably NOT read the article wanting to read everything McArdle ever wrote, wondering why you never heard of her and wishing she would turn her hand to fiction, and you will probably also not read Jane Dark's review pairing HP & the order of the phoenix with Joe Strummer: the future is unwritten (British Prep School Boys Against Evil) wishing more film reviewers knew their Fredric Jameson. Wir sind für Sie da. Ihr Paperpools Team.