Karaoke (meaning: empty orchestra) is a form of entertainment enjoyed by millions. The karaoke machine was invented in the early 1970s by Japanese musician Daisuke Inoue, but Inoue never patented his invention, leaving others to make the money that has been pouring in ever since. In 2004 Inoue received the ersatz Ig Nobel Peace Prize awarded by an American science humour magazine for “providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other”.
Cultural critics are people who read into the fad of tattooing, for instance, something beyond the fad itself. I too am one of these: I am inclined to see more in karaoke than the untalented warbling of an anonymous person over the “I Will Survive” backing track. Karaoke endorses the democratic notion that anybody can do anything if only they want to, just as everybody will want to because they can. Inoue, an unassuming man, sees his contribution in the fact that he has managed to change the Japanese – people short on expressing emotion – for the better. Now that the Japanese have grabbed hold of the microphone, there is nothing to stop them.
Karaoke can be seen as an offshoot of those old-fashioned fairground portraits where the anonymous person places his face through a hole in the backdrop and purchases the cheap satisfaction of a picture taken in the company of someone famous, in the costume of a historical personality, or in a famous setting. From a visit to Universal Studios in Los Angeles I have a photograph where Clark Gable is holding my sylvan body in his arms. The body belongs to Vivien Leigh, but the head is definitely mine. This sweet memento from thirty years ago cost me no more than an American dollar.
What is the appeal of karaoke? I assume that the attraction is in the simplicity and silliness of the fun, and then the double position the participant holds in the game: singing a famous song, the amateur expresses respect for the original interpreter, but at the same time questions their musical authority because the amateur performance makes them ridiculous. This theft of the star’s aura, the undermining of the hierarchy, remains in the realm of harmless entertainment. And the performer remains anonymous.
Of course we can imagine other forms of karaoke entertainment. It might occur to someone who is very rich, for instance, to engage the entire corps de ballet of the Bolshoi Theatre to perform Swan Lake, while inserting their wife, or mistress, or themselves into the leading role. There are many takes on this. In all of them, it seems the key element is anonymity. Why? Why would our gesture – if we were to sign ourselves to it in full – not have an entirely different function? Then our rendition of Mamma Mia, for instance, would be not so much a slavish imitation of the model, as a subversion, an homage, a parody or something similar. The authorial gesture, unlike anonymity, sends a different message, like the one sent into the world by Marcel Duchamp by drawing a moustache and beard on Mona Lisa, or Andy Warhol cranking out portraits of celebrities. Many works of modern art – which use quotes and a different purpose for the function of a traditional artistic original – could be termed “karaoke-art” – if it weren’t for the artist’s signature. Karaoke is a form of entertainment that belongs to those who leave no signature.
Not entirely. There are examples that work the opposite way, where the famous entertain using karaoke. Romance & Cigarettes (2005) is a karaoke movie of sorts, a musical in which fine actors such as James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet and Steve Buscemi lip-synch songs from the collective unconscious when their characters’ own words fail them. In last year’s Mamma Mia! Julie Waters, Meryl Streep, Colin Firth and others gamely take on ABBA. Both films, just like karaoke, are fuelled exclusively by the viewer recognizing authentic hits. They run on the energy of the evergreen rather than on the new imitation.
When does the innocent fun of the anonymous grow into something larger, into culture? Can these two movies be considered karaoke culture, or simply celebrity culture in which stars are not only given free rein – from mediocre warbling in a film musical to writing mediocre books – but are egged on to do so for powerful commercial effect? Don’t forget that karaoke is the entertainment of anonymous people who, protected by their mask of anonymity, realize their secret longings within given codes (technological, and others). Karaoke people are everything but revolutionaries, creators of something new or people who will change the world. And yet it appears that they are quietly changing it.
“Second Life affair leads to real life divorce”, an article in the Guardian last November, describes the case of English couple Amy Taylor and David Pollard, who met in an internet chatroom, fell in love and married. They both had avatars in the internet computer game Second Life. These avatars were lovers in the game. Then Taylor caught her husband watching his avatar make love to a prostitute. Enraged, Taylor broke off her relationship in virtual life, while she and David (in real life) stayed married. After a time Taylor decided to check David’s faithfulness so she camouflaged herself in Second Life as a detective and discovered that Skye, her avatar, and Barmy, David’s avatar, were still happily married, but she also found out that Barmy was still cheating on Skye. Taylor filed for divorce in real life. David announced that he had had only one online affair, but that there been no cyber consummation, and that he hadn’t done anything to feel guilty about.
The foundation of karaoke culture is the parading of the anonymous ego through a game of simulation. It is as if people are more interested in escaping themselves than in recognizing their authentic self. The self has become boring. The possibility of a transformation into something else or someone else is far more engaging than digging around within oneself. The culture of narcissism has given way to karaoke culture.
The market for parading the ego, whether we are fleeing from it or confirming it, is wide open. Everyone and everything is welcome. The ego, which spent centuries languishing below ground, has now poured out onto the surface and no one can stop it. In metaphorical terms, Andy Warhol, inventor of karaoke in art, died at the right time, because today he would watch on in horror as the anonymous Campbell Soup can lurches toward him to slurp him up. And the good man Daisuke Inoue is working today selling eco-friendly detergents and ego-friendly cockroach repellant to rid karaoke machines of the roaches that nest in them and gnaw at the wires. Without healthy wires there can be no healthy culture.
Translated by Ellen Elias Bursać.
Published in: The Drawbridge, issue 12, Spring 2009.
