FAILanthropy
Feb. 16th, 2010 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go."
- Mother Teresa
On February 12, dozens of the music recording industry's shiniest glitterati gave unveiled "We Are the World 25 for Haiti," a multimedia charity orgy even more awkwardly jumbled than its title.
And wow, is it awful.* It is as if someone baked the Grammy awards into a Hot Pocket, sprinkled it with the ashes of Michael Jackson and Ray Charles, washed it down with Cristal and then vomited it into a MacBook.
*Actually, MTV liked it. Which is not surprising, since MTV stopped caring about music a decade ago and is now the world's foremost purveyor of calculated, formulaic zeitgeist and scourge of original, creative thought.
As for the song itself, while the melody remains thoroughly hummable, there should be no illusion that the lyrics have somehow improved with age or repetition. The message remains unabashedly self-aggrandizing: We are the world/We are the children/We are the ones who make a brighter day/So let's start giving. Let there be little doubt that when the chorus sings "We're saving our own lives," their mindset and motivation are painfully obvious.
There are many who will agree with my thoughtful friend Josh, who writes, "given all the money it will raise for Haiti, the artistic merit is irrelevant." This argument is fundamentally an microscopic assertion that the ends justify the means. As Josh's Machiavellian/free-market theory goes, if it raises loads of cash, who cares how much it sucks?*
*To add a splash of Darwin to the mix, we can assume that this excercise in noise pollution is lifting money specifically from tone-deaf, tasteless idiots. (This is also known as the Hootie Tax.)
But the theory doesn't quite hold up in practice. If a person were to club one baby dolphin every day until he raised $1 million for the ASPCA, would that also be okay? And would that sound any better than "We Are the World 25 for Haiti?"
Criticizing WAtW25-4H for its heinous crimes against eardrums everywhere is not an indictment of the charity itself. In fact, it is because the devestation in Haiti is such a solemn and serious cause that it deserves better than Lionel Ritchie's lukewarm leftovers.
Even if we set aside the song's loathesome, nauseous aesthetics, there is still plenty of subtext worthy of criticism: Not only is it artistically cheap and lazy to simply repackage an existing song for a new cause, it is pretty blatantly commercial. Either they are trying to capitalize on the hard-earned nostalgia of children of the 1980s, or they're pretending like the original benefit (USA for Africa) didn't matter. Whichever gets you to write a check.
And if you think that's cynical, consider this: not only are they hitching a ride on an old cause, they're also hitching a ride on the new cause. WAtW25-4H is nothing more than opportunism dressed down as philanthropy, with the Haiti tragedy being used to gather the spotlight on attention-hungry performers eager for easy PR and global cred. That's life in the Kanye West Era. I'm not saying Huey Lewis and the News wouldn't have done the same thing in 1985, I'm just saying that it wouldn't have occurred to them.
It's not like the original We Are the World/USA for Africa was a perfect expression of unblemished human decency, spilling forth from the pure hearts of benevolent geniuses like the healing glow from Jesus's smile. And, as noted above, it's not like the lyrics contained any kind of etherial truth, like the Gettysburg Address set to the Theme to the Greatest American Hero.
Maybe my roots are showing. But 25 years ago, We Are the World was a cultural touchstone, featuring performances from actual living legends rather than a bunch of people who happened to be popular at the time (including something called a "Justin Beiber"). It was simple, it was spare, it was original and it was ours.
It would be nice if everyone contributed money, supplies or services to the Haiti relief effort -- or African aid, for that matter. It's good that the most influential among us are helping to promote the cause. But it would be much, much better if we weren't bludgeoned into contributing by a bunch of egomaniacal rock stars looking to dash off some community service between their Bentley tune-ups and their manicure appointments.
- Mother Teresa
On February 12, dozens of the music recording industry's shiniest glitterati gave unveiled "We Are the World 25 for Haiti," a multimedia charity orgy even more awkwardly jumbled than its title.
And wow, is it awful.* It is as if someone baked the Grammy awards into a Hot Pocket, sprinkled it with the ashes of Michael Jackson and Ray Charles, washed it down with Cristal and then vomited it into a MacBook.
*Actually, MTV liked it. Which is not surprising, since MTV stopped caring about music a decade ago and is now the world's foremost purveyor of calculated, formulaic zeitgeist and scourge of original, creative thought.
As for the song itself, while the melody remains thoroughly hummable, there should be no illusion that the lyrics have somehow improved with age or repetition. The message remains unabashedly self-aggrandizing: We are the world/We are the children/We are the ones who make a brighter day/So let's start giving. Let there be little doubt that when the chorus sings "We're saving our own lives," their mindset and motivation are painfully obvious.
There are many who will agree with my thoughtful friend Josh, who writes, "given all the money it will raise for Haiti, the artistic merit is irrelevant." This argument is fundamentally an microscopic assertion that the ends justify the means. As Josh's Machiavellian/free-market theory goes, if it raises loads of cash, who cares how much it sucks?*
*To add a splash of Darwin to the mix, we can assume that this excercise in noise pollution is lifting money specifically from tone-deaf, tasteless idiots. (This is also known as the Hootie Tax.)
But the theory doesn't quite hold up in practice. If a person were to club one baby dolphin every day until he raised $1 million for the ASPCA, would that also be okay? And would that sound any better than "We Are the World 25 for Haiti?"
Criticizing WAtW25-4H for its heinous crimes against eardrums everywhere is not an indictment of the charity itself. In fact, it is because the devestation in Haiti is such a solemn and serious cause that it deserves better than Lionel Ritchie's lukewarm leftovers.
Even if we set aside the song's loathesome, nauseous aesthetics, there is still plenty of subtext worthy of criticism: Not only is it artistically cheap and lazy to simply repackage an existing song for a new cause, it is pretty blatantly commercial. Either they are trying to capitalize on the hard-earned nostalgia of children of the 1980s, or they're pretending like the original benefit (USA for Africa) didn't matter. Whichever gets you to write a check.
And if you think that's cynical, consider this: not only are they hitching a ride on an old cause, they're also hitching a ride on the new cause. WAtW25-4H is nothing more than opportunism dressed down as philanthropy, with the Haiti tragedy being used to gather the spotlight on attention-hungry performers eager for easy PR and global cred. That's life in the Kanye West Era. I'm not saying Huey Lewis and the News wouldn't have done the same thing in 1985, I'm just saying that it wouldn't have occurred to them.
It's not like the original We Are the World/USA for Africa was a perfect expression of unblemished human decency, spilling forth from the pure hearts of benevolent geniuses like the healing glow from Jesus's smile. And, as noted above, it's not like the lyrics contained any kind of etherial truth, like the Gettysburg Address set to the Theme to the Greatest American Hero.
Maybe my roots are showing. But 25 years ago, We Are the World was a cultural touchstone, featuring performances from actual living legends rather than a bunch of people who happened to be popular at the time (including something called a "Justin Beiber"). It was simple, it was spare, it was original and it was ours.
It would be nice if everyone contributed money, supplies or services to the Haiti relief effort -- or African aid, for that matter. It's good that the most influential among us are helping to promote the cause. But it would be much, much better if we weren't bludgeoned into contributing by a bunch of egomaniacal rock stars looking to dash off some community service between their Bentley tune-ups and their manicure appointments.
Amen!
Date: 2010-02-17 03:31 am (UTC)Maestro