Showing posts with label Justin Bieber. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Justin Bieber. Show all posts

Friday, April 5, 2013

re Justin Bieber -Teen Idols and Teenage Girls' Consumer Power and the Backlash: Signs of the coming Pop Culture apocalypse in Oslo: 5 Norwegian schools are rescheduling mid-term exams around Justin Bieber tour dates, and it's okay according to Kristin Halvorsen, the Norwegian Minister of Education and Research. But other politicians are less sanguine about it, and worry what this sort of govt. response will encourage in the future

re Justin Bieber -Teen Idols and Teenage Girls' Consumer Power and the Backlash: Signs of the coming Pop Culture apocalypse in Oslo: 5 Norwegian schools are rescheduling mid-term exams around Justin Bieber tour dates, and it's okay according to Kristin Halvorsen, the Norwegian Minister of Education and Research. But other politicians are less sanguine about it, and worry what this sort of govt. response will encourage in the future
And the one thing we know from the mountain of evidence is that the students who would otherwise have skipped school are NOT teenage boys!
Interesting that the news media is unwilling to state the facts -that the students who will not show up for school are almost exclusively girls, don't you think?

Art Beat blog
New York Times
Schools in Norway Postpone Exams for Bieber Concerts
By JAMES C. MCKINLEY JR.
April 4, 2013, 10:40 am 


This article below from NRK TV's website can hardly be more apt: "The whole world is laughing at us"


NRK-TV
Heile verda gjer oss til latter
Politikarane rasar fordi skulane har flytta tentamen til fordel for Justin Bieber-konsert.
MARIA HOLAND TØSSE
Pubisert 03.04.2013 17:03

Another article about the over-the-top situation is this one that ran on Tuesday, that was dominated by one large photo of a teenage fan's bedroom :


Flyttet tentamen for Justin Bieber, Nedtellinga til konsert i Oslo 17. april har begynt. Da får Kristiane Søvik (15) se sitt store forbilde - Justin Bieber.
Randi Longva
Publisert: 02.04 2013 06:00 
Sist oppdatert: 02.04 2013 14:42

It's like I'm always saying on these pages -twelve-to-seventeen year old girls in Western countries are taking over the world and won't let go of their grip, and as long as they hold sway, pop culture will cease to be a meaningful measure of merit or talent in the way that it often but not always was in the past.
That so much of what teenage girls "Like" music-wise is pre-digested corporate filler product is not a positive sign. 

Old rule of thumb for the blog and his circle of friends is that if the recording artist's album sale or concert is comprised of more than 90% of one gender, they're not really that talented.

Those girls' fingers on their precious cell phones, whether texting or casting votes dozens and dozens of times for no-talents at home, at school or while walking across the street without looking both ways, are like tentacles around real music talent's throat and creativity.

U.S. and Western consumer product companies and their print/TV middlemen are completely afraid to call their bluff, too, which is the worst sign of all.

That's closely followed by the U.S. Mainstream Media's general cowardice and unwillingness to push-back against the LCD group think that says giving more news time to what's going on with teenage girls and their myriad fads and obsessions, is, actually helping.

In many cases, it's pretty clear that the more the media -hard news and general interest- talks about one of these issues -teen suicide, anorexia, bulemia, teen fashion, teens texting while driving- is actually does more harm than good.

But publicly you can't tell teenage girls NO anymore, as per the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas cheerleading scandal here in Broward County, where a mob and a mob mentality made the all-female Broward School Board make decisions not based on facts but on their -yes- feelings.

For more on that, see my October 8, 2012 blog post titled, Dynamite! Bob Norman adroitly uses facts and context to lower-the-boom on the Broward School Board for their abysmal handling of the purported Douglas H.S. cheerleader coach 'scandal" -and drops School Board member Katie Leach squarely on her head; One month before the election, docs show Donn Korn opponent Franklin Sands funds his race with lots of money from his stepson’s lobbying firm -shocker!; @mattgutmanABC, http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/dynamite-bob-norman-adroitly-uses-facts.html

The firing of Coach Melissa

By Bob Norman, Reporter, bnorman@Local10.com
Published On: Oct 07 2012 10:33:04 AM EDT  
Updated On: Oct 08 2012 11:16:26 AM EDT

http://www.local10.com/news/blogs/bobnorman/The-firing-of-Coach-Melissa/-/3223354/16884040/-/8enkprz/-/index.html

Not giving in to upset teenage girls and their emotionally over-wrought mothers actually resulted in a principal being removed!

Principals upset over cheerleading coach's firing
'They're furious. They're absolutely furious over this'
Published On: Oct 08 2012 06:30:41 PM EDT  
Updated On: Oct 09 2012 10:16:48 AM EDT
http://www.local10.com/news/Principals-upset-over-cheerleading-coach-s-firing/-/1717324/16903370/-/t6vkfa/-/index.html

And you certainly can't say aloud in the media that many of their so-called "problems" actually seem much more psychological in nature, and based on their own self-esteem or lack of it, not something physical, otherwise you're labeled as not being understanding.

But if these things were physical, shouldn't there be at least some measurable incidence of bulimic or anorexic activity by girls in countries like Pakistan and Iraq, too?
But there aren't any.
Why the dissonance?

Because these groups all have an incentive to not tell these Western teenage girl consumers the truth -that they can't always get their way
They want to sell them something: a product, a fad, an idea... that will make them like themselves better.

So, while consumer product companies and the advertising industry falls all over themselves to get in (and stay in) the good graces of teenage girls -because they'll be making the family buying decisions in the future, so they want to favorably shape those opinions ASAP!- the news media just capitulates rather than stand up for common sense or the truth.

And they just can't wait to find out the new trend and fad of upscale teenage American and Western girls and obsessively report on it as if it's something more than it is.

My last post on Justin Bieber was an August 31, 2010 post I titled simply,

Examining a music phenomenon: ABC News Nightline's Chris Connelly interviews pop sensation Justin Bieber: "The Business of Being Bieber"


http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/examining-music-phenomenon-abc-news.html

It's now been read 4,081 times.

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http://www.regjeringen.no/en.html?id=4

Monday, March 7, 2011

Miley Cyrus' parody of Justin Bieber on Saturday Night Live was spot-on -wink, chin, finger point. "Oh, you know, uh, I brought my swagger coach."



NBC-TV's Saturday Night Live,
March. 6, 2011 -Skit: Miley Cyrus as Justin Bieber, Vanessa Bayer as Miley and Jason Sudeikis as Billy Ray Cyrus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHA5he4PKfI


Having seen it for myself, I must admit that Miley Cyrus' parody of Justin Bieber on Saturday Night Live was spot-on -wink, chin, finger point.
"Oh, you know, uh, I brought my swagger coach..."


The Daily Mail is all over the story of Miley's performances, with still photos:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1363484/Miley-Cyrus-Saturday-Night-Live-pokes-fun-Lindsay-Lohan-Justin-Bieber.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Before this came on Saturday night, I watched the first forty minutes of Charlie Sheen's UStream show, which had over 113,000 viewers while I was on.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/charlie-sheen-ustream-show-attracts-164741



NBC-TV's Saturday Night Live,
March. 6, 2011 -Opening show skit with Bill Hader as Charlie Sheen, host of "Duh! Winning! with Charlie Sheen," with Miley Cyrus as Lindsay Lohan.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Examining a music phenomenon: ABC News Nightline's Chris Connelly interviews pop sensation Justin Bieber: "The Business of Being Bieber"

The Business of Being Bieber 07:55
We're backstage with teen idol and pop sensation Justin Bieber.
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/business-bieber-11474697




When I saw last Tuesday that ABC News Nightline would be doing a segment that night on teen singer Justin Bieber, I must admit that I was of two minds about actually watching it.

The first was the old default attitude that I grew-up with as a guy coming of age in the 1970's, one that had usually proven so accurate, which was that if 95% of a singer's fan base consisted of young teenage girls, with posters in their bedrooms of unicorns, or, if they were REALLY wild, posters of unicorns AND whomever the singer/group was -Bay City Rollers, perhaps?- chances were pretty good that most self-respecting teenage guys would NOT respect them as an artist.

History is replete with examples proving this music & social theorem so there's no point in my
kicking that can all over again.
And certainly every news video I've seen of Bieber over the past year prior to last Tuesday, if I even paid attention to it, showed that his fan base was... well, about as expected, albeit perhaps with less unicorn posters these days, and in the U.K., probably also including posters of girl group, The Saturdays. http://www.thesaturdays.co.uk/


On the other hand, for all of Bieber's apparent popularity, and knowing who he was, I'd never actually listened to one of Bieber's songs, since I don't actually listen to Miami's FM radio stations and couldn't name one of his songs to save my life, though I could, to save my life, name the entire Dolphins' or Orioles' 1972 roster, or recount key plays, good and bad, from closely following the Dolphins since 1970 and the Hurricanes from 1973, in-person at the Orange Bowl, complete with commentary on the sights and sounds around me.

Yeah, if my life depended on it, I could even tell you which teams baseball Hall-of-Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander pitched for and why the legacy of his greatness and toughness can never be challenged.
Or tell you that the semi-fictionalized biopic on him, starring Ronald Reagan and Doris Day, was much better and more accurate than 75% of the sports-themed films made in the past thirty years. http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=319902&titleId=12906
(Or more honest and heartfelt than anything Alex Rodriguez will ever say or do.)

But Justin Bieber, well, he might as well have been the 2010 Slovakian contestant for the Eurovision Song Contest.

Except, of course, that I might've actually heard of THEM, for reasons that I've previously discussed here in discussing my music interests and education, such as it is.

---------
In fact,
in a March 7th post about Timoteij, I even included the original version Kristina Pelakova did of Horehronie, this catchy song that I was humming to myself over-and-over
after first seeing the national entry video.


I found myself humming it while stuck at red lights or in check-out lines at stores, which, living around here, means that I was doing a LOT of humming.
And once it's in your head, that's it -it's there forever.

But then who doesn't love great singing with flutes and drums?
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/look-out-world-here-comes-timoteij.html

That post of mine five months ago also included an interesting fan video of the song that featured a scenic travelogue of that part of central Slovakia, with its verdant hills and beautiful mountains, which, then as now, seems so very, very far from here and our gridlocked traffic next to oh-so ugly buildings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0CaeDo-wEY

Here's Kristina Pelakova performing Horehronie at Eurovision in Oslo back in May with her dancers and musicians.



(I mentioned in March that a former housemate of mine now work for the U.S. State Dept. in Slovakia, so I'm a little more conscious of things going on there than I was before.)
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On the other hand, any thirteen-year old kid who has the self-confidence to pull a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey when he meets and auditions for one of his idols, Usher, can't be all bad.
I will give him props for that!

And at sixteen, for better or worse, he seems intent on ignoring YES Men and is going to do things his way, however that winds up in the end years from now.
Kudos to the kid.


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Chris Connelly
bio: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=4853214

Kristina Pelakova: http://www.eurovision.tv/event/artistdetail?song=24973&event=1503

Background on the song, Horehronie, and the effect of it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/will-adams/slovakias-eurovision-2010_b_577593.html