苦瓜又名「半世瓜」，正因為：「當你覺得它好吃的時候，你的人生也就走完一半。」這別名倒是有意思。[1]
Another name of the balsam pear is mid-life pear. Because people need the whole first half of their life to discover it is actually taste delicious, but not bitter as it was known to be. The name of mid-life pear is quite meaningful in this sense.
Adorno(1941) made three specific comments the popular music. Firstly He suggested that popular music is the standardized production like made from the factories. That’s why people called them the music industries.
The Hong Kong Canton-Pop music has long been criticized with its static and standardized form that majority of the releases shared similar melodies, musical arrangements, and as well as the forms and content of lyrics.
The balsam pear《苦瓜》 performed by “the king of Canton-Pop” Eason Chan is a typical example of the Hong Kong styled slow balled with mid-tempo of a classics 4/4. The song inherited the boring musical arrangement of standardized verse and chorus. The same equation of standardized chord progression is represented through the construction of music introduction and ending.
The repeated compound of Canton-pop elements do promotes passive listening like what Adorno was mentioned. It operates as social cement that limited the real needs of people like freedom and advancement in creativity.
Scholars from the Frankfurt school also proposed that the true needs of people sometimes cannot be represented through the music industries under modern capitalistic market. False needs of human, like consumerism which is not necessarily to maintain quality of life, are promoted though various cultural products. It drives different social class into the conspicuous cultural and identical consumption through the equation of successful Canton Pop genre. The question will be does the profit motivated music production suppressed of the true needs of Hong Kongers?
Lyrics usually functioned as the most essential catalyst to colorize the identically produced Canton-Pop songs. It acted as the “hook”, of songs from other genre usually applied it with the musical arrangement, to trigger the emotional drive from audience’s heart. Historically, Canton lyrics emphasizing sadness, regrets and emotional oppression are the major hooks to attract and retain the emotional resonance from audience. The negativity promoted false ideologies and needs of human.
However, the lyrics of the song balsam pear《苦瓜》 do promotes positive messages of being optimistic in various difficulties and the valley of emotions. The last sentence, Biter of life is not that bad when we are all together. (我共你覺得苦也不太差), promotes the idea that human should help and accompany each other although we are all in difficulties in Life. This positive thought promotes true needs of human.
Thanks to the dedicative local producers, the song balsam pear successfully promote encouraging messages to audiences , although they are making hard effort on replicating a marketable Canton-Pop genre music in the modern profit oriented music industry.
[1] “陳奕迅釋出最新單曲《苦瓜》透徹悟出人生百味”. Ubwebzine. [on-line]; available from http://www.ubwebzine.hk/?p=6044; Internet; accessed April 24, 2011.
The review has made some critical reflections on the local music industry, which act as a solid base for analyzing the selected popular song with the (revised) perspective of Frankfurt School. I really appreciate your our effort in applying some theoretical concepts (e.g., true and false needs, standardization and social function of pop music) learnt in class.
ReplyDeleteFollowing your question on whether the profit making nature of pop music would suppress the true needs of consumers, I wonder if we can define and differentiate the “true needs” from the so-called “false needs”. For example, many songs convey the message of scarifying for love, does it belong to “false needs” ( as it is selling a romantizied notion of love) or “true needs” (the highest level of “true love”)?
Yes, bitterness of life is not that bad, when we stick with our beloved ones. Easons’s songs are always popular, but the consumption process does not necessarily represent the practice of passive listening. It demands some cultural resources (and deeply rooted emotional energy) for understanding and identification. Don't you agree?