Kids these days, with their loud music and their scandalous outifts...

Last night (Sunday) was the Grammy awards, and I watched the majority of the telecast. The live performances were not consistently great, but pretty good in most cases. The decisions about awards, at least the ones shown on TV were odd, to say the least (for example, Lady Antebellum won what seemed like 138 Grammies for a mediocre song they put out about a year and a half ago). What captured my attention most, though, were all the crazy things performers did to capture people’s attention. From Lady Gaga’s horrible pointy shoulders to the multitudes women with hairstyles that required an impressive amount of neck strength to support, it seemed like everyone was trying too hard to be noticed. I’m all for freedom of expression, but it seems as if people are resorting to greater and greater lengths to stand out, even though they are already quite famous. This speaks to the nature of celebrity in the world today, and what is required, or what people think is required, nowadays to realize the classic “American dream”.

Nowadays, it seems as if stardom doesn’t come to those who are the most talented, attractive or intelligent. Instead, it comes to those who are the best at garnering attention. The time was when a band didn’t need outrageous outfits or flashy gimmicks to get noticed. The Beatles, arguably the best and most famous group in history, performed in suits and ties. The biggest celebrities then were talented movie stars, musicians, and athletes. Now, Lady Gaga is inexplicably climbing in and out of eggs and Cee-Lo Green is dressing up like the Froot Loops parrot. There’s nothing wrong with this per se, but it seems to me like they’re trying too hard to stir up public interest, when it shouldn’t really be necessary. Case in point: Arcade Fire’s performance near the end of the telecast featured blinding strobe lights that probably caused dozens of seizures in the audience, and also several random people riding around on bicycles. It’s as if they forgot that they would be performing onstage, and that everyone in the audience would already be looking at them. I’m ambivalent on the band and its music, but I came away from the Grammies hating them, just because the show was so ridiculously overproduced.

I don’t mean this post to be too old-geezer-esque, and I don’t mean to be overly nostalgic about the past (though looking over it, it seems to be both these things). I realize that Elton John dressed just as flamboyantly as most modern stars, and that Zsa-Zsa Gabor was probably no more deserving of fame (to the extent that anyone can be objectively judged in that manner) than Kim Kardashian. Still, the trend of people doing more and more outlandish things just to get noticed speaks to a decay, however small, in our culture and it might be nice if people could get attention simply for being good at whatever it is they do.