I enjoyed Carrie Allen Tipton’s essay on ABC‘s show Nashville. I haven’t seen the show. I didn’t even know it existed. I don’t think I have watched an episode of television on one of the networks in the last two or three years. If you exclude 60 Minutes, it may be five or more years since I’ve watched a non-sports, non-political program on the networks. And I’m not going to watch Nashville. It sounds awful.
I’d much rather they depict Nashville as it is, than as it ought to be. Even worse, while I can tolerate a little music snobbery from the jazz scene, since part of playing jazz is being an expert on your instrument, and I can get with the low-rent purity of HBO’s Treme, I have a real problem seeing alternative country as some kind of pure and sacred exercise. In Nashville, it sells records or it don’t. It’s the Las Vegas of music. If you want purity, you’re better off in Memphis.
Nonetheless, it is interesting that the writers of the show have decided that evangelical Christianity really isn’t a big part of its characters’ lives. I don’t know if that is a sign that a new South is arising, but it appears that the writers would like to believe that it is possible. Nashville without tinsel and pop and God!!
God and Man at Yale!
The Boston of Cheers didn’t exist either.
Nor the Minneapolis of Mary Tyler Moore.
Nor the Mayberry of The Andy Griffith Show.
All television drama is really about the spiritual trials of Los Angeles or New York.
And it seems that someone has rightly noted that you can’t get any substantial country music out of Nashville any more.
I think we are seeing a shifting business model in the music and television business that the major record labels and media companies are trying to fight through legislation and “trade agreements”.
Well, my friend, it ain’t no fun making art in a digital age. I don’t care if you are in a band or you run Warner Brothers or Sony, it’s hard to get people to pay for what they can have for free.
Same is true for code, invention, blogs, news, virtually any creative endeavor. All of those have been de-coupled from the economy because private enterprise business models don’t work for creative people any more. And the economy does not allow any alternative means of support.
The people who are making money in those endeavors are either kept people or holding on to some integrity by their fingernails.
What you’re on about.
The Nashville that produced music by and for the rural white south is gone. (Hell, so is most of the rural south, white and black.) It’s long been taken over by corporately produced middlebrow being sold into suburban America.
That Nashville voted for Obama by twenty points.
If you are a young musician looking to break in, it’s a good a place as any to start.
I blame Jann Wenner for propagating the myth of “authenticity” in music – as if just by picking up an instrument and osmosis, stardom ensued. It’s utter bullshit, but there you are – no mundane studio work for young Mr. Page to polish his craft (and pay his bills), no Led Zeppelin.
Scripts in TV & movies occasionally have a basis in reality. This is entirely accidental.
Booman, i am not sure what you are trying to accomplish with this post. I used to ridicule conservatives who came out against a movie they had never seen.
And here you are critiquing a tv show you have never seen, and you have already indicated that you don’t think there are any tv shows that are worth your time to watch.
If you had just noted the religion aspect you would have been on solid ground. What’s the point in weighing in on the rest of it?
I watch plenty of television. Just not on the networks.
Ah, didn’t catch the distinction, thanks.
The last network show I can remember watching was a Fox thing called Doll House. So, however long ago that was…
Hell, if you want purity you’re better off in Branson. Everyone understands that it’s schlock designed to separate rubes from their money. But the “rubes” enjoy themselves and are willing to spend the money to be entertained, so the harm is what, exactly?
The lack of religiosity in the show is telling, however. For one, it tells you that the true audience isn’t the stereotypical Southern or rural country music fan – again, no surprise, since Country has been the biggest single format in the radio industry, nationwide, for decades, and has the most popular single station in any number of medium and major markets. Alt country is also a big and nationwie scene. But if the show purports to be about “authentic” alt country, as you note, most of that doesn’t come from Nashville. But Christianity is a key part of some (not all) of the scene and its practitioners, so excising it means the show’s producers are just as inauthentic and pandering as the pop country music they’re implicitly criticizing.
So what? It’s show business. And it’s corporate America. And if you don’t want to play that game, for every Ani DeFranco or Fugazi who sets up their own distribution networks and makes it, there’s literally a million musicians who get a hundred bucks per bar gig (if that), live on the edge until they can’t any more, and will never be able to quit their day jobs. Or frustrated writers who will never produce the Great Novel they might have, because they need to work, don’t have time to write it, and if they do they can’t get it published by a serious distributor. And if it is so published nobody but the author will promote it any longer, nobody sees it, and in three months it’s out of print.
We live in a society and economic system that, as throughout its history, places zero value upon art except as it can be used to move commerce – whether it’s selling your painting to a rich patron or helping bars sell beer or channeling your creativity into making car ads. We don’t even teach music or art – or encourage creativity at all – in most of our schools any longer, because it doesn’t help “us” “compete.” Whatever the fuck that means.
Try making a TV series about that.
Before reading the linked essay, I will admit that I watch the show… avidly. It’s a post-feminist soap opera about three quite different women striving for personal empowerment and trying to break free of dysfunctional relationships with men.
I liked some “authentic” country music many decades ago. I don’t like the homogenized crossover all-of-it-sounds-alike stuff that’s called country these days. But the music on this show is pretty darn good. Sometimes they hit the twangy harmonies and flat notes just right enough to give me goosebumps. The lyrical content hits classic country themes and they haven’t done a song yet about trucks, beer, dirt roads, and hey-girl with the jeans painted on, come and let me do ya.
As for the presence of evangelical Puritanism, it remains unnamed to avoid offending viewers but a current story arc concerns one of the women being publicly slut-shamed for being a home-wrecker. The source of that kind of moral outrage is obvious. This comes after last season when a man left his wife and two kids to marry his mistress and still got elected mayor. The hypocritical double-standard is illustrated for what it is–a means of oppressing women.
Is this “real life”? Hell no. It’s entertainment with a “liberal agenda”. Now I’ll go read the essay.
Wow, read it. I suspect the essayist fast-forwarded thru the show on streaming. Notice how the first character she mentions is a MAN! I swear this show is about WOMEN. She portrays him as a preacher of pure music. Wow. He’s an alcoholic failure who has repeatedly ruined his life. There’s no integrity there about expressing his “true self” thru his music and encouraging others to do so. On the show I’ve watched, he lacks confidence because he knows he’s a screw-up.
Almost every single performer on the show is motivated by wanting to maintain or achieve big-dollar success. Whatever honesty they put into their music–and they do often speak from their experience–is secondary to being stars. They look for a “new sound” or a hook to maintain, promote, or achieve stardom, not for the purpose of pure artistic expression. I’m floored that anyone reviewing the show thinks that.
The one exception to being success-driven is Scarlet, also featured in the essay. But she DID NOT “refuse” to “sell-out”. She was incapable of performing up to music business standards because she’s a weepy emotional doormat. (I want to slap her silly.) Her songs and voice are indeed rare and pure. But she repeatedly sabotages herself out of weakness not by strongly holding onto musical ideals.
For goodness sake, this is a soap opera ABOUT women FOR women. The music is used for entertaining breaks and to illustrate character development. The real story lines are: Will Rayna ever break free of the controlling influences of her father, ex-husband, tyrant record label boss, and alcoholic ex-lover to find happiness with the nice rock music producer who treats her with respect? Will Juliette work through her abused childhood issues, stop being a cold selfish bitch, and learn how to love someone? Will Scarlet stop being an irritating self-destructive wimp who puts her love for the wrong men above her own best interests? And will all those loser men ever get what they deserve and shape up into decent human beings?