Elitism, art, money, and Justin Timberlake

So if you're in circles with opera singers, coaches, conductors, or students of any of these, you're probably seen a recent interview with Thomas Hampson on BBC.  The host of the program, Sarah Montague, works her way through a litany of stereotypical judgments on opera: elitist, expensive, only supported by the aged or the coerced relatives of performers, hard to understand, etc.  Thomas Hampson replies to all of her barbs with grace (far more than I would have been able to exercise under such questioning) and makes the case that the arts' job is to reach people of (and at) all ages and share passion with all audiences.  I've been turning this over in my head for a little while, and I had a flash of understanding just last night.  I wasn't at the opera.  I wasn't at Tanglewood or the BSO.  

I was at Fenway Park, enjoying the Legends of the Summer concert tour, with Justin Timberlake and Jay Z.  

Let's do a little cross-comparison analysis here.  Point 1:  If the argument is made that opera is expensive and therefore exclusionist/elitist, then all 40,000 people at Fenway last night and the night before are part of a seriously elitist crowd.  My first-row roof deck ticket was between $100 and $150, and it afforded me a great view of the field seats and the megatron screens.  JT and JZ looked like teeny teeny dancing figurines.  I don't pretend to know how much the floor seats were, let alone the ones toward the front.  $250?  $350?  Would anyone say that Justin and Jay's music is elitist?  No?  How about Pink?  Or Beyonce?  Or Rihanna?  No.  So it's not the price tag of the experience that determines the music as elitist.  Next!

Point 2:  Opera only appeals to people of a certain demographic, namely people who are over 65, and the rest of its supporters are made up of performers' friends and family.  So does that mean that popular music appeals only to young people, or that older people can't enjoy popular music of the current generation?  The number of people my parents' age I saw at Fenway last night would indicate that they have the ability to enjoy Justin's dancing and singing, and the number of people my own age I see knocking back beers between acts 1 and 2 of whichever opera I'm seeing tells me that age has little to do with whether or not one can enjoy music.  I like the Bee Gees and the Beatles and Jimmy Durante and Earth, Wind, and Fire.  My mom watched a Robin Thicke video with me last week and loved it.  (Don't clutch your pearls, Gladys, it was the one with classroom instruments and Jimmy Fallon)  So it's not about the age of the viewer?  Nope.  Next!

Point 3:  Opera is hard to understand because it's in a foreign language, and understanding it might require a little homework on the front end.  And who wants to do homework to go be entertained?

--this is where it gets sticky--

So I'm at the show last night.  I know all the songs off JT's first two albums, and many of the ones off his new album.  I've heard the occasional Jay Z song on the radio, especially the collaborations with other artists (i.e. Alicia Keys), but I don't own a Jay Z album.  Not a single.  Nothing.  So I can't sing along or fill in the lyrics when he stops and holds out the mic for the crowd to shout in.  I didn't do any listening before I went to the concert, but I was still swept along by the songs I didn't know.  I bobbed my head when he said to bob my head, I waved my hands when he said wave, and generally had a fun time.  It was more enjoyable with JT (truthfully, he's the one I went to see) but even with the new songs that were less familiar, I relaxed and went with it.  I didn't feel left out because I didn't know every word, and I didn't feel alienated by not being able to understand everything Jay Z was rapping about.  And that was happening a lot more than I'd like to admit.  

So if the language barrier isn't necessarily the only hurdle to enjoyment (and let's remember that operas usually have supertitles in the native language of the country), the price tag is an inhibitor but not one that defines the genre, and you don't have be above or below a certain age to ride this ride, what is it?  

What offended me the most about the BBC interview with Thomas Hampson was the seemingly continuous harping on the 'otherness' of opera as a genre.  That being different made it weird.  That being in a foreign language made it strange or distant.  That taking plots from literature people wouldn't have read would make them think.  And who wants to be made to think?  (That last statement was mine, and rhetorical.)  Do I go to the opera to be entertained, enlightened, made to think, moved to tears, roll with laughter, recoil in terror, question the decency of humanity?  Yes, I do.  Do I expect this out of every piece of entertainment?  I do not.  Just this afternoon, I spent a little downtime (after a morning/afternoon of errands and before an evening of laundry and packing) watching a black comedy called Election, featuring a very young Reese Witherspoon and a slightly older Matthew Broderick.  I wasn't looking for it to change my life.  I went to see Das Leben der Anderen when I was at language school for German.  I understood maybe every 5th word, but that movie had a profound impact on me.  But why why WHY did it?  

Here's what I think.  If you're open to 'otherness' or curious about the world beyond your zip code, you might enjoy opera.  Or skydiving.  Or Nascar.  Or sushi.  Or competitive step dancing.  I don't particularly get Nascar, but I don't see people pointing fingers at how 'strange' Nascar is.  

I think there are whole swaths of people who fear change and difference.  They shun things different from their norm.  They fear being made to feel inferior or they fear that someone is taking advantage of their ignorance.  

Soapbox nearly done, I promise.  

The world is getting smaller, not larger.  Our neighbors are rarely the people 5 miles down the road.  They're probably the people on the other side of your living room wall.  And if you think their life is so much different than yours, will you make the effort to get to know them?  If you see them as strange or weird, will you see them as foreign or other or different or dangerous?  Doesn't it encourage xenophobia to draw big lines and say "you live in that box, and I live in this box?"  

In the immortal words of ABBA (another guilty pleasure of mine), "Take a chance, take a chance, take-a take-a chance chance."  Do something new.  Go to the opera.  Read a book that's not on Oprah's reading list.  Talk to your new neighbor.  Encourage yourself to think freely and openly and discuss your opinions with others.  I'm fixing to be a foreigner, and I really hope my neighbors won't ignore the Americans with the dog on the 3rd floor, just because we're foreign.  I hope they won't assume that, just because we're foreign, they have nothing in common with us.  And I hope you'll go listen to JT's new album, and maybe a little bit of Boheme (if you're an opera newbie) and maybe a little more of Katya Kabanova (if you're an opera intermediate) and maybe, just maybe, you'll hear something or see something that strikes you, and you'll roll with it.  

Incidentally, Justin brought SexyBack.  And it was waaaaaaaaaaay lotsa fun.