This is where broadcasting meets the wonders of the Internet. Without this strong programme concept and reality television, Susan Boyle would never have emerged into the public sphere. The drama building before her singing is something that TV professionals can do so superbly. That´s talent.
But without the Internet and YouTube, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore would never have become fans of this English lady or she wouldn´t have become a world-wide phenomenon. Currently at 12 million hits. I love TV, I love YouTube and there´s no contradiction there. I think writing of television as a medium is just bull crap.
“What students today, the nation tomorrow.” The old promise of the student community was mentioned several times yesterday evening as the Student Union of the University of Helsinki HYY celebrated its 140th birthday. Fancy party indeed with 350 people in evening dresses and frocks.
This organization has been fundamental for our small nation in the North. It was the students of this very union who sang the national anthem for the first time when Finland was still under the Russian rule. It was also this very student union, which acted as the key stage in the cultural revolution of the late 1960s. 20 years ago HYY was one of the founders of Pakolaisapu, a legal counseling organization for refugees. This role taken by students is in no way unique for Finland – in the US students played a fundamental role in shaping the civil rights or anti-Viet Nam agenda.
It has been fours year since I attended these annual celebrations. This community has been crucial in shaping who I am now and how I carry myself to the future. It is not “just” some volunteering, it is a school of citizenship. I feel very strongly about its well being, at the same time recognizing that decisions are now made by people significantly younger than I am. And rightly so.
These parties provide us a peak into the mindset of their time. Selection of speakers and the songs being sung tell about the priorities and concerns.
This hope of acting as a beacon is of course an issue that the union needs to think of as part of its strategy in keeping students active in it: how much is the student union up to its time and promise of leadership? How does it keep itself fresh and alert? How is the student union showing the way of tomorrow for its nation? Which traditions are worth preserving and which are ones we have been doing for too long just out of a habit?
Relating to this challenge, I found myself thinking of the following yesterday evening: Singing is a great student tradition. But why students would sing in year 2008 mostly about boozing and even more troubling:”More land for Finland, more Finland on Earth, Let´s March to Carelia, Carelia!”
This is very close to being the perfect Sunday song. The amazing Duffy with Jools Holland. There is just nothing that beats a BIG orchestration. The encouragement to love again, to be bold and hopeful even if it seems very difficult is one amazing message. The stubbornness and daring for the pursuit of happiness. That sometimes it means that you make some drastic moves in your life, which may hurt in the beginning in order to gain the well-being that in the end counts. These moves may be about relationships like in the case of the song or about the other main components in our lives such as housing, work and so forth.
In a bit more than a week, I am giving a lecture to a professional audience in Geneva on how ´we´ and ´they´ are produced in youth cultures. When preparing the lecture I have been going through a lot of audiovisual content (fancy expression for hanging on YouTube) and value studies of European youth. I wish to elaborate a bit on the shared or divied values today and between generations. The quest made me go back to one of my favourite moments on Dutch TV some months back: the winner of the Dutch Idols Nikki decided to sing a gospel song in the finals of the competition and got criticism from one of the jury members (gay celeb singer) for the song selection. In that moment, I felt like the Dutch society was accurately presented in a matter of seconds and forced into dialogue.
Well, the moment came back to me watching the annual charity show of the American Idol called Idols Give Back. The star-studded show for Aids work featured everyone from Miley Cyrus and Fergie to Brad Pitt. However, the most fascinating moment was when this mainstream of the mainstream programme ended with the finalists singing together a religious song called Shout To The Lord. This was not a song they picked themselves but was for sure selected by FOX. Fascinating, wouldn´t you say? It seems like religion - more accurately Christianity - is getting cool again on both sides of the Atlantic. Or religion has consumer power? Or both. I keep watching these clips again and again in awe.
I find it wonderful that people are in touch with spirituality and wish to express it. But the difference between the Dutch and the American example is important: in the Dutch Idols Nikki chooses to express something important to her when in the American Idol mainstream entertainment adopts religion as a collective practice.
You know, I was thinking of writing about the generational change in Finnish politics but then I heard this song in Apple's Air commercial and I just did not feel like it anymore. La-la-laa-laa. And yes, Apple Air is light and oh so wonderful.
Sometimes a meeting can really make your day. In the middle of Excel sheets and overwhelming emailing, it is so empowering to meet people who really make change happen. My meeting today with Nirit Peled boosted the rest of the day.
Peled is an Israeli-born documentary maker who has for the last years focused on women in hip hop. She is currently working on Say My Name, a full-length documentary on female MCs and the women they inspire. She showed me the trailer and I found myself warming up from the inside. The strength of these women who are in the public eye characterised as rowdy and loud, was unbelievable. And the most amazing fact was that stars like Erykah Badu were completely shadowed by the normal women from the streets of Atlanta, New York and London. These girls kick ass.
I loved it, loved it, loved it. The trailer led us into a lengthy discussion on why these girls are so seldom heard and so often talked about. Through the interview we saw not rowdy but smart and frank women comfortable with their sexuality and opinions.
Nirit Peled works also with companies like Nike and MTV. It was brilliant to hear her insight on how these partnerships work. I am getting more and more convinced that often we in the non-profit sector could learn from commercial actors who seem to know how to tap into people's aspirations, how to talk to people directly and how to get them make and give their best. For instance a lot of these women take a lot of distance to classic feminism whereas a lot of women's organisations would see many of these openly sexual girls as victims of a chauvinist culture. Without dissing the protection agenda of the feminist movement, I would still claim that we should be using the modern means we have to make sure that as many of us as possible have the chance for a voice.
I really don't have problems with Nike, MTV and Dove making money by empowering women, I really don't. It is not like public funders would not have an agenda - sometimes it feels like the commercial funders are just much more honest with theirs.
As I was cycling to the gym today, my iPod (on shuffle) started playing this song from the Swedish glam band The Ark. I found myself listening to the lyrics in detail for the first time and realised that the message of this song is just briliant.
Last week I had a discussion at work on what does all this video making do to these teenagers. If they would feel like singer Ola Salo in this song, we would have reached a lot. The attitude he is propagating is wonderful: focusing on the essential for you, not on what others might find giving you stature.
There have been very few TV programmes that I remember capturing me in the same manner as BBC Two's Choir: Boys Don't Sing. The programme is a typical public broadcasting take on reality television: youth meets empowerment. The programme idea is fairly simple: Choirmaster Gareth Malone goes to an all boys' school with the goal of making sports boys love singing.
I work with young people and we often struggle with the issue of sustainability. Malone's dedication is something I see also in my work: people working on a local scale on a long-term basis making change happen. Due to its superlocal take, Malone's experiment can be duplicated: he shows how change in young people starts from believing in them, taking them seriously and getting personally and emotionally involved.
Every time I have seen the show it has made me cry. The way singing helps these boys in believing in themselves is what culture really is about. It gives recognition and blows your mind. And most importantly, Malone guaranteed that once he left the school with the camera crew, the school board had guaranteed a choirmaster for the future as well.
Today I started my day with a meeting at the headquarters of MTV Networks here in the Netherlands.
MTV for me means Ray Cokes and Maria G, it means the thing from London that I and my friends all used to watch after school. The thing that somehow made you feel that even if you live in a small town in Finland, you are part of it. Somehow the localisation has been painful but I am adjusting.
Currently I am totally hooked on MTV's programme called Made where young people are helped by a coach to achieve their goals. Maybe I am getting old or I am still having goals to achieve, you tell me.
But MTV stands for MUSIC television. Watching it today at the gym and seeing this video made me remember once again how much I love music videos.
Last day of holidays in İstanbul. Before going ınto details on discoveries of a more intellectual nature, here is what Turkey is listenıng now - superstar Tarkan is out with a new album. Not my cup of tea to be honest, but hey, people like it.
Ioften wonder out in town what people have playing in their iPods. It could be the same stuff as I have or it could be something wacko. Wacko, yes. I think that would be the word many would choose if they knew that I have been on a 100 % country mode for the last week. Yes, I am confessing it here, in public, with the risk of mockery. It’s been only Tim McGraw, Dixie Chicks, Alan Jackson, Martina McBride, Trisha Yearwood, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, George Strait and of course...the man himself...Johnny Cash.
I confess that for a long time I was one of those Europeans who considered the whole music genre a pure joke. Like the American equivalent to Eurovision camp. Men in oversized hats, overtight jeans and women with oversized boobs. This summer’s trip to Texas opened my eyes to the varieties of country and reminded me of a wise statement made once by The Economist: if you wish to understand the United States in a whole (yes, the country continues beyond New York), you need to listen to country. And I must say: if you pick good country music, the beauty is easy to see.
So based on this crash course, what is America about? It is about men falling short, women standing strong, women wishing to kill the violent husband, family members passing away, pretty small towns, family (especially mothers), loving your country, standing up to what you believe in, 4 July, getting drunk, challenging marriages and above all – decent people loving each other.
Country also functions as a good measurement for the mood of the country. The case of Iraq is the obvious. In the beginning the lyrics were about standing up for the troops agains the Evil. But as time has gone by, number of casualties has grown and as this clip by megastar Tim McGraw shows, the tone has changed: it is pain about full bodybags coming back from the Middle East.
Visiting Texas, meeting people and listening to their music made my realise even stronger what great countries are about - real people living real lives. And country is the soundtrack of that documentary.
Today has been a good day. After having a second brilliant session with the design students in Zürich, I made my way to the airport with the new Rufus Wainwright CD in my iPod. Sunny streets and his flirtatiously clever voice in my head was just the ultimate start for the weekend. And just to make my sister jealous I need to mention the perfectly salty crispy bretzel at the railway station.
By the way the Zürich airport is quite an experience. I would dare to name it as the most impressive airport I have seen. The share amount of empty space, the size of the airport compared to the size of the city (only like 300.000 inhabitants) and the fact that the airport is completely spotless all support an image of a city quite comfortable with its prosperity.
In our second session today with the students we focused on self-representation, migration and contextualisation. We compared for instance presenting a video on one's own MySpace site and on YouTube which is much less contextualised. The longest discussion was on "the story" behind a video of a teenager girl shaking her ass in her bedroom to 50 Cent's openly sexist song Candy Shop. The group slightly divided between those who did not see a reason to worry and those seeing signs of a lack of parental control.
After watching a lot of oneminutes, hip hop videos and parkour videos we dived into the question whether there are differences in the visual languages based on the teenagers ethnicity or nationality. My own gut feeling is that the differences are much more on subjects and in the tone of communication but the visual structure follows relatively unified paths.
I also got a question on why we do not indicate on theoneminutesjr website whether the maker is for instance an asylum seeker or an orphan or belonging to a cultural minority in a country. My answer was that we give the context of youth but after that it is up to the young maker to decide which particles of their identity their wish to highlight in their video. I have lobbied and will keep on lobbying for strategies where young people - whether or not with an immigrant background - are allowed to choose the communities they wish to attach to.
It's spring and bizarre things are happening. I am overswamped with work, many of my friends are driving (or are driven with) their relationships into a crisis and people seemed to have managed to wake their hormones from the winter. All and all emotions are IN again - in better and worse.
I worked this weekend both Friday and Saturday evenings. I can tell you that on the verge of thirty it has its price even if the occasions were quite special. Saturday's highlight was kissing a real princess. Or to be exact, she actually kissed me. My royal story made me the king of the evening at the Eurovision party following the official event.
Due to the prosecco in the Helsinki-driven party, my Sunday was one of the slower ones. The new CD of the Dutch singer Trijntje Oosterhuis suited the Sunday perfectly. Her perfectly sad voice and the underappreciated songs of Burt Bacharach really made my Sunday into a beutiful solitude.
Things and ideas worth sharing from videos to news, from Finland and abroad, out of private and public self with a bigger emphasis on enthusiasm than irritation.
kiplekker (Dutch): fit as a fiddle, chicken lickin´ good
Owner of Argumentti Com, a consultancy on corporate social responsibility, civil society, culture and media.
Location: Helsinki
Interest: Democracy, Idealism, Pop Culture, Sustainability, Cool T-shirts, TV, Generations
Action: Writing, Speaking, Hosting, Moderating, Thinking, Sharing
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