The video that stood out to me most this week was the video of Justin Bieber fans crying, shaking, and screaming as soon as they see him. On its surface, this video is pure emotion run wild. It’s evidence that popular culture really can hit people where it hurts. However, when thinking about Justin Bieber through this lens of this week’s readings, he becomes less of a singer and more of a shining example of how popular culture is manufactured, distributed, and felt within the parameters of what Adorno and Horkheimer term the “culture industry.”
Justin Bieber was not randomly discovered singing on the street. He was discovered on YouTube, branded quickly, and has been proliferated ever since through countless media formats. This type of carefully orchestrated manufacturing and mass dissemination of celebrities is exactly what the culture industry is designed to do. Adorno and Horkheimer claim that popular culture is standardized to turn a profit, and few people are more standardized than Justin Bieber. From his song’s cookie-cutter pop sounds to his managed image and “ordinary kid” personality, everything about him is designed for mass consumption. The millions of fans crying when they see him are not just responding to sheer “talent”: they are responding to a constructed product in a manner that the culture industry has conditioned them to react.
Walter Benjamin’s concept of mechanical reproduction plays a key role in why Bieber can be seen as both inaccessible and yet so intimate. From hearing his songs on the radio to seeing his face on fans’ phones screens, Bieber’s image is constantly being replicated. This kind of replication, Benjamin argues, removes an object’s aura, but it also allows fans to feel close to their stars. They don’t just listen to Bieber’s music; they are surrounded by him. This immersion creates an intimate feeling that makes the viewer’s reaction in the video above feel authentic, despite how many other people are feeling the same thing.
Though we cannot deny that Bieber is a product of cultural manipulation, I think it would be cynical to stop the analysis there. John Fiske’s notion of popular discrimination reminds us that audiences are not passive when it comes to popular culture; they use it. Fans of Bieber build fan communities, make edits, defend him online, go to his concerts together, and base their social identities on their relationship to him. In short, fans aren’t just consuming Bieber’s image and music, they are interacting with it.
Justin Bieber becomes a tool that fans can utilize to express themselves and their emotions. The reason why Bieber is the perfect example of this concept is because of this push and pull. To one degree, he is the product of cultural standardization and pushed back into our faces. But to another, he feels very personal. His fans crying may very well be helping to uphold a multi-billion dollar industry, but they are also genuine tears of joy and connection. Justin Bieber is the epitome of how popular culture functions at the convergence of top-down power and human emotion.
Question for discussion: Is crying over Justin Bieber an authentic emotion or a performance of what we’ve been told to feel? How do we distinguish between feeling and consuming feelings?
I really liked your use of the Frankfurt School and Walter Benjamin theory when analyzing Justin Bieber. I also think your question on whether the fans' tears constitute genuine emotions or a front is a significant part of the tension within the culture industry. I would argue both can be the case. The industry has a way of standardizing music, pop culture imagery, and fan interactions to produce the same, or a limited, range of emotional response. Yet at the same time, fans really channel these emotions to create a sense of self, community, meaning, etc.,, and emotional investment. This is what Fiske would argue, and I think he is right on. The performance aspect of the emotional investment does not preclude the investment from being real. It is, instead, a commentary on the interdependence of culture and personal experience. The question might be whether, despite the manufactured experience, understanding the emotional investment from a different vantage point does or does not enhance the experience.
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