Ever had the following experience? It’s around noon and you have some time left, so you go to some fastfood joint – let’s say McDonalds. The burger looked great in the ads, but it doesn’t quite look the same when it’s in front of you. The bacon doesn’t quite look as appetizing, the bun sort of seems soggy… and on the whole, it just looks a lot smaller than you expected. Anways, you’re hungry, so you start munching away. It tastes just fine, but it seems like you’re forced to gulp it all down as quickly as possible – the burger falls apart as you eat it, the fries are cooling down fast and the ice cubes soon turn the coke into water. And let’s be honest, you feel like you could’ve kept on eating, but you never quite feel full afterwards.
By now you should know that none of this is a coincidence. Corporate headquarters knew exactly what they were doing. This is studying the human body and exploiting it for maximum consumption. Understandably, once they figure all of this stuff out, they keep doing it. And guess what? Their competitors aren’t blind. They see what works and copy it for themselves.
The dynamic I’ve just described here, has been replicated in many, many fields. It’s why pop songs started sounding the same the last couple of decades. It’s why every other YouTube video seems and sounds the same. Everyone is in the game of finding out the formula for success. The result is uniformity all across the board, in hopes of achieving their much needed breakthrough.
Television has been through the same ordeal, in the search of higher viewership figures. It’s why shows like The Voice and The Masked Singer get on my nerves so much. You can see them following the recipe, in hopes of keeping you glued to the screen for as much time as possible – which wouldn’t be too bad, if only we’d feel satiated afterwards, speaking mentally and emotionally.
So when I saw The Piano on Channel 4, I expected more of the same: the typical formula you’d see at a talent show, but this time in an effort to find the best pianist, and only two jurors, popsinger Mika and world-famous pianist Lang Lang. Here’s the whole concept: they place their piano in a train station and entrants show what they can do. At the end of every episode, they pick the best pianist and next week, they go put the piano at some different train station. The best of the bunch are invited for a concert at the Royal Festival Hall, where the grand finale takes place and during which they’ll pick out the winner.
Much to my surprise: this wasn’t some clever advertisement for the two jurors’ careers, there weren’t any cheap tricks to drive up the suspense and the contestants each seemed like ordinary folks, with their own worries and problems. And I’ll admit the finale was quite moving, the winner being a young lady, born with several defects (blindness, trouble speaking), but with plenty of talent for playing the piano.
I suppose my main point is this: it’s okay to learn the formulas, but keep your critical faculties in check. Don’t be a slave to formulas for your whole life. They might be profitable in the short term, but they’re not very satiating in the long term… and sooner or later, everyone finds out you have a habit of creating predicatable, low-quality junk.
Regards
Vincent J. Dancet