We lament the fact today that one cannot travel anywhere without being bombarded with advertisements and the euphonious "ka-CHING" sounds of slamming till drawers.  We lament the fact that modern music and television programming is cheap, mass-produced, and caters solely to the lowest common denominator.  Where, oh where, have American standards vanished?

The question should really be, where were our standards in the first place?

After the Second World War, marketers discovered the Holy Grail.  The baby-boomers' rapid growth, plus a good economy, plus disposable incoe, plus Depression-Era parents wanting to indulge their children....equalled the first market catering solely toward teenagers.  Consumer Shangri-La.
 

We all know the story.  The resentment of compassionless older generations...the desire for change and making a difference in history....the Vietnam protests...the Civil rights causes....and the boredom with conservatism - they all let to tumultuous uprisings against society in the guise of Beats, Mods, Hippies, and the erstwhile affluent white kids.  And with each and every minor revolution, lurked the pop culture vultures, ready to package those rebels into more-palatable, watered-down versions to MARKET.

There was TV's first "beatnik," Maynard G. krebs: a far cry from Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, to be sure. There was Jack Webb's relentless pursuit of toking hippies during the second stint of Dragnet.  There's nothing more deadly to an intelligentsia rebellion than a common belief in its futility, and marketers know that.  Television had, by the 1960s, become the most effective control of the masses in history.  People had become numb to the daily news' depictions of death in Vietnam.  The American people, on the whole, still had money to burn.  Marketers sought the resulting fire.
 
 
 
 
 

Nothing can possibly be relevant in society anymore if it cannot be packaged into a marketable product.  Classic example: the Beatles.  Brian Epstein stumbled upon a brilliant marketing manoeuvre when he took four young, impoverished, angry, rebellious men from Liverpool and repackaged them as loveable moppets for the Baby Boomer generation to "discover."  Result: the most profitable musical marketing scheme in history.  Result: Berry Gordy's Motown records, with which he repackaged poor black singers from inner-city Detroit into desirable, marketable products.

This was the GENUINE revolution.  Although more invisible than the frolicking naked kids at Woodstock, it changed (albeit more gradually) the thought processes of the American people.  Constant bombardment of images tend to do that.  And behind those images, of course, lurk the advertisers.

This invisible revolution, however, did not escape the observant eyes of Gil Scott-Heron.  Heron spoke vehemently about blacks' inequality and stifling in the artistic industry; about the blacks' persistent invisibility, leading to a consumable repackaging.  

Scott-Heron's angry, rhythm-infused poetry was "avant-garde compared to what was going on in early 70s black pop (Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield)." (Tom Terrell, liner notes for Evolution and Flashback: the Very Best of Gil Scott-Heron).  He challenged common misconceptions of urban blacks in America.  He accused whites of relentlessly stealing "black" catchphrases for marketing ploys ("Right on, Tiger," "power to the people"). He criticises the American people for mindlessly accepting the fact that anything interesting happening in popular culture was, in some way, sponsored by a large corporation.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised sparked its own revolution.  Within ten years, Scott-Heron's rhythm poetry entered popular culture, via groups such as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, as hip-hop and rap.  Minorities utilised the powerful rap medium as their forum for widespread political discussions.  The revolution certainly became live, brother, but where hath the fury gone?  Why has rap dumbed down to one giant booty call?  

I think we all know.

The question is, what's going to happen next?

And will it sell?