April 18, 2009
How Beautiful Should a Voice Look?
Three days ago, a friend (thanks, Tillu), posted a YouTube link on Facebook about Susan Boyle's performance on the show "Britain's Got Talent". After you type Susan Boyle in the search bar on YouTube, you should choose the first video; it is 7:08 minutes long, because it contains her pre-performance build-up as well. Here we learn that Susan is 47, and from a small cluster of villages somewhere in Britain. She has a double chin and is matronly plump. When she is asked who she wants to be like and says "Elaine Paige", you can almost hear the sniggers in the audience, while the camera cuts to looks of disbelief on the judges' faces (Amanda Holden, Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell, the latter of American Idol fame) and then to a teen in the audience rolling her eyes. Elaine Paige is considered by many to be the "First Lady of British Musical Theatre" and became famous when she played Eva Peron in the musical "Evita". Her signature song is "Memories" from the musical "Cats".
Susan Boyle however decides to sing, "I Dreamed a Dream" from the musical, "Les Miserables". Just before she starts to sing, the camera pans once more across the judges and the audience; you can sense their weariness and their thoughts, "here is one more talentless, over-the-hill woman taking her shot at 1 minute of stardom". And then she sings. It's difficult to describe what happens next in words...so it's best if you see the video yourselves. The best part of the video however is seeing the incredulous looks on the judges' faces when they realize that here is a woman who can actually sing and that too with a voice perhaps as good as Elaine Paige's.
Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Blink" writes about the pitfalls of making presumptuous, instantaneous decisions based on our "gut" feel. As in Susan Boyle's case, we are so tuned to our woman singers being sexy and young (no thanks to MTV, etc), that we intuitively make a call about someone's singing talent based on her looks and appearance. And many of us have a lot of trouble differentiating between "good-looking" and "good-sounding" voices.
In "Blink", Mr. Gladwell further goes on to talk about how women would hardly feature in classical orchestras, some years ago, because it was assumed that they just couldn't play the instruments as well as men. It was only when curtains were put in front of the performers during auditions, and the judges had no clue who the person playing was...man, woman, white, black, etc, that women started getting selected and now account for 50% of all orchestra players.
To further drive home this point; type "Paul Potts" in a YouTube search bar and select the third video that says, "Paul sings Nessun Dorma". See his pre-performance build-up; his lack of confidence, the plump face with bad front-teeth; a salesman in a mobile phone shop in a town in Britain, who wants to be an opera singer. All you need to do is to hear his tenor voice once, to understand what I am talking about.
In the days when radio was king and there was no television, it was only the "voice" that mattered and this worked very well for all the singers of the previous generation. Today, when television rules, the paradigms are different; average, but good-looking singers are usually more successful than great, but "not-so-good" looking ones. So I ask the question again. How beautiful should a voice look?
Posted by bhavinj at 08:25 AM | Comments (0)
August 25, 2006
The Power Is Ours
This was in today's Mumbai Mirror.
On Monday night, my Mom called up to ask whether our TV was working, because all she was getting on her TV was snow. For a moment, I thought her cable had been disconnected as well, but we soon realized that the cable operators were on strike.
I thought her cable had been disconnected, because just a couple of days before, I had asked my cable operator to remove ours. Having obtained a Tata-Sky dish connection last week, I finally had the guts to do so, and it felt great to be able to free myself from the clutches of the “Great Indian Cable Conspiracy”.
Matunga, like all other parts of the country, has been carved out into monopolistic territories by the cable operators, and they have complete control not only over our connections, but also the programs that we get to see. Though my local cable operator is actually a nice guy, the fact remains that all cable in India is geared to the lowest common denominator, where we have to suffer poor quality video and audio, a general lethargy for English language channels and to top it off, channels like National Geographic and Disney in Hindi.
In the last week, since I’ve had the dish put-up, I’ve suddenly realized what I’ve been missing out on. I finally have signal quality that makes the 42” plasma really worth the effort, along with a stereo audio signal, which actually sounds good when routed through the sound system.
One really neat thing is the online program guide, which tells you what is currently playing on all channels and the schedules for the next 24 hours. This literally means that we never have to look at a paper program guide again. The bigger revelation however was when I found that many channels, especially the kiddie and sports channels, transmit audio in multiple languages and you can actually choose your language.
The big issue is of choice and power. The choice to see the programs that you want to, in the language that you want to, with a certain quality of video and audio, preferably DVD-like. And eventually, the power to use a DV recorder to record programs that you might want to see later, just as we used to do with VCRs. Thus, I could record all the Desperate Housewives’ episodes, which airs at the ridiculous 10.00PM time slot on Sunday, and then watch four or five episodes back-to-back, on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon…and at the same time skip all the ads and so finish viewing these episodes in almost half the time.
The cable guys have had us by our balls for a long time, but thankfully, no longer. For those who are happy with the current situation, there is nothing further to be said. But for those, who in today’s day and age, want a little more, at least now, there is a choice. And not only a choice between cable and satellite dishes, but even between multiple satellite dish providers.
The power to choose, of course can have funny consequences. Having been forced to watch Power Rangers in Hindi, on the Jetix Toon Disney channel, I thought my kids will immediately switch to English. On the new satellite television, Power Rangers airs in four languages – English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. So guess what my English and Hindi-empowered, Gujarati-born daughter does?...she watches entire episodes of Power Rangers in Tamil…apparently because that language has the most punch. Go figure!
Posted by bhavinj at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)
