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Stars
In Our Ears
Recently, I bought myself an MP3 player. It's small
and neat and I listen to it on the bus into work. This is the first time
I've had a personal stereo since I was fifteen and I was struck by how
uniquely modern the experience of using headphones is. When they put them
on, every person is a star.
A headphone wearer gets used to thinking of themselves as an individual,
rather than part of a larger group. Even after wearing them for only a
few weeks, in and out of work, I was struck at how normal it seemed to
project my isolation onto other people walking past me or getting onto
the bus ahead of me. One of my favourite pastimes is usually looking at
people's faces as I walk through town, trying to imagine their character,
their interior lives and how I look to them. But I don't even think about
these things when I'm listening to my music. Instead I barely register
that there are real people around me. And when I do notice them, I no
longer try to imagine what they might think of me. Outside my head, everything
is silence. What better simulation for the strange modern experience of
being a star, surrounded by people who have abandoned their identity to
echo and mirror you?
When I put on my music, I am suddenly the centre of the world. I have
a soundtrack that nobody else can hear, dramatising my actions, or adding
a counterpoint to them. Other people go from being equals to look out
for, to being voiceless extras.
If listening to music on your headphones makes you feel like the star
of your own movie, it is worth considering how unknown that feeling was
before the 20th Century. The idea of a soundtrack, or a score, to accompany
action was alien to the imagination of previous generations. And people
may have imagined themselves as the heroines of novels or the heroes of
the stage, but neither of these art forms had the idea of the star part.
There is obviously a leading man in Hamlet, for example, but Hamlet does
not exist on a different level to the rest of the characters. A secondary
character like Polonius has an internal life, and a set of beliefs. Crucially,
he can be shown existing outside his relationship to the young Prince.
Even the bit parts of Rosencrantz and Guliderstein are sufficiently well
rounded to have allowed Tom Stoppard to write an entire play from their
point of view.
Elizabeth Bennet's sharp, but blinkered, view of the people around her
is the prism through which we experience the people in Pride and Prejudice,
but the central joke of the novel is her lack of understanding of their
real motives. In contrast, modern films can barely manage to acknowledge
that there is more than one real person in the world.
In his book for, and love letter to, aspiring screenwriters William Goldman
asserts that when writing a modren script, "You have to give the
star everything. Everything." The economics of the star system
have driven this to extremes.
To follow up Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio chose to star in an adaptation
of The Beach. He was the hottest star in the world, and the filmmakers
clearly felt that they had to make the most of him. As a result, young
Leo is in every single scene in the entire film. Unlike Jane Austen's
Mr. Darcy, none of the supporting cast are given a life independent of
the hero. Everyone must orbit their star.
Pity the poor millionaire Mr. DiCaprio. He was the most sought after star
in the world, but the possessor of only modest to mediocre acting talent.
He found it hard to carry a film on his own. But even if he had the combined
genius of Olivier, Brando and Pachino compressed into his bones, the audience
would have come away feeling dissatisfied. A story where the audience
is expected to identify with one person, but which doesn't bother too
much about the people around him is never going to chime with how we experience
life.
It is a comfort, of course, to put on our headphones and block out the
reality of things around us. Insulated from thinking, retreating from
relationships and flushed with an illusion of power, derived from hearing
things nobody else can hear, it must be among the reasons headphones appeal
so powerfully to teenagers. Teenagers will also be glad of anything that
seems to confirm that they are above or at least separate from, the other
people they see around them. And it can hardly be a coincidence that the
movie industry is driven by the need to pander to the fantasies of those
same teenagers.
Of course, headphones are also a very good way of listening to music,
and a very good pair will give the audiophile top quality sound at the
fraction of the panoply of hi-fi gadgetry. Why do even audio obsessives
buy a new amp, speakers, connectors and even a "box of worms"
for "cleaning their sound" when they could just plug in and
sit back? Outside the ranks of Nick Hornby anti-heroes, we don't do that.
We want to listen to music, but not to the exclusion of talking to our
family or friends. Experiencing music with other people adds to the richness
of the experience. That's why people go to gigs, and why bands release
live albums. Because the sound of the crowd can be as much a part of the
music as the bass or drums.
It is pleasant to put on my earphones and retreat into a musical world
of my choosing. Similarly, it's great fun to watch Bruce Willis battling
baddies, armed only with an action vest. But when I get into my office,
I won't hesitate to turn off the music to talk to my friends. And when
I step out of the Savoy cinema, my first impulse will be to turn to my
companion and ask them what they thought of Bruce's exploits. Because
unless we share our life with other people, no amount of stardom, real
or imagined, can give it real meaning.
by
Simon McGarr
20th June 2002
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