Welcome!

Welcome to theopinionatedinternet.blogspot.com, a whirling hotpot of political opinion, poetry, prose, philosophy, reviewing, and other assorted wild ramblings! Here you will find: PWN, Grand Reviewer and assistant thinker; JAFHR, head of Philosophy, Literature, and Ambassador for France; JHWW, critic/comic materialist; and iTech, computer technician, pilot-in-the-making and co-politician. Fare Thee Well!


Pour les Francophones

Cher Lecteur/lectrice,
Nous vous souhaitons la bienvenue A notre blog, L'Internet Dogmatique. Vous trouverez ici tout votre bonheur- Literature, Philosophie, Politique, Revues, Technologie... Par dessus tout, vous trouverez des opinions. Ne manquez pas a publiez le votre!
Pour rendre tout cet Anglais lisible, traduisez simplement cette page en utilisant le gadget que vous trouverez sur votre droite, un peu en bas. Nous regrettons que cette traduction est rarement exacte; il serait peut-etre plus sage d'utiliser ce blog pour pratiquer votre Anglais.
Bien le Bonjour, Messires et Demoiselles,
JAFHR, le Fou Francophone.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

A Deeper Look at Justin Beiber

Before you stare at shock at this title and whisper things such as 'Good grief, how fickle. Bring back JAFHR's excellent views on philosophy, iTech's fascinating rants about aeroplanes and JHWW's... what does he write about? But anyway, we don't want to listen to this uncultured idiot's views about people who I'm sorry I ever heard of.'

And this would be a perfectly valid view to have, but I implore you to continue reading because there's something deeper behind the superficial nature of this 'artist'. I would also like to point out that 'a deeper look' does not involve... okay, never mind.

Bieber in New York in 2009

Basically, Justin Bieber is an internationally Canadian successful pop singer. Don't blame Canada, though, he's really as American as South Korea. Most people concentrate on the two things that I think are the least relevant to this post about Bieber: his singing ability and public image. These things though, are relevant to his fame and, to a lesser extent, popularity, so I see it as necessary to cover them briefly, Firstly, Bieber can sing. No matter what you hear his critics say, he gets the notes right and technically the only thing wrong with his voice is that it lacks the emotional depth of a better singer, Adele for instance. This problem could, however, be put down to poor lyrics, but I'll get to that later. The latter aspect of Bieber that people often draw attention to is his public image, which I won't get into too much. To his fans, he is exactly the kind of bland, unintimidating boyfriend every bland American teenager dreams of. To his haters (a group with which I do not associate myself, I might point out), he is a despicable challenge not only to his industry but to his entire gender and thus he has been labelled as many things, starting with the least vulgarity at 'gay' and ending with... well, we shan't get into that.

A shot from Bieber's hit song Boyfriend


Now, the interesting stuff. JAFHR has been going on for a while about materialism, and in Bieber I see his point. His songs, while they could be called love songs, are not about love. I know neither his fans nor haters do, but look at his lyrics. His two most popular song, Baby and Boyfriend, are as materialist as a Texan in a toy store. Baby contains the phrase 'I'll buy you anything', Boyfriend includes the line early on 'I've got some money that I'd really like to blow', while the music video shows him in a series of impossibly shiny cars on an impossibly sunny day singing to several (yes, several) impossibly attractive women. One of the cars he is driving is clearly a Ford Mustang, which is not exactly fitting considering his effeminate image and the fact that the Mustang was mocked even by Top Gear for its overt, arrogant masculinity, but makes a large amount of sense when you consider the ratio between Ford's advertising budget and Bieber's record label's artistic integrity. I'd put it at about 100,000,000 : 0.

An example of the extent of 'Bieber fever'

But what has this got to do with materialism, I hear you philosophy junkies cry. Well, if Bieber can get to the top by being incredibly bland and by pointlessly referencing Starbucks and other equally detestable companies in his songs, then surely this is reflective of our society, and it shines a harsh, damning light. Wait, I hear you cry, you would-be defender of true music, I hate Justin Bieber and so do many people. In fact we threatened to kill him multiple times. Perhaps, but does that really make it any better? I mean, thousands of young males are getting incensed over someone who should really be ignored completely if one wanted him to go away, then doesn't that shine an even harsher light? Hatred is just as bad a response as love in this case, if not worse, partially because no one hates Justin Bieber because of his music. Admittedly, many dislike his music, but often the reason is jealousy that this uninteresting, boylike adolescent should capture the hearts of so many teenage girls.

Justin Bieber isn't Justin Bieber's fault, he's our fault.

-PWN-

While researching this post PWN listened to Justin Bieber's Baby an unhealthy number of times, resulting in a catastrophic collapse of his already poor musical taste. He is currently recovering and will hopefully be fit enough to start writing a post about Frankenstein in a few days.

7 comments:

  1. Hmmmmm...What to say...All the male population hate him,but can we really say why? PWN just asked me why I don't like him, and I couldn't come up with a valid answer other than that we are all jealous of him. If in fact anyone can find a good answer, please leave a reply to this comment

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    1. PWN is very nice even though he got 0 in the latin grammar

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    2. Try working on the relevance of your comments rather than Latin grammar.

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  2. Bieber certainly works on his marketing- you will find a close correlation between those who read Twilight and those who like Bieber. Rather than concentrating on the lyrics to view the materialism I suggest looking at the overall picture- the High voice has simply been used to its full commercial extent. I see the rise of Po-singer phenomena more as a result of populism than materialism/consumerism; and, although Bieber is a good example of the consumerist side he is by no means the only one. I do agree that Consumerism and Populism are related.

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  3. Why can't I be that funny, dagnabit! If you could write such 'lad'-like things more often, this blog would be rolling in followers. In fact- if you're reading this, WE NEED FOLLOWERS!

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  4. I re-read your last point, and I find that this reminds me of iTech's constant Global Warming rants. We know that he despises the idea, but, rather than ignoring it and talking of things that he actually believes in, he goes on-and-on-and-oooon about the pointlessness of wind turbines.If you're reading this, iTech, I think it high time that you give up GW and get on to things which you actually believe in.

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  5. i am sociable you accord narcissism in what you write. It makes you stand pretentiousness out from many auxiliary writers that cannot market excessive-sense content material in the end than you. internet providers toronto

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