A Jewel in the Crowd
by Josh K-sky on Jul.15, 2010, under music
“If I was not who I say I am, I could have easily overpowered you already. You have just seen how I willingly gave the Ring back to your master. In fact, if I wanted to kill you all, I could do it — NOW!”
He stood up, and suddenly seemed to grow taller and well-muscled. In his eyes gleamed a light, keen and feral. Throwing back his cloak, he laid his hand on the hilt of a long sword that had hung concealed by his side. Sam stared at it, horrified.
“But I am the real Strider, fortunately,” he said, looking down at them with a suddenly kinder eye. He smiled. “I am already betrothed to an elf-maid, and I have no need for the power of the Ring. I am Aragon son of Arathon; and if I can save you from your own stupid mistakes, then I will.”
There was a long silence. Pipsqueak and Morrie stared at Strider with new-found respect at this revelation of his state.
–The Fellowship of The Ring, J.R.R. Tolkein
In this Funny or Die video, Jewel dresses up as a Woman in a Grey Flannel Suit named Karen and, shyly persuaded to sing by her fellow “conventioneers” (“She only sings at the Christmas party”), blows the crowd away with a couple of Jewel songs.
She then comes back out and does an encore as herself.
This is terrible. Karaoke is the exact wrong place to stage what tvtropes.com calls a King Incognito moment. That works in two situations: where the king needs information that he won’t get if he asks people who know who he is (consider Henry V walking among his troops on the eve of the attack, or, for a variation, Zeus rewarding mortals who treat him kindly not knowing his identity), or when, as in the excerpt above, the king must travel for his own safety.
Karaoke has an exact opposite mythopoetic gesture. We’ve all been to the bar where amid the drunk jocks and party girls (bless them) moaning through “Light My Fire” or “Lady Marmalade” there’s a shy, old man, talking to no one, who reveals as golden a throat as ever ran with the Rat Pack. Karaoke is a scene where an ordinary person can reveal talent that only celebrities are suspected to have.
By mixing with the rabble and then revealing her powers, Jewel sucks the fun out of karaoke. The message of this video is that, actually, most people can’t do the things celebrities do, that privilege follows a natural order, and there’s no point in trying to join the elect if you’re not already in it.
Jewel’s own life story is one of rags to riches. What an awful revision this gives it.
July 15th, 2010 on 2:35 pm
Spot on.
The “joke” here is basically:”What if some pathetic, fat girl with a big nose got up on stage? No one who looks like that can be talented.”
It’s just a lame joke. It’s not funny.
It would have been so much *funnier* to show Jewel-in-a-fat-suit singing Jewel, and then show some ordinary girl in cheap pants and too much eyeliner pouring her heart and soul into some Aretha Franklin — and leaving Jewel in the dust.
July 15th, 2010 on 5:23 pm
Or a “rock star” getting up there and getting beaten at his/her own song by an amateur. Or said rock star covering someone else’s song badly. Or anything other than this lameness.
July 16th, 2010 on 5:13 pm
Let me get this straight: Jewel is catching flack for goofing on people at a karaoke bar. Just when was it that karaoke became a sacred cultural icon?
July 16th, 2010 on 5:41 pm
Just when was it that karaoke became a sacred cultural icon?
2000 A.D.
July 16th, 2010 on 5:45 pm
Just when was it that karaoke became a sacred cultural icon?
It’s not about the karaoke for me, necessarily. It’s about the broad principle that it’s funny to poke fun at the powerful, but generally not funny when the powerful poke fun at the less-powerful. I’m not angry at Jewel or anything. It just didn’t make me laugh at all.
July 17th, 2010 on 8:26 am
In no way did I get the impression that she was making fun of people less attractive than her.
The people who were there seemed to enjoy it.
And, you take your karaoke way too seriously.
July 17th, 2010 on 11:27 am
Lame. Washington post did this with a classical music player on the subway. This was done years ago.
July 17th, 2010 on 12:10 pm
“Just when was it that karaoke became a sacred cultural icon?
2000 A.D.”
Deepest apologies to the tens of people who actually take karaoke seriously.
July 17th, 2010 on 1:42 pm
Sigh. I shouldn’t really have to explain this, but since you made such a nice apology to my offhand Duets reference, I’ll go ahead.
Karaoke is a multi-million dollar industry, billions if you count Japan. Business is declining right now, both in traditional karaoke, and in music video games like Rock Band, but it’s still something that hundreds of people do in every city in every night. And based on the numbers alone, it’s clearly something that someone “actually takes seriously.”
Relatively few people “take it seriously” in the sense that true obsessives are never the bulk of any leisure activity. But since it’s responsible for millions of hours of entertainment, millions of dollars in retail (and drink) sales, is somewhere in the DNA of American Idol, and I enjoy it, I “take it seriously” in the sense that I think about what it means that people do karaoke, and I think it’s worthwhile to speculate about the meanings it might have even if people don’t think about them explicitly or even consciously.
Don’t you believe that it’s worth thinking about how we use our leisure time (and money) to create an image of ourselves? Everyone who complains about trophies for everyone in Little League or think it’s odd that poker became America’s pastime is doing the same thing. I bet if you tried, you could do it too.
July 17th, 2010 on 6:17 pm
Okay, Slash shows up in disguise during a “Rock Band” night somewhere, plays guitar like no other and reveals himself at the end of the set. Are the hack guitarists in the house offended? I’m betting he gets a standing ovation. If someone bases their sense of self-worth on their performance at karaoke night, they have issues that karaoke can’t resolve.
July 18th, 2010 on 1:27 am
Sure, the hack guitarists aren’t offended. What would be the point?
July 18th, 2010 on 1:29 pm
Josh – I really enjoyed reading your analysis of Jewel’s undercover karaoke stunt.
At the risk of sounding serious, the karaoke industry is shifting from traditional karaoke (karaoke machines and CDs) to online communities, download stores, mobile apps, cable television channels (disclosure: I’m a karaoke product specialist at The KARAOKE Channel). There are thousands of people who sing online everyday and have access to 1000s of songs to sing online. Access to sing karaoke wherever and whenever you want has never been easier.
One of the great things about karaoke is that it gives the opportunity to anyone to sing in a safe environment – it doesn’t matter what you look like or if you sing off-key. And one of the most interesting things about listening to karaoke singers, is the element of surprise – you never know what the performance will be like until it starts – it’s almost always totally original, although there are a few singers who imitate the original singer really well and those are equally entertaining for that reason. As long as the singer tries their best, the audience encourages them to continue no matter how well they sing.
Yes, there are people who take karaoke (wherever they sing it) very seriously, but in general, karaoke singers and fans are kind and encouraging to others. We know how much courage it takes to get up on that stage and sing in front of a crowd, or to make one of your online recordings public. But we also know that doing so is a great way to build self-confidence, and that is part of the attraction – the way you feel after singing – is great!
Thanks for the insight you’ve given to the Jewel karaoke episode of last week. If you or your readers are looking to get in on the fun, The KARAOKE Channel online has responded to Jewel’s undercover karaoke gig with an Undercover Karaoke Challenge in the style of Jewel – sing Foolish Games or Who Will Save Your Soul in the style of Jewel – for fun! we would really love to hear you sing! http://lounge.thekaraokechannel.com/undercover-karaoke-challenge-in-the-style-of-jewel/
July 18th, 2010 on 8:56 pm
Jewel was generous. That video did not make me laugh, but it made me like Jewel even more.
Celebrity status today creates serious problems for celebrities. They endure obsessed lunatics (John Lennon, Shawn Johnson). Past early childhood, uncritical acceptance corrodes the soul. Artists and writers commit suicide when their work is uncritically accepted (Rothko, Hemingway). Bands break up when they realize that they could record forty minutes of belching and farting and go platinum (the Beatles White Album). An academic mathematician told me that the Journal of the American Mathematical Society tried blind peer review once but had to quit when big shot mathematicians at Prestige U complained that their fingernail clippings did not receive due reverence. The King Incognito scenario confers enormous advantages. Solzhenitsyn wrote “for the desk drawer”.
Did Jewel diminish the karaoke experience? No. Of course there’s a lot of unacknowledged talent around, and a lot of luck involved in being in the right place at the right time to snag the brass ring. Who disputes that? I remember a beautiful voice and a competent folk guitar from –it must be 40 years ago–a girl who, it appeared, had been badly burned. She looked like she’d been cast in wax and partly remelted.
Perhaps one day I’ll be there when Jenna Jameson goes undercover at a singles bar.
July 27th, 2010 on 12:16 am
The idea behind the extra padding, false nose and brown wig was to fool the audience into thinking this person was who she said she was. If she had only come on wearing a wig it would be a dead give-away that it was just Jewel in a wig. The same applies for the other items of disguise. The “joke” behind it all was not the fact that some ‘fat, ugly jill punchclock’ can sing like Jewel it’s the fact that she can sing so remarkably like Jewel. If you don’t find the humour in that, say so but don’t give us some wounded soul, sacriligious diatribe. This is a huge over-reaction to a bit of fun.
July 31st, 2010 on 10:00 am
I agree with Josh that it was kind of lame and not funny (it was more about the divinity of celebrity — Zeus walks among us! — then it was humor). The reversal of the populism of karaoke was also there. But the people at the bar got a huge kick out of it, who wouldn’t?