WEBVTT NOTE 23. Rebecca Black’s “Friday”: A Libertarian Allegory 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.940 Rebecca Black's Friday, a libertarian allegory 2 00:00:05.940 --> 00:00:11.620 The astonishing popularity of Rebecca Black's Friday video, which became the YouTube meme 3 00:00:11.620 --> 00:00:18.260 of all memes in the course of a wild six weeks, has mystified many critics. 4 00:00:18.260 --> 00:00:23.340 Was it shared and watched so wildly because it was so bad? 5 00:00:23.340 --> 00:00:28.460 Certainly the overwhelming judgement on the part of viewers is that it is atrocious. 6 00:00:28.460 --> 00:00:34.300 And yet it is hard to know what that means, since 85 million people not only watched the 7 00:00:34.300 --> 00:00:38.300 video but also downloaded the song, bought the ringtone and devoured every available 8 00:00:38.300 --> 00:00:42.600 bit of news about the singer and the song. 9 00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:49.000 Using the principle of demonstrated preference, this music video ranks as the most popular 10 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:51.340 in human history. 11 00:00:51.340 --> 00:00:56.740 Perhaps it is the digital age version of Mel Brooks' smash Broadway play The Producers, 12 00:00:56.740 --> 00:01:02.300 A story about an attempt to write a play so bad that it flops on the first night. 13 00:01:02.300 --> 00:01:05.320 But in Brooks's hilarious telling, the results were the opposite. 14 00:01:05.320 --> 00:01:12.520 The play was so bad that it was brilliant, and it became a smash success, however inadvertently. 15 00:01:12.520 --> 00:01:17.960 Lovers of liberty are often drawn to such scenarios because they highlight the unknowability 16 00:01:17.960 --> 00:01:22.820 of the future, the unpredictability of human choice, and the way in which the intentions 17 00:01:22.820 --> 00:01:27.980 of the planners – in this case, the producers and writers – are easily upended by consumer 18 00:01:27.980 --> 00:01:33.260 choice, which is the driving force of economic progress. 19 00:01:33.260 --> 00:01:38.420 The producers-like irony is deepened in the case of Black's Friday video, because it 20 00:01:38.420 --> 00:01:43.240 was not intended as a parody, or an attempt to create a flop. 21 00:01:43.240 --> 00:01:47.820 That makes it all the more brilliant as a piece of viral art. 22 00:01:47.820 --> 00:01:54.620 It somehow captured an archetype, a bubblegum pop, but with an innocence and the absence 23 00:01:54.620 --> 00:01:57.060 of an edge. 24 00:01:57.060 --> 00:02:01.100 Kids say, it is awful and they hate it. 25 00:02:01.100 --> 00:02:04.260 They do not, despite what they say. 26 00:02:04.260 --> 00:02:08.660 Teens often claim to hate what they really love, as only a passing familiarity with teen 27 00:02:08.660 --> 00:02:11.780 romance patterns illustrates. 28 00:02:11.780 --> 00:02:18.180 The girl who can't stop talking about the guy she hates is surely protesting too much. 29 00:02:18.180 --> 00:02:23.220 Musically, the song wouldn't seem to offer that much, but I would point out that its 30 00:02:23.220 --> 00:02:26.920 wordplay is not entirely conventional. 31 00:02:26.920 --> 00:02:32.740 The repeated placement of a three-syllable word, partying, into a duple meter creates 32 00:02:32.740 --> 00:02:37.980 some off-accent downbeats that are not entirely intuitive. 33 00:02:37.980 --> 00:02:45.580 How more significant is the underlying celebration of liberation that the day Friday represents? 34 00:02:45.580 --> 00:02:49.220 The kids featured in the video are of junior high age, a time when adulthood is beginning 35 00:02:49.220 --> 00:02:56.980 to dawn, and with it, the realization of the captive state that the public school represents. 36 00:02:56.980 --> 00:03:01.780 From the time that children are first institutionalized in these tax-funded cement structures, they 37 00:03:01.780 --> 00:03:04.180 are told, the rules! 38 00:03:04.180 --> 00:03:10.060 Show up, obey the rules, accept the grades you are given and never even think of escaping 39 00:03:10.060 --> 00:03:12.180 until you hear the bell. 40 00:03:12.180 --> 00:03:17.180 If you do escape even peacefully of your own choice, you will be declared truant, which 41 00:03:17.180 --> 00:03:22.840 is the intentional and unauthorized absence from compulsory school. 42 00:03:22.840 --> 00:03:27.620 This prison-like environment runs from Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to late afternoon, 43 00:03:27.620 --> 00:03:31.940 for at least 10 years of every child's life. 44 00:03:31.940 --> 00:03:35.620 It's been called the 12-year sentence for good reason. 45 00:03:35.620 --> 00:03:43.840 At some point, every kid in public school gains consciousness of the strange reality. 46 00:03:43.840 --> 00:03:50.260 You can acquiesce as the civic order demands, or you can protest and be declared a bum and 47 00:03:50.260 --> 00:03:53.740 a loser by society. 48 00:03:53.740 --> 00:03:59.740 Friday beautifully illustrates the sheer banality of a life spent in this prison-like system 49 00:03:59.740 --> 00:04:02.740 and the Prospect of Liberation that the Weekend Means. 50 00:04:02.740 --> 00:04:11.060 Partying, in this case, is just another word for freedom from state authority. 51 00:04:11.060 --> 00:04:15.460 The larger segment of the video then deals with what this window of liberty, the weekend, 52 00:04:15.460 --> 00:04:22.000 means in the life of someone otherwise ensnared in a thicket of statism. 53 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:25.820 Keep in mind here that the celebration of Friday in this context means more than it 54 00:04:25.820 --> 00:04:30.140 would for a worker in a factory, for the worker is free to come and go, to apply for a job 55 00:04:30.140 --> 00:04:35.060 or quit, to negotiate terms of a contract or whatever. 56 00:04:35.060 --> 00:04:40.280 All of this is denied to the kid in public school. 57 00:04:40.280 --> 00:04:44.300 In the video, the rush to comply and conform to the system begins with the main character 58 00:04:44.300 --> 00:04:49.620 in the morning, when the drill begins with waking up and preparing to go. 59 00:04:49.620 --> 00:04:55.040 She eats cereal for breakfast, a bit of trivia that one would hardly expect in a pop song, 60 00:04:55.040 --> 00:05:01.680 But a first sign that the topic is reality-based and not idyllic or romanticized. 61 00:05:01.680 --> 00:05:03.600 And where is she headed? 62 00:05:03.600 --> 00:05:09.560 To catch the official tax-funded school bus, which, though it is not shown, we know is 63 00:05:09.560 --> 00:05:14.980 painted yellow today just as it has been from time immemorial, since there is never really 64 00:05:14.980 --> 00:05:19.440 progress or change in the state-run system. 65 00:05:19.440 --> 00:05:23.540 The tax-fueled machine comes to your door to snatch you away from home, but you are 66 00:05:23.540 --> 00:05:28.780 are loved and valued in order to transport you to the cement structure that teaches you 67 00:05:28.780 --> 00:05:35.380 about the glory of fitting in and believing what you are supposed to believe. 68 00:05:35.380 --> 00:05:42.540 But then, the protagonist experiences a foreshadowing of the liberation at hand. 69 00:05:42.540 --> 00:05:47.580 Arriving before the school bus is a car with my friends. 70 00:05:47.580 --> 00:05:52.240 They are smiling and inviting her to join them on the ride. 71 00:05:52.240 --> 00:05:56.800 And it is in this context that she confronts that glorious institution that is otherwise 72 00:05:56.800 --> 00:06:03.880 denied to her, and every student in government school, human choice. 73 00:06:03.880 --> 00:06:08.820 It might at first seem like a trivial choice, whether to sit in the front seat or the backseat. 74 00:06:08.820 --> 00:06:14.900 But the point is not the choice set, the point is the opportunity to exercise some degree 75 00:06:14.900 --> 00:06:19.580 of human volition, to use one's own brain to control one's own body. 76 00:06:19.580 --> 00:06:25.500 I make my mind up and live with the consequences of that choice. 77 00:06:25.500 --> 00:06:29.980 It is a similar situation to anyone who has found himself led out of prison. 78 00:06:29.980 --> 00:06:35.300 These people will report the sense of elation that they feel in even the smallest opportunity 79 00:06:35.300 --> 00:06:38.020 to make a choice on their own. 80 00:06:38.020 --> 00:06:44.980 At this moment of choice, note that the melody departs from its single note, drill-like recitation 81 00:06:44.980 --> 00:06:50.660 to suddenly rise up a fifth, a musical interval that has traditionally been used as a trumpet-like 82 00:06:50.660 --> 00:06:52.340 announcement. 83 00:06:52.340 --> 00:06:57.580 And once surrounded by friends of her own choosing, the imaginings of Friday's end 84 00:06:57.580 --> 00:07:04.020 become more real, and thus does the melody become more complex and celebratory, exploring 85 00:07:04.020 --> 00:07:08.720 a great range of musical colours and rhythms. 86 00:07:08.720 --> 00:07:13.180 The protagonist returns again and again to the profound meaning behind the seemingly 87 00:07:13.180 --> 00:07:17.980 A trivial choice to sit in one seat or another. Again, it is not the choice set that matters 88 00:07:17.980 --> 00:07:23.420 here, but the reality of choice itself that is otherwise denied to her and all her friends 89 00:07:23.420 --> 00:07:26.060 in the state-run system. 90 00:07:26.060 --> 00:07:31.580 The remainder of the video features scenes of partying, which turns out not to be about 91 00:07:31.580 --> 00:07:37.140 drugs or drinking, but merely hanging around in yards and milling about with friends. There 92 00:07:37.140 --> 00:07:42.040 is no attempt here to manufacture a predetermined order, no standing in lines or obeying some 93 00:07:42.040 --> 00:07:47.920 on Central Plan, rather the beauty is seen in the pure fact of voluntary human association 94 00:07:47.920 --> 00:07:52.440 with kids milling around and joining this group or that wearing clothes of their own 95 00:07:52.440 --> 00:07:57.200 choosing and talking with friends of their own choosing. 96 00:07:57.200 --> 00:08:01.600 Even the recitation of the days of the week, a portion of the video that has been most 97 00:08:01.600 --> 00:08:08.700 subjected to ridicule, underscores the theme of captivity and liberation. 98 00:08:08.700 --> 00:08:15.180 is there to do in prison, but count the days. 99 00:08:15.180 --> 00:08:21.380 In story and legend, the prisoner watches the light outside and makes tick marks on 100 00:08:21.380 --> 00:08:24.500 the wall to mark the passage of time. 101 00:08:24.500 --> 00:08:31.260 So it is with this protagonist, who uses calendar pages to do the same. 102 00:08:31.260 --> 00:08:37.400 When she finally announces elatedly that I don't want the weekend to end, she is expressing 103 00:08:37.400 --> 00:08:54.000 The Video ends with the hope that there will be no return to the 12-year sentence, but 104 00:08:54.000 --> 00:09:02.520 rather that partying could become a permanent state of being, not just for her but for everyone. 105 00:09:02.520 --> 00:09:07.560 To be sure, I'm not arguing that all of this was overtly intended by the songwriter or 106 00:09:07.560 --> 00:09:08.560 the singer. 107 00:09:08.560 --> 00:09:13.960 The point, rather, is that the plight, the hopes and the dreams that are reflected in 108 00:09:13.960 --> 00:09:20.400 this video, however inadvertently, tap into a sensibility and a longing of a generation 109 00:09:20.400 --> 00:09:27.080 for a certain kind of freedom from a system that has ensnared them against their will. 110 00:09:27.080 --> 00:09:33.320 This might be the driving force of its popularity, and precisely why something that people claim 111 00:09:33.320 --> 00:09:36.680 not to like is evidently so loved. 112 00:09:36.680 --> 00:09:43.680 A childlike dream of Friday, and what it represents for kids trapped in public school, kids who 113 00:09:43.680 --> 00:09:48.820 are transported around on tax-funded buses and ordered around by tax-funded propagandists 114 00:09:48.820 --> 00:09:56.400 for the state, is a plausible allegory for the plight of all people, imprisoned in state-controlled 115 00:09:56.400 --> 00:09:57.640 Environments.