Through this tidal wave of publicity, no one has stopped to wonder why a forty-something, avant-garde pianist would actually want to set this record. What was a professional musician doing putting on such a crass stunt?
The weird world record has traditionally been the province of the amateur. One’s profession isn’t really relevant when it comes to pulling off such feats as owning the longest fingernails in the world or being one of twenty-five people who managed to cram themselves into a Volkswagen Beetle. Conte could have spent his fifty-two-plus hours stunning audiences with his virtuosity (apparently he played everything from Christmas carols to Beatles tunes). But someone with just a few hours of piano lessons under his belt could, conceivably, take the record away. By contrast, few could sit on stage for even five minutes and hold their own performing with an orchestra. And yet, it suddenly seems that we are more interested in the mere performer than in the bona fi de virtuoso. Everywhere you look, “ordinary peo ple” are emerging as entertainment personalities. Secretaries, students, and social workers who want to be singers, chefs, and hockey players are capturing the attention of countries, continents, the world. Thousands try out for Canadian Idol; millions watch and vote. A recent Idol spinoff on Arab satellite TV, called Superstar 2, turned an unknown Libyan dental student into a hero and made headlines in four newspapers in Canada. On shows such as cbc’s Making The Cut and nbc’s The Next Action Star, aspiring hockey players and actors audition for a chance at stardom. (The prize for the former is a place at an nhl training camp and for the latter a starring role in an action movie, Hit Me, produced by Joel Silver, executive producer of The Matrix.) Meanwhile, amateur contests of every sort, from competitive eating to spelling bees, pop up on national TV.
Consider William Hung, who earlier this year earned enthusiastic applause singing for fans at a Toronto Blue Jays game. Hung is the portly nerd with the buck-toothed grin who became a professional singer on the strength of his rendition of the song “She Bangs,” by Ricky Martin, in the American Idol tryouts. He famously didn’t make the cut, but his off-key, unselfconscious, and utterly joyful performance earned him a global following. He was, quite simply, the worst singer ever! And he sold more than a hundred and fifty thousand copies of his first album, Inspiration. His second album, Hung For The Holidays, is due later this month. Despite being unable to carry a tune, compose lyrics, write music, or even shake his booty to the beat, Hung has stumbled into the kind of career most professional musicians dream of. He is the poster boy for a new professional amateur class.
The dictionary describes an amateur (from the Latin amare, to love) as a person “who engages in a pursuit, study, science, or sport as a pastime rather than as a profession.” And leisure classes throughout time have always made room for the dabbler and the dilettante. In our own times, we seek to improve ourselves with activities such as planting a flower garden, taking piano lessons, and running in a marathon, despite — or because of — the absence of monetary or professional reward. As Steven Gelber, a professor at Santa Clara University, writes in his book Hobbies: Leisure and the Culture of Work in America, amateur pastimes are, in fact, meant to be a haven from the stresses of making a living. Hobbies, he writes, “passively condemn the work environment by offering a contrast to meaningless jobs.”
But a new force more powerful than the urge for mere self-improvement is changing this perception of amateur activity as a diversion from career, rather than a career in and of itself. As mass-media pop culture reaches into every nook and cranny of our lives, amateur and specialist are conflating, giving rise to the ultimate oxymoron: the expert amateur.
The rise of the professional amateur in the guise of the small-town singing hero, or comedian, or hockey player suggests that anyone can be an expert, anyone can be an entertainer. And the Internet, that great organ of democracy, has further encouraged the trend. There are some 1.5 million active bloggers online, many of whom feel free to critique TV shows, restaurants, books, or wars, without the slightest bit of professional training. Why should we listen to them? Why not?
The phenomenon of amateur-professional entertainment has created figures such as Ken Hechtman, the database programmer from Montreal who jumped headfirst into the Afghan war and contributed jovial, if not exactly informative, freelance commentary to both a Web site and an alternative weekly newspaper. Hechtman ended up a prisoner of the Taliban, who eventually let him go, giving him a place in the international press and access to an even broader audience.
Hechtman is a fine example of the professional amateur, someone who gains notice, attention, and even profit from doing something in an utterly amateurish — and yet somehow appealing — way. The competitors we see in the Olympics (“amateurs” who actually train full-time) induce in us a sense of awe at their example of self-sacrifice and commitment; the professional amateurs we now regularly encounter, on the other hand, exude the kind of bumbling optimism to which we can more readily relate. Our interest in, and affection for, this burgeoning group of entertainers derives from the fact that their actions are both attention-getting and in the realm of the possible. We, too, can sing very badly, can play video games, can sneak our way into a war zone and get arrested. No longer are we looking for the exclusive, the incredible, the transcendent. We are interested in the possible, the small, the amateur — that which we could conceivably do.
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