Moderator: Sarah Kessler, University of Southern California
Destiny Meadows, “Glittery Gowns, Holiday Cheer, and Caroling Capitalists: [Re]Configuring Intimacy through Modern-Day Christmas Specials”
In 2019, streaming giant Amazon Prime Video released The Kacey Musgraves Christmas Show, a Christmas variety special starring Kacey Musgraves and featuring a revolving door of musical guests including Troye Sivan, Leon Bridges, and the Rockettes. As Musgraves moved through holiday standards like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” her wardrobe, too, continuously changed. Custom Gucci brooches, Giambattista Valli gowns, and Manolo Blahnik pumps provided a stark contrast to the intimacy suggested by her covers of World War II-era classics.
Musgraves’ Christmas Show, though perhaps novel in its brazen nods to designer fashions, comes from a lasting lineage of holiday variety specials—starring prominent figures—that were produced in the latter half of the twentieth century. From Judy Garland (1963) to Dean Martin (1967), and the Captain and Tennille (1976), celebrities have capitalized off the intimate affordances of the televised Christmas variety special. However, a larger communication circuit including new streaming partnerships with musical artists have reconfigured—through both fashion and capital—the imagined domestic space produced by these specialized variety shows. New forms of mediation have redefined such concepts as closeness and attainability while simultaneously reifying celebrity through visual signifiers, specifically through luxury clothing.
This paper examines two musical Christmas variety shows created by pop artists Kacey Musgraves (2019) and Sabrina Carpenter (2024). Drawing on the work of sound and media scholars Christina Baade (2022), Karen McNally (2012), and Eric Drott (2024), I argue that the connection between fashion and present-day media technologies has contributed to shifts in audience perceptions of celebrity intimacy in Christmas programming. I suggest that newer variety shows reify investments in both the celebrity and the streaming services, whose strategic, capital-driven partnerships are demonstrable through changing fashion and visual spectacle.
Clay Conley, “Black T-Shirts and Cargo Pants: The Disguised Labor of Sound Engineers”
Just like theatrical tech crews, sound engineers have a uniform: all black, black work pants, black band t-shirts, and black comfortable sneakers or boots (Curtin and Sanson 2017, Mayer, Banks and Caldwell 2009). Because live music productions center around the spectacle of an artist performing, black clothing allows the laboring body of the sound engineer to blend in with the black stage and curtains of most venues (Kielich 2024). The illusion of invisible laboring bodies can best be described as a “swan effect” (Behr et al. 2016) where essential work is below the surface, behind the musicians, their instruments, and the stage. Beyond wearing black, sound engineer’s technological extensions are visually disguised through cable management, discrete mixing stations, pre-show sound checks, etc.
In amplified venues, sound engineers have audible traces through the balance of the mix, prevalence of feedback, monitor levels, and/or audio effects. During ethnographic research working as and alongside sound engineers at mid-sized independent venues both in Ann Arbor, MI and New York City, I observed that sound engineers work to minimize these audible traces. In addition to invisibility, sound engineers are also inaudible. Jacob Faraday (2021) recognizes this concealment as a culture of control wherein the eponymous sound guy is distinctly masculine.
In this cultural space, essential workers prefer to cease to exist. Sound engineers find pride and success in convincing ticket holders that the artists are the primary actors in the realization of liveness. As visually and audibly disguised laborers serving the success of the performer, a job well done for an engineer hinges on the eclipsing of the barrier between artist and audience. In the pursuit of liveness, mediation, sound engineers and their technology, yearns to be hidden, drawing the audience closer to the living presence (Emmerson 2007) of the artist.
Rebecca Rinsema, “Putting the Brakes on Accelerated Consumer Culture: Pedagogy, Fashion, and Comedy on ‘The Voice’”
The 13-year-old singing competition show ‘The Voice’ can be read as an example of our contemporary accelerated consumer culture. Biannually producers cast singers from all over the United States to compete in becoming the next pop phenom. The show trades on packaging and cycling through the traumatic life journeys of the cast members and attached emotional vocal performances. With a new potential phenom spotlighted every five minutes, roughly, (during ‘The Blinds’), the show can be viewed as a microcosm of the consumer culture it exists within. In this presentation, I complicate the above reading of the show by emphasizing the characteristics of ‘The Voice’ that I argue decelerate consumer culture, and of popular music in particular. Typically, an accelerated consumer culture focuses consumers’ attention on the ‘now’ and ‘next,’ and, while this is true for the attention that audiences pay to the contestants, the attention paid to the coaches requires further framing. The coaches are popular music ‘icons;’ that are seasoned in the music industry; by industry standards, they are old. The coaches, thus, call to mind ‘the past,’ encouraging viewers to locate the contestants’ versions of the songs within a meaningful (nostalgic) historical lineage. As one would expect, the coaches are teachers of the contestants, which encourages viewers to reassess notions of ‘born-with-it’ vocal talent that more easily aligns with accelerated pop music culture. The coaches bring something ‘new’ to the table, in that they position themselves for the reality television medium as fashion influencers (Gwen Stefani, Ariana Grande, Snoop Dogg) and comedians (Michael Buble, Blake Shelton). I read this reinvention of the ‘old standards,’ along with the coaches’ pedagogical and contextualizing functions, as supporting a kind of stasis and continuity of pop culture that works against the inertial motion toward and allure of the ‘always new.’
