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Soul Train: The New Surveillance and Popular Music*
Gary T. Marx
Videos are watching me
But dat is not stopping me
Let dem cum wid dem authority
An dem science and technology
But Dem can’t get de Reggae out me head.[1]
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Zephaniah
Watch therefore, for you do not know
What hour your lord is coming.
Rapture by Steel Prophet
I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places
this heart of mine embrace.
I. Kahal and S. Fain
Contemporary surveillance methods and popular culture both reflect distinctive kinds of soul training. The title of this article plays off of Michele Foucault’s (1977) study of modern means of training the person to be compliant. It also draws from popular rhythm and blues and disco musical culture. Soul Train was a 1970s song title and a popular TV musical program. In connecting these two markedly disparate uses of the term I call attention to the close links between surveillance and culture and control and entertainment.
In considering soul training, Foucault was talking primarily about emerging modern organizational forms of control in the prison, workplace and school. Popular
culture (and music in particular) as entertainment and recreation, might seem very far from the sober hard worlds of surveillance and control. However,music along with television, film, literature and advertisements can also serve as a kind of soul training, alongside of the more familiar formal organizational structures.
Most analysis of information technology and surveillance uses printed words and numbers and looks at structures and behavior. As important as historical, social, philosophical, legal, and policy analyses are, they are not sufficient for a broad understanding. We also need cultural analysis. This article considers surveillance in
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* In volume edited by E. Leichtman, forthcoming.This article expands on the musical section in G. Marx, “Electric Eye in the Sky: Some Reflections on the New Surveillance and Popular Culture” in D. Lyon and E. Zureik (eds.), Computers, Surveillance & Privacy, 1996. Thanks to my sole soul mate PARM and to Ellen Leichtman, Torin Monahan and Pat Gillham for critical help.
popular music over the last 50 years. Serious social questions raised by surveillance technologies (such as computer dossiers, video and audio monitoring, drug testing, satellites, and electronic location monitoring and undercover methods)can be better understoodby considering popular culture.Erving Goffman’s admonition to look for big meanings in little things, as well as Shakespeare’s advice, "by indirections find directions out" apply. There are strong intellectual and political grounds for studying popular culture and information technology.
In contrast to most studies of music lyrics in which the focus is on a genre such as country and western, teen pop or rap(e.g., Vannini and Myers 2002, Whitehead 2005), my emphasis is on a particular kind of lyric expressed across a variety of genres. I view the musical themes as a window into knowledge about surveillance and society.
Our sense of surveillance goes beyond anything inherent in the technology and reflects cultural themes and values.Surveillance technology is not simply applied; it is also experienced by users, subjects, and audiences who come to learn its meanings. Cultural analysis of songs and other popular culture forms can tell us about the experience of being watched, or of being a watcher, and how this reflects and creates social phenomena.
Music and visual images are social fabrications (though not necessarily social deceptions). They speak to (and may be intended to create or manipulate) needs, aspirations, and fears. They communicate meaning. They can also reflect the meanings and shared concerns characterizing a given time period and place. There is, of course, a leap from the analyst’s interpretations and impressions to meaning and feelings more generally. Yet seeking to understand subjective experience must be a part of any broad understanding of human affairs.
Certainly the momentous events of the daily news effect popular perceptions and culture.Yet popular culture may play a role in conditioning what is seen as “newsworthy” and in how events are understood and felt.
One of the more intriguing and enduring aspects of contemporary change is the blurring of borders previously taken for granted.[2] Consider surveillance and media content (whether entertainment or news).These are increasingly delivered through the same digital (and often wireless) technology. In addition it is often not possible to draw a clean line between contemporary newsworthy events and popular culture. They may be mutually inspirational (if that isn’t too elegantly put) and interwoven.
Rather than being distinct, popular culture and the news may be intricately involved with each other and with surveillance. Foucault’s emphasis was on the shift of punishment and surveillance away from being grand spectacles in public view. In contrast, the mass communications and public informational expectations and rights that appeared simultaneously in the 19th century (and have in many ways been growing since), bring some aspects of the spectacle ever more graphically into public view.
This is nicely symbolized by the surveillance camera (whether hidden or not) which delivers crime and social control events to the six o’clock news. The same electronic means and messages serve as both surveillance and as communication and entertainment --most frequently, sequentially, but sometimes simultaneously as with “live” helicopter video images of car chases, or Web telecasts or videoconferences.
Surveillance data feed the mass media’s appetite. This in turn can re-enforce cultural beliefs about crime and control and strengthen public support for surveillance as a result of the need demonstrated by the “news” (Mathiesen 1997; Altheide 2002; Doyle 2003). Mass media communication about surveillance may serve as a soft means of social control by offering morality tales of what happens to those caught by panoptic mechanisms and by advertising the presence of control. The media of course may have other consequences such as stimulating resistance to control and encouraging crime.
Real criminals get ideas from television and film. Media creators draw on the news in mixing fact and fiction. Real events generate simulated docu-dramas and mocu-drams that are then offered back (or come to be understood) as “real” representations. Music may be folded into real life events and then communicate about them.
The current violent conflict between some hip hop artists and between them and authorities reflects threats made in the music, as well as real world shootings subsequently reflected in the music. Graffitti wall art may show equivalent interactions (Ferrell 1996).[3]
In a case of life imitating and using art, Sting’s “Every Breath You Take” was popular with police doing surveillance (thus detectives in Boston, and likely elsewhere, played the song while they tailed organized crime figures -Lehr and O’Neil 2000). Or consider the song, “I fought the law and the law won” played during the investigative partying of an undercover agent (Wozencraft 1990).
Surveillance and content may also overlap in the tracking systems that measure mass media consumption –whether the statistical inferences drawn from Nielsen ratings, records from cable and satellite transmissions, internet communication or music purchases. The medium that brings entertainment also reports back on the audience for billing and marketing purposes (a topic we will return to in the conclusion).
In identifying songs I drew on my own and others’ suggestions and searched the Internet for songs with words such as surveillance, watching, police, FBI, DEA, video, spying, big brother and privacy.
Care mustbe taken with respect to the kind of sample conclusions are based on.Clearly, surveillance is not a theme in most popular songs and is under-represented even in protest songs (these initially sang of class and racial injustice and more recently of war, nuclear, famine, AIDS and environmental issues). Not having taken a representative sample, I cannot say with specificity howminimal it is. However, I am confident that the materials here are reasonably reflective of the music that does deal with surveillance.
There are many ways that surveillance and music concerned with it can be categorized. First is consideration of the kind of role playedand the organizational forms present. We can note a distinction between the agent (the watcher or data collector) and the subject (the watched about whom personal information is collected), whether the surveillance involves an organization or an individual and whether or not it is reciprocal. The kind of personal information collected such as visual, auditory, biological, chemical, geographical, or on networks can be considered. A related question involves the kind of technology that is used --from the un-enhanced senses we have seen ever expanding forms such as video, electronic location monitoring, DNA analysis and drug urine testing. We can also ask about evaluation standards.[4] How is use of the technology justified or criticized? Finally there is the question of the presumed goal(s)of the surveillance.
In the discussion below I make reference to all of the above, but I organize the music primarily around the question of goals. Among the most commonly expressed goals are those involving protection, control, the search for and the expression of love, suspicion and protest.
A. Watching as Heavenly and Parental Protection
Praise of an all knowing and protective God is a central theme in religious music. Let us first consider songs for children. The voice here is that of the agent of surveillance (or his or her agent).
Among the best known of all surveillance songs is "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town." The words to this religious panopticon song are well known --Santa "knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake." The message here is one of control and threat –don’t be good because it is right, but be good because you will be externally rewarded and won't get away with bad behavior anyway. Consistent with an age of science --we even have a concern with verification, "He's making a list, he's checking it twice."
Rejecting the notion of possession by the devil and oblivious to environmental determinants (or statistical correlates) of behavior, Santa instructs the child to do the right thing, implying that the child clearly knows what that is, and is capable of doing it. In visiting your town Santabrings the notion of individual responsibility and choice along with presents.
Lullabies promising tripartite protection by God, angels and parents are among the first things a child repetitively hears, even before the words are intellectually understood. Consider:
Go to Sleep
Go to sleep my darling, close your little eyes.
Angels are above us, peeping through the skies.
God is in his heaven, and his watch doth keep.
Time for little children to go to sleep.
Lullaby and Good Night
…Lullaby and good night, thy mother’s delight
Bright angels beside my darling abide
They will guard thee at rest
All Through the Night (Sir Harold Boulton 1884)
Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee,
All through the night;
Guardian angels God will send thee,
…Mother dear her watch is keeping,
All through the night.
God is here, thou’lt not be lonely
…tis not I who guards thee only
…Night’s dark shades will soon be over,
Still my watchful care shall hover.
God with me his watch is keeping,
All through the night.
There are also many adult versions. In the midst of problems, contemporary singer Hilary Duff finds hope in “Some One’s Watching Over Me”:
So I won’t give up
No I won’t break down
Sooner than it seems life turns around
And I will be strong
Even if it all goes wrong
When I’m standing in the dark I’ll still believe
Someone’s watching over me
I’ve seen that ray of light
And it’s my shinning destiny
Many songs promise surveillance as both protection and control.[5] The former is particularly needed when the protected is sleeping and the latter when he or she is awake and faces temptation. Such watching is omnipresent and omniscient.
Jesus Loves His Little Children
…Jesus sees His little children
When they fold their hands to pray;
And however softly they may whisper,
He can hear each word they say.
Jesus sees into the hearts of children,
Ev’ry thought that’s good or ill;
And he knows the ones who truly love Him,
Those who long to do His will;
Like a shepherd, Jesus watches
Over them both night and day,
As he safely guides their little footsteps,
So that they don’t go astray.
Rebecca St. James in “Universe”
…When I’m awake, You see what I’m thinking
and when I’m asleep, You’re watching…
I can’t get away from you.
Conversely there can be alarm over the possibility of not being watched. Ani Difranco’s in “What if No One’s Watching” asks:
…What if no one’s watching
What if when we’re dead, we’re just dead
…What if it’s just us down here
What if god is just an idea
Someone put in your head.
B. Protective Lovers
Another common theme is the yearning for a lover and/or protector by someone who feels weak or vulnerable and seeks to be a subject of surveillance. Such songs seeking protection were much more likely to be sung (and perhaps written) by females than by males, at least until recently.Consider the familiar song "Someone to Watch over Me":
Looking everywhere haven’t found him yet… There’s a somebody I’m longing to see, I hope that he turns out to be Someone to watch over me… I’m a little lamb who’s lost in the woods I know I could always be good To one who’ll watch over me… Won’t you tell him, please, to put on some speed Follow my lead, oh, how I need Someone to watch over me
In “Inside of Me” Madonna expresses a near magical faith in the protective power of the lover:
I keep a picture of you
Next to my bed at night
And when I wake up scared
I know I’ll find you there
Watching over me
Such songs are the passive expression of a hope or a plea, rather than an active seeking out of the individual. In contrast, males as surveillance agents have been more likely to write and sing about their prowess as active protectors, watchers and discoverers. Watching over can have both a metaphorical and a sexual meaning:
Emerson, Lake & Palmer in “Watching Over You”:
Sleep tight, sleep tight.
Know everything is alright.
And tonight I will be here
Watching over you.
For tonight and forever, be watching over you.
So sleep, little darling, sleep on through.
I will be watching over you.
In “Look Through My Eyes” Phil Collins promises protection through his watching:
It will be alright
You’ll see
Trust me
I’ll be there watching over you
Supertramp offers protection in “Listen to Me Please”:
Please believe me and all this will be yours
Your vision will be clear, your pain will disappear
You’ll know that I’ll be watching over you
I’ll chase your blues away
The value of the protective gaze can also be seen in songs about its disappearance. In “Fields of Fire” Bon Jovi laments a lost love in singing, “there is no-one watching over me tonight and I’m afraid to turn out the lights.”
C. Looking for Love and Loving Looks
In their 1957 song "Searchin'," the Coasters express a common ballad theme --the search for true love. Unlike later songs, this is not a threat, nor is it bragging. The actions are not motivated by an untrustworthy femme fatale, nor by the desire to gratify a secret obsession. Instead, the song represents a statement of determination, optimism, and yearning as the singer proclaims that he will "find her" --the ideal woman.
The singers compare their search to that of the detective. They are like the Northwest Mountie and will bring in the ideal woman "someday." “Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, Sergeant Friday, Charlie Chan, and Boston Blackie” have nothing on them. There is an explicit link between the male gaze and the gaze of the professional surveillant.
Hank Williams reports success and no need to look further in “Hey Good Lookin’”[6]:
:
…No more lookin'
I know I've been tooken
how's about keepin' steady company
…Say hey good lookin'
whatcha got cookin'
how's about cookin' something up with me
The surveillance in "On Every Street," by Dire Straits involves locating a particular individual. The song refers to the tracks increasingly left by inhabitants of an electronically and chemically marked world: "There's gotta be a record of you someplace, you gotta be on somebody's books" and "somewhere your fingerprints remain concrete." This involves a sadder, less hopeful search than that of the Coasters; perhaps the yearning is deepened because the singer knows exactly what he has lost.
Other romantic songs focus not on watching to find, but rather as an expression or generator of love. Here there is none of the suspiciousness and hard-edged, obsessive watching and/or covert surveillance seen in some songs.