“It’s not cheating if you don’t get caught.” I have a lot of buddies who are big NASCAR fans and I’ve heard that phrase repeated by them many times over the years. NASCAR fans as a group have the utmost in loyalty to their favorite drivers. Corporate sponsors (advertisers) absolutely love NASCAR precisely because of that loyalty. They say that the fans will go out and buy the product that is emblazoned on their favorite driver’s car in high percentages. Higher than any other sport, by far.
The truth is, it’s still cheating even if you don’t get caught. I think maybe, that these NASCAR fans are throwing up a defense mechanism in the event that their guy does get caught. In other words, it implies that all are cheating and only the unfortunate get caught.
I’m a big baseball fan and I used to hear the “not cheating if…” line from other fans before steroids became an issue. Gaylord Perry and Phil Neikro made it to the hall of fame throwing the spitter. They were considered wily or crafty.
So, there seems to be varying degrees of cheating. It’s O.K. if you are “crafty” but, introducing an artificial substance into your body to make you stronger, faster, and quicker to heal is not.
Here is an article about an upcoming movie about Milli Vanilli.
The writer/director Jeff Nathanson is quoted…
“I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of fakes and frauds, and in this case, you had guys who pulled off the ultimate con, selling 30 million singles and 11 million albums and then becoming the biggest laughing-stocks of pop entertainment”
So, Mr. Nathanson is calling the subject of his movie fakes, frauds, in other words, cheaters. This charge of misrepresentation was based on the fact that they didn’t sing on their records. The business people behind the music thought that the real singers didn’t look good enough to sell records in the post MTV climate so, they had a couple of people who looked “better” lip sync.
This was understandable because, at the time, there were a lot of successful records by great looking people that were crap. Conversely, there were good records by not so great looking people that were being ignored.
As the technology improved, it became easy to make anyone sound great on a record. If a singer comes in late on a phrase, you just digitally edit it back to where it’s supposed to be. If they sing out of tune, use the pitch corrector. I would be very willing to bet that it is impossible to find a major label release where these devices are not employed. I even hear the old pitch corrector kicking in on live performances by major artists.
Is the use of digital editing a totally different animal then what Milli Vanilli did? Or, is it the same thing at a lesser degree. Are there varying levels of cheating or not.
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Tags: cheating, Milli Vanilli, NASCAR
Jayne d'Arcy wrote,
I wouldn’t call it cheating, but I do think digital editing and alteration can become a crutch. I do love listening to “perfect” music on CDs, but I really enjoy going back to my warped and scratchy old vinyl records to listen to voices nearly untouched by the digital age. There is something raw and truly alive about listening to music like that. It’s also the reason I love to stop and listen to a good street guitarist.
Link | February 16th, 2007 at 12:31 am