Westernism in the Grand Ole Opry
With my brain now primed to look for macro-sociological trends, I couldn’t help but notice some elements of the Grand Ole Opry, country music’s crowning achievement show. So here are some of my thoughts in no particular coherent structure or argument. Generally in the past six years, the South has not received a great media image. Most likely due to chasing clicks and the liberal leaning of journalists, a person from the North could easily define the entire South as a toxic Christian nationalistic region against LGTQ+ rights and books, just from reading the news. I mean, who can blame them when the most common Southern men talked about in the news come in the form of shaming Ted Cruz or Trump (justified or not). What this leaves the rest of the country with is a stereotype to fill in the blanks of where the news should be providing unbiased comprehensive pictures.
However, in stark contrast, at the Grand Ole Opry, I watched a muscular, tall, stereotypically Southern looking man scream in support of Bailey Zimmerman, a 22-year old long-haired, skinny country music star. While I don’t believe in judging based on looks, the contrast was not lost on me. Yes, I acknowledge that the news is not comprehensive, Southern bias or not, they definitely don’t show a grown Southern man cheering over a pop star like a teenage girl. And, just personally, this whole experience has further opened my eyes to the crutch I use the news for to stay informed, mainly due to realistic constraints.
Shifting topics, the foremost trend that I noticed, the type that slaps you in the face, was the presence of advertisements in between the singers. While I have been to concerts where advertising has been on shirts, posters, or pamphlets, the distinguishing factor at the Grand Ole Opry was the emcee reading aloud ads in between singers. Overall, I was left with an air of artificiality throughout the concert.
First, technically, the Grand Ole Opry is a radio show and my personal social norms expect advertisements in between songs in this form of media. However, the fact that the concertgoers paid $100-$400 for tickets and had to listen to advertisements is incongruent. The Grand Ole Opry could easily send the advertisements to the radio listeners and add in some non-advertisement programming to keep the watchers entertained in between singers. Secondly, advertisers know that the 4,400 people in Grand Ole Opry are a captive audience, meaning they are willing to pay more for their advertisements which translates to a higher pay day for the Grand Ole Opry. Certainly, this is no coincidence.
Furthermore, the advertisement of Humana at the Grand Ole Opry was definitely off-putting. On one hand, as a budding physician and navigator of the healthcare system, I know the dirty moral practices, mainly the economization of human life, that Humana engages with to cut costs and increase profits. On the other hand, viewing the Humana advertisement, I noticed the integration of familial themes when they said, “Humana has always got your back.” Furthermore, Humana is implicitly associating themselves with the Grand Ole Opry, who try and successfully associate themselves with patriotic nationalism, veterans, and Southern roots. While certainly the company is technically entitled to practice business how they want, there lies an incongruence between the morals behind their business practices and this public image they are putting out at the Grand Ole Opry. Overall, this really put into perspective for me American consumerism and its blindness to the capitalistic morals and incongruences their political support creates. Especially in the South, businesses are able to cover up the morally unpalatable side of their capitalist practices with nationalism and family values.
Just based on my description, one may ask why anyone would come to the Grand Ole Opry with its injected artificial consumerism. But, the last performance of the show resolved the tension. One of the hallmark songs, the kind that every Southern knows, is “the Gambler.” When Don Schiltz, the song’s writer, came on to sing it, there was not one voice left not singing (except mine since I didn’t know the song since I was raised in the North). The collective bond was the type where you could reach out and physically hug it. Consciously or unconsciously, every person singing was thinking, “This is real country music. Country music is the South. I am the South. We are the South together.” In addition, the common fashion between all the concertgoers (boots, jeans, plaid, etc), the open dancing of the couples after the show, and the bonding of patriotism for clapping for the veterans all leaves the concertgoer with an undeniable and tangible communion with their fellow people. And, while I noted that businesses use this as facades, this does not make the feeling and bonding any less real.
