Xu Peidong — The Face of the Mainstream!

2006/5/29 0:52:25

What "Shajiabang" actually is doesn't really matter. The only thing worth noting is that "Shajiabang" is not a word that can be typed directly with pinyin input. Of course, this conclusion is irrelevant to today. Today, because of a Northeastern man named Xu Peidong, Shajiabang is no longer Shajiabang, and the mainstream has become even more mainstream.

Xu Peidong — from any angle you look — is the mainstream today. And being mainstream, he naturally has the face of the mainstream. Lu Songling suddenly popping up can of course have N possible interpretations, from the most nauseating to the least. The feelings of this once-mainstream figure who has been un-mainstream for N years are probably not hard to understand. But have today's mainstream figures ever considered that they too will one day be just as un-mainstream?

Waving around a 50,000-yuan RMB contract, sporting the face of the mainstream, with media flies swarming in waves — this constitutes the all-too-familiar isomorphic entertainment. This isomorphic entertainment has amusement-ified things for far too long and is not worth discussing. But then this Northeastern man went and huffed out one last line: "And who can prove that tune was written by him?" Sigh — has the steamed bun been steamed-bunned to the point that men now feel they must display extra steamed-bun-ness to feel manly? Tragic, tragic! Must one abandon decency to become mainstream?

The only thing that can be asserted with certainty is this: for today's mainstream figures, including the Northeastern man, the odds of your works outlasting "Shajiabang" are even smaller than the odds of media flies ceasing to chase after stench. "Shajiabang" has been around for forty-odd years by now, and how long will your so-called works last? The commercialization of music and the politicization of music are merely shameless synonyms of each other, having absolutely nothing to do with art. This is probably the only commonality worth mentioning between the two different generations of mainstream figures!