Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 12

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Popular Culture Review

hell" (McKay 166)—of America’s hypervisual distortion in "painting
the senses white!" (Kellum-Rose 49). The formerly popular slogan,
"Black is Beautiful," may illustrate well the dilemma of the
"colored" standing out but wishing to assimilate with mainstream
American culture. Again, Emerson realized the potential problem by
declaring that "the eye is final; beyond color we cannot go" (Journals
14:166, emphasis added). All those well-meaning civil-rights
workers and stumping politicians who insist that "the color of one's
skin matters less than the content of one's heart" might well be
ignoring potent racial and political realities in America the
Hypervisual.
But whether or not one accepts these analyses of American sensory
responses to music, one cannot evade the omnipresent obsession that
popular songs have with the eye. A glance at the song titles from the
recent 50’s, 60's, and 70's—all of which can be found in Joseph
Edwards' Top lO's and Trivia of Rock and Roll and Rhythm and
Blues—bears out the inevitable ocular bias. From "I Saw Those
Harbor Lights" to "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise" to "Glow,
Little Glow Worm" to "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes" to "The
Yellow Rose of Te xas," accompanying "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon
You," to "Great Balls of Fire" and "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes,"
we find the popular American "transcendentalism" at work—"On a
Clear Day, You Can See Forever" and like the transparent eyeball,
become "part and parcel of God." We "study" such popular
phenomena because, like Johnny Nash, in 1972, we want to declare, "I
Can See Clearly Now." Or, like Kenny Rogers, we want to ask of our
potential spouse, "Baby, Do You Love as Good as You Look?" Jonathan
Edwards was afraid that Satan might come "disguised as an Angel of
Light"; and we ourselves want to know the truth behind the images of
friends, lovers, politicians and cellophane-wrapped boxes of cookies.
From state anthems touting New Mexico's "sky of azure" that is
"kissed by the golden sunshine" to the cowboy/railroader traveling
song—"Let the Midnight Special shine its light on me"—we discover
the "everlastin' light" of the American Religion of Vision—a light
we must both absorb and question if we want to consider ourselves bona
fide citizens of what Emerson and Whitman called the
"incomparable materials" of "these United States" ("Poet" 238).
From John Cage’s musical compositions featuring the popping of
flashbulbs at bare pianos and stages, to Andy Warhol's gigantic