Country music as impression management: A meditation on fabricating authenticity

POETICS ELSEVIER

Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205 www.elsevier.nl/locate/poetic

Country music as impression management: A meditation on fabricating authenticity Michael Hughes*

Department of Sociology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 560 McBryde 1tall, Blacksburg, VA 24-061-0137, USA Abstract Without using Goffman's well-known theory of impression management in any conscious way, Richard Peterson, in his Creating country music: Fabricating authenticity (1997), demonstrated that impression management was a central process in creating country music. The present study explicitly links Peterson's ideas about the fabrication of authenticity to Goffman's Presentation of self in everyday life (1959) in an attempt to show that impression management provides a set of concepts and a theory to conceptualize the processes underlying the fabrication and maintenance of authenticity. In addition, the parallel between Peterson's and Goffman's work shows that macrosocial units have to deal with the same problems faced by microsocial actors in fostering and sustaining definitions of the situation, and that the solving of these problems can be understood in much the same way at both levels of analysis. Finally, the present study suggests that concepts used to understand interpersonal interaction can be used to bridge tile gap between culture theories that currently focus separately on the processes of production and consumption of culture. © 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Country music; Authenticity; Impression Management

1. Introduction M y instantaneous reaction to draft chapters of Peterson's Creating country music: Fabricating authenticity (1997) that I was privileged to read was that he was writing about impression management. Peterson had uncovered a pattern o f impression management enacted through collective behaviors at a m a c r o level. This article is an I thank John Ryan, Carolyn J. Kroehler, and Laura Montgomery for comments on the ideas presented herein. * Phone: +1 540 231 8971; Fax: +l 540 231 3860; e-mail: [email protected] 0304-422X/00/$ - see front matter © 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S0304-422X(00)00021-8

186

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

elaboration of that idea, a meditation on Peterson's Creating country music ... (1997) using some ideas from Goffman's Presentation of self in everyday life (1959). One of my guiding assumptions is that the production of culture approach becomes a more complete theory of culture when it shows the linkages between culture consumption (what has recently been termed the auto-production of culture; see the articles by DiMaggio and by Peterson in this volume) and self-conscious culture creation. By linking Peterson's (1997) work to Goffman's (1959) study, I attempt to show that the concepts used in understanding micro-level interaction can be used to bridge these two levels of analysis in the sociology of culture. Illuminating the nature of the authenticity fabrication process in country music as impression management does a number of things. First, it suggests that we can generalize the process of impression management beyond interpersonal interaction to situations in which the meanings that are attributed to actions, whether individual or collective, are important determinants of the next stage of social activity. Second, it shows how the structure of the field of cultural production in country music makes fabrication and maintenance of authenticity a collective activity requiring almost constant attention, while in other kinds of cultural production this activity is more centralized and requires less focused attention. Third, it provides a means of conceptualizing various patterns of activity in authenticity fabrication and maintenance. Fourth, it gives us a model we may be able to use to understand how and why country music has maintained its distinctiveness in the face of serious threats to authenticity. And fifth, it highlights something that is demonstrated in Creating country music: .... but which is never directly expressed: that the production of culture perspective, which has been criticized for not engaging the meanings of cultural expressions (e.g., Griswold, 1987), can, in fact, be about the emergence and transformation of meaning. The criticism of Goffman's framework in The presentation of self in everyday life, that it views individuals as cynical manipulators and for ignoring the deeper significance and meanings of the self (e.g. Manning, 1992), is similar to the criticism of the production perspective that it ignores meanings in expressive symbolism. But the criticisms of Goffman's argument tend to ignore the valuable contribution that it makes to our understanding of how the shared meanings of the self as a performed character are derived. This enacted self is "a dramatic effect that emerges diffusely from a scene that is presented" (Goffman, 1959: 253). "This self does not derive from its possessor, but from the whole scene of his action, being generated by that attribute of local events which renders them interpretable by witnesses" (1959: 252). Put another way, the shared meanings of enacted selves are part of the overall definition of the situation, and are determined not only by individuals' behaviors, but by normative expectations and the nature of the interaction and the settings in which interaction occurs. The social self that results is not merely the sum of the symbolic elements presented, but is an interpretation that emerges from all elements presented together. In much the same way, Peterson showed how meanings embodied in country music have emerged out of the ongoing interactions between producers and consumers over time and from the settings of those interactions. In so doing, Peterson has demonstrated that a production of culture approach that includes audience

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

187

factors as inputs to the production process, and which analyzes culture over time, can contribute significantly to our understanding of how cultural meanings are determined. In his classic work, Goffman showed us how individuals in their everyday lives manage the impressions that others have of them so as to control the behavior that others direct toward them. In doing this, people creatively manipulate how they express themselves and how they appear to others. They also join with others to form small groups who act as teams to stage routines to foster particular definitions of the situation. While not using Goffman's formulation in any conscious way in his 1997 book, Peterson showed how these same sorts of processes were critical to the creation and maintenance of country music as a distinctive cultural form. Although individual performers almost continuously manage their images, and do this in teams of managers, agents, producers, and the like, these are not the central processes in Peterson's scheme. The fabrication of the authenticity of country music was not the product of individuals managing', their impressions, but of the collective activity of participants in a field of cultural production. When people manage impressions, they are attempting to establish a particular definition of the situation. If successful, impression management results in the creation and sharing of a set of meanings, a 'working consensus' on the definition of the situation (Goffman, 1959: 9-10). Authenticity, while not the full embodiment of meaning, is both a critical quality of meaning and a catalyst for other meanings. If a cultural product can be defined as authentic, it has a meaning that is very different from that of the same product that does not have authenticity. As Peterson's account in Creating country m u s ic ... (1997) strongly suggests, if the 1930s audiences had known that Pee Wee King, leader of the Cowboys of the Golden West, was really Frank Kuczynski from Wiscon,~in, or that Dollie and Millie Good of Muleshoe, Texas, were actually Dollie and Millie Goed from East St. Louis, Illinois, the meanings of their performances and of their whole presentation as artists would have been very different. The fabrication of authenticity of cultural products, therefore, involves the fabrication of an important dimension of the shared meaning of those products. In many respects, Goffman was a theorist of interpersonal behavior. And an important strength of his work was in showing how the correct enactment of everyday social rituals by individuals through role playing and impression management is a foundation of the production and reproduction of social structures (Goffman, 1967; Collins, 1986, 1988; Manning, 1992). However, he did not locate the mechanisms of impression management in organizations or institutional structures, but in the social interactions of individuals and small groupings of cooperating individuals who work to sustain a particular definition of the situation. It is clear from Peterson's (1997) analysis of the fabrication of authenticity of country music that impression management is also a macro-level process that functions to control the relations between a field of cultural production and its public, but it is not quite the same process as described by Goffman. While Goffman has individuals and small teams of individuals managing impressions, the fabrication of authenticity occurs at a differen! level of social organization and involves a different social dynamic.

188

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

The fans, buyers, and potential buyers of country music are the audience for whom the fabrication of authenticity of country music is intended. Trying to impress this audience are the industry (producers, marketers, promoters, and radio programmers) and country music artists. The industry and the artists together are a sort of meta-team trying to generate the maximum buying response and adulation from the audience. Their alliance is unsteady because of differing interests, with artists trying to maximize their own fame, popularity, drawing power, and sales, while industry actors are working to maximize profits for their record, concert promotion, and radio businesses. Neither of these sets of actors knows quite what to do to get what they want out of the audience, so they do various things to see what gets a response. In making responses, the audience influences what sorts of presentations and models of country music are expressed, and thus has a strong impact on what is defined as authentic at any particular moment. The authenticity of country music thus produced is not brought about by a social movement, although occasionally social movement organizations have appeared in the history of country music attempting to consciously influence the nature of authenticity in country music (e.g., the ACE case [Peterson, 1978]). Rather, this is collective behavior of industry actors and artists, and is based in generalized beliefs about the existence and nature of the audience and what they will buy.

2. The management of impressions Participants in everyday interaction wish to know more about those they interact with than is possible to determine with certainty in the interaction situation. In place of the hard facts they would prefer to have, people are forced to rely on the inferences they can make from the nature of the social situation and from the behavior and appearance of others in it. These inferences are impressions, and they are in large part the result of the expressiveness of others in the situation. This expressiveness occurs in two ways: expressions that one gives in order to intentionally convey information, and expressions that one gives off as a byproduct of behavior presumably exhibited for reasons other than conveying information. Because people's impressions of others help them come to conclusions about the nature, the purpose, and the meaning of others, the interaction, and the situation, such impressions will exert a strong influence on the conduct and reactions of those who have them. For this reason, it is in the people's interest to control and manage the impressions that others have of them. Goffman uses the term 'performance' as a metaphor to describe the broader pattern of activity in which impression management occurs. A performance is "all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants" (Goffman, 1959: 15). As part of their performances, people attempt to manage impressions by controlling their expressions (which others expect them to do) and their expressions given off (which others do not necessarily expect them to do, but which others may suspect). Performers must be constantly attentive to possible disruptions to performances that can result in

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

189

undesired or distorted information being conveyed, so that remedial action can be taken to preserve the definition of the situation that the performer wishes to foster. In managing impressions and controlling the behavior that others direct toward them, people are doing more than serving their own interests. If performances are disrupted, interaction can come to a halt or be fundamentally altered. When interacting individuals work to manage impressions, exhibiting signs and symbols that others correctly interpret or react to, this helps to sustain patterns of social interaction. Thus, interaction rituals of mutual impression management have the function of helping to create and preserve social structure. People are usually aware that their impressions are subject to attempted management by others. A certain amount of suspiciousness and wariness is therefore built into social life that might well make impression management impossible were it not for certain moral principles built into social interaction. As Goffman puts it: "Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way. Connected with this principle is a second, namely that an individual who implicitly or explicitly signifies that he has certain social characteristics ought in fact to be what he claims he is. In consequence, when an individual projects a definition of the situation and thereby makes an implicit or explicit claim to be a person of a particular kind, he automatically exerts a moral demand upon the others, obliging them to value and treat him in the manner that persons of his kind have a right to expect." (Goffman, 1959: 13; emphasis added) Of course part of the moral demand that a person be taken for what they claim to be in a given situation comes from the fact that their performance conforms to some degree to the claim. A professor demands that others take him or her as a professor in part by conforming to the expectations associated with being a professor. But this demand is strengthened by a norm that governs interpersonal interaction. Even if person A strongly suspects that person B is not what he or she appears to be, person A nonetheless has an obligation to behave in accordance with the definition of the situation that B is attempting to foster. To do otherwise is to threaten B ' s identity and role and to undermine the social structure in which the interaction is occurring.

3. Policing cultural production Creators and marketers of cultural products of all kinds continuously face the problem of convincing those in the market for these products that the products are what they are claimed to be. Buyers, viewers, readers, and listeners need to be assured that these products are worthy of attention and of being consumed. As noted above, in interpersonal interaction, the moral demand to be taken for what one appears to be is an expectation built into the interaction. In impersonal marketing situations, there is no such demand. It is hard to imagine a person being laughed out of someone's living room or off the reception line, but dramatic or musical performers can be laughed off the stage, and audience members can walk out of theaters or concert halls without having to justify themselves. To try to ensure acceptance of cultural products, producers and creators conform to conventions of already established

190

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

forms. In doing so, creators signal what their products are (Becker, 1982) and infuse their products with the legitimacy already established for that form. In so doing they help to create a moral demand that their products be accepted for what their producers claim they are. A key ingredient in being legitimate is being authentic. As Peterson (1997) notes, authenticity has a number of meanings, all revolving around the idea that to be authentic is to be in some sense real and true to something. An authentic thing is not fraudulent, manufactured for some ulterior purpose, or contrived. It is not simply an imitation, but is a sincere, real, true, and original expression of its creator, and is a believable or credible representation or example of what it appears to be. For any specific cultural product, there are many conventions that can be creatively deployed to demonstrate the authenticity of the product. However, in specific applications, conventions are sometimes ignored, violated, or twisted in the service of originality or dynamism, or just getting attention. This results in part from the tension in authenticity between the twin demands that authentic products be (1) original and sincere expressions and (2) believable or credible representations of some cultural form. This contradiction between authenticity as originality and authenticity as following a form is a continuous threat to authenticity, and thus to legitimacy. If conventions are not strictly followed, is the product still legitimate? Is it still authentic? In the field of fine art production, authenticity is judged through institutional standards, enforced by critics and judges (Peterson, 1997). However, in commercially based fields of cultural production, "it has not been possible for any one group, whether critics, the state, creators, the industry, or audiences to force its own aesthetic standards on the field ..." and thus, "authenticity emerges in the interplay within and between all these in concrete historical circumstances" (Peterson, 1997: 207). The distinction Peterson made here is essentially the same as Anand (2000) explicates in his article in the present volume where he distinguishes between the centralnormative model and the peripheral-competitive models of cultural production. As Anand points out, central-normative fields of cultural production are organized around the normative standards of the occupational groups at the core of the field, critics, curators, artists and the like. These fields of production are somewhat protected from market forces. Indeed, it would appear that audiences, buyers, and fans are heavily influenced in their own responses to cultural products by the judgments made by professionals at the core. So to a substantial extent, the market is controlled or managed by moral forces generated at the center of the field. Ambitious artists or producers do not have the latitude to go too far in violating convention unless they have the positive sanction of the field's center. Fields of fine arts production thus retain their coherence and maintain their authenticity in spite of the tension between originality and form because they are effectively policed from the center. The moral demand on the fine arts audience that fine arts products be accepted as what their creators claim them to be is generated by the legitimacy of the moral agents at the core and the trust that the audience has in them and their judgments.

M. Hugk, es / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

191

Peripheral-competitive fields such as country music and mainstream popular music, however, have a weak moral structure. As Anand notes, they are shaped largely by the market forces, having a small center but a large differentiated periphery composed of agents who are free to experiment. Violations of convention are positively or negatively sanctioned through the decisions of buyers, not through the reactions of moral agents at the center. The agents on the periphery that Peterson has theorized about through much of his career, artists, producers, record company executives, and the like, are to a large extent self-interested profit maximizers. "... Peterson's agents just want to 'make a hit', make some money, become famous, 'do their own thing' (like making or listening to music), and/or minister to their addictions" (Anand, 2000).. Naturally, this sort of field would breed wariness and mistrust in buyers, fans, and audiences. And in commercially based fields of cultural production, in which someone who is a journalist or critic at one moment and is a record producer, a promoter, or an artist's manager at another (e.g., Jon Landau, a music critic for Rolling Stone magazine, also worked as a record producer for pop star Bruce Springsteen), it is not surprising that critical exposition does not have the moral force [hat it does in a central-normative field such as fine arts production. Thus, in peripheral-competitive fields like mainstream popular music and country music, violations of form and convention are policed on the periphery, in the market, not at the center. This happens through the actions of producers, promoters, and radio programmers making decisions in anticipation of, or response to, audience demand. As a result, conventions can be bent, shaped, changed over time, or left the same with no conscious control by centralized authoritative moral agent or set of agents. As Peterson has shown, whether there is much diversity and rapid change in styles of musical production depends on the constraints under which such decision makers operate, including the :aature of culture producing organizations, industry structure, the nature of technology and other factors (e.g. Peterson and Berger, 1975; Peterson, 1990). During the period of the 1930s and 1940s, popular music was fairly narrow and static, but in the years since then, we have seen much more diversity of style and an ongoing pattern of stylistic change. In fact, popular music seems to move fairly rapidly from one set of conventions to the next, appearing to be radically different at one point than at another. Country music, in contrast, retains coherence and legitimacy, organized around a sense of authenticity that is distinct from other forms of music. How is this possible with market forces continually pressuring for change, and no strong moral agents at the center? I argue that it has done so by creating a moral force on its periphery, in much the same way as it created itself, fabricating and maintaining some form of authenticity through a collectively driven impression management. The moral demand to accept the country music product as country music is not an expectation built into the relation between fans and performers, but is created through the nature of the impressions created and managed in performance and promotion.

192

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

4. Why worry? "... [W]hen an individual appears before others he will have many motives for trying to control the impression they receive of the situation" (Goffman, 1959: 15). Many of these motives involve controlling the behavior of others, in particular the behavior toward the person or team managing the impressions. As suggested above, the motives of those involved in country music production, distribution, and broadcasting are very simple: making profits by making hits and selling CDs, tapes, records, videos, tickets, and airtime. To do this, consumers must be manipulated into buying the country music product, listening to country music radio, and/or watching country music videos. But why worry about and expend energy dramatizing some sort of authentic image in the creation and presentation of country music ? Why not just make and sell the music and let the image take care of itself? One answer is that producers, distributors, and programmers believe that there is a large audience of potential buyers, listeners, and watchers, and country music is what they like to the exclusion of other kinds of musical products. Dramatizing authenticity through impression management is a way marketers have of letting the buyers know what the product is and that it is the real thing. I think this is fairly close to the correct answer, but to get to it, we have to answer another question first. If country music is a music marketing business, why is it not focused on the widest possible audience? That is, given the threats to the distinctiveness of country music, why do the producers of the music not just give in to the threats and produce music that slowly drifts away from the model that embodies authenticity? There are two classes of threat to the distinctiveness of country music, internal threats from the 'soft-shell' variant of country music (Peterson, 1997; Peterson and Kern, 1995), and external threats from mainstream popular music producers who are trying to expand their market to include the country music audience. What Peterson calls 'hard-core' country music sets the standard for authenticity in country music, though its specific manifestation changes over time (e.g., Fiddling John Carson, Roy Acuff, Hank Williams, and Hank Williams Jr., all examples of hard-core from different time periods, were very different from each other in style and presentation). Hard-core country music with exaggerated Southern accents, distinctive country music vocalizations, themes such as personal and family problems and hard times, and musical instruments previously legitimated as appropriate for the genre (in recent years these have included the fiddle, banjo, and pedal steel guitar), attracts many fans and buyers. However, the associations of its characteristics with rural life, backwardness, the lower end of the SES distribution, and traditional white Southerners has alienated many people since the beginning of the genre (Peterson, 1997). At different times, country music producers and radio programmers have found that they can expand the audience for country music by softening some of these hard edges, and producing and promoting soft-shell or pop country music that has less of a Southern accent in the vocals, presents more middle class romanticism and/or complexity in the lyrics, and includes orchestration with massed strings, brass, woodwinds, and synthesizers. History shows that success in marketing such soft-shell and

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

193

pop country music usually creates an opening for hard-core artists and producers, because softened country music alienates hard-core fans who can be lured back to buying and listening by a reinvention of hard-core (Peterson, 1997). This dialectic creates an ongoing cycle of renewal and change in the nature and meaning of country music. Two factors seem to be involved in preventing producers, marketers, and radio programmers from allowing country music to completely lose its distinctiveness and become pop music. First, soft-shell and pop country owe at least some of their popularity to their kinship with the rougher edges of hard-core country music. Fans attracted to softer country music would simply turn to another slightly deviant form of pop music if soft-shell or pop country were to become completely indistinguishable from mainstream pop music. Second, if industry actors allowed country music to disappear, and were simply to market their products as pop music, they would lose very important marketing advantages. Competition would increase dramatically, and they would have lost what is equivalent to the brand name of 'country music' that helps to organize and coordinate promotion and consumption activities. The brand name of 'country music' provides a focus for the actions of consumers (who can know what they are buying), record store owners (who can know what bin to put it in), record promoters (who can know what radio stations to send it to), concert promoters (who can know what artists to put on the same bill), and industry publications (who can know what chart to tabulate it on) (Ryan and Wentworth, 1999).

5. Impression management in country music A major distinction between Peterson's (1997) orientation and that of Goffman's (1959) study of impression management is that Peterson has the larger purpose of explaining the evolution of a field of cultural production, and he therefore shows how impression management can have a macro-structural context, something that Goffman does not do. Except for this emphasis, Creating country music ... (Peterson, 1997) can be read almost as if it were titled The presentation of country music in everyday life. As a result, many of the examples that Peterson gives of fabricating authenticity fall easily into Goffman's categories. In this section I will briefly show some of the clearer parallels, and show how of some the phenomena we observe in contemporary country music can be understood in Goffman's terms. After detailing the institutionalization of country music, Peterson (1997: 205209) concludes that two facets of authenticity were critical in this process. First, country music must be believable relative to the model that has legitimacy and is thought of as representing the tradition of country music. Such a model is made up of a set of musical, vocal, fashion, performance, behavioral, and contextual conventions, including the demographic characteristics of the artists. These models are ever changing, so the set of conventions that defines the model at one point will not necessarily work at a later time. Critical conventions defining country music over the years are hard-core elements. (Peterson, 1997: 150--154), but one need not conform closely to these conventions all the time, nor to conform to all of them to be

194

qughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

identified with the current model. Soft-shell and pop country music is sometimes only suggestive of these conventions. What is important is to conform to at least some of these conventions most of the time. As one can easily see by looking at contemporary music videos for mainstream popular and country music, the particularly important conventions at the present time are vocalizations (Southerness and the characteristic intonations rarely heard outside country music) and inclusion of certain instruments played in ways characteristic of country music (currently pedal steel guitar and fiddle are important defining elements, but country guitar and piano sounds, mandolin, dobro, and banjo are also important signifiers of country music). These conventions signal to consumers that the music is of certain type and create a symbolic context in which particular musical, lyrical, vocal, and other individualistic expressions are made. The second demand that authenticity makes of country music is that it be original in the sense of being sincere, true, and real human expressions. Country music must be true to the artist and true to the style the artist developed, not an imitation of some other artist or some other contrivance. Impression management involved in fabricating authenticity for country music has had to do with manipulating conventions in country music production, presentations, and promotion to create the impression that the products fit the model existing at the time, and that the songs and performances were original and sincere human expressions. 5.1. The belief in the Part One is playing

Goffman distinguishes between sincere and cynical performers. A sincere performer is "convinced that the impression of reality which he stages is the real reality", whereas a cynical performer is one who "has no belief in his own act" (Goffman, 1959: 17-18). An important characteristic of authenticity in country music is that performers are original, sincere, and true to their own individual styles, and that what they stage in their performances and in their lives as artists is a true reflection of what they really are. But there are good reasons for thinking that artists are to some degree cynical performers. At different points in their careers country music artists may have worn formal concert clothes, hillbilly outfits, fake beards, blackening on their teeth, and cowboy suits. These changes were frequently engineered by producers and promoters, and were intended to create creating different impressions and foster different realities (Peterson, 1997). In fact, it seems that performers may have had limited opportunities to be sincere performers in Goffman's sense. However, the issue is not so simple. Artists have sometimes balked at some kinds of image making. Roy Acuff, for example, refused cowboy suits for himself and his band because "... there is nothing cowboy about me . . . . I don't intend for the public ever to see me as a cowboy" (quoted in Peterson [1997: 148]). In addition, as performing artists, it is easy to define the act of putting on imagery and making impressions as part of what they are. The fostered reality is that of being a person who engages in impression management as a country music star, and this constitutes, for them, the 'real reality'. In this way, audiences can see the obviously manipulative

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

195

act of a wearing cowboy hat in country music videos in the year 2000 as the act of a sincere performer. Finally, because many country music artists, such as Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, and others, are known to sing about problems in their own troubled lives, they can still see themselves and be seen by others as sincere performers, regardless of their changing wardrobes, instrumentations, and theatrical backdrops. 5.2. Front

The expressive equipment that performers use intentionally or unintentionally during their performances constitutes the 'front'. It includes two elements, the setting and the personal front. Objects such as furniture, decorations, layout of rooms, and so on, that usually stay in one place, are all parts of the setting. The personal front is the set of things more intimately identified with the performer, such as how they look, their clothing and jewelry, speech and vocal patterns, gestures, and facial expressions. Appearance and manner are two dimensions of the personal front, appearance symbolizing the status of the performer, and manner indicating the role that the performer intends to play. In most successful episodes of impression management, setting, appearance anti manner are consistent and help to establish a particular definition of the situation. When these three elements are not consistent, and allowances are not made to repair the damage, a shared definition cannot be maintained and interaction can break: down. Among the primary ways that the country music industry has of managing impressions of country music is to ensure the consistency of setting, appearance and manner in the presentation of country music. When Peterson (1997) described and presented pictures of the changing backdrops for live radio performances and publicity photos, he showed how settings have been manipulated and changed to convey a sense of authenticity for country music. In live radio presentations and later on television from the 1930s to the 1980s, the set design often included symbols of rural life, such as barn imagery, hay, front porches, and fences. In recent years, television program programs settings emphasize rural imagery much less, and frequently include images that reference the tradition of country music itself, such as using oversized pictures of country music legends like Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, and Minnie Pearl as backdrops. A country music setting can also be created in concert situations without any rural stage props by including only known or aspiring country music acts on the concert bill. In addition, the venue itself, a state or county fair, a bluegrass festival, or a country music bar or showplace, can serve as the expressive equipment that aids in creating the impression of authenticity. Peterson's detailed exposition of the changing wardrobes of country music performers shows very clearly how appearance has been used to create the impression of authenticity in country music. Although early country music performers often appeared in ordinary street clothes or formal concert attire, doing so could not symbolize the status of country music artists as the carriers of a unique and authentic cultural tradition. As the institutiortalization of the genre proceeded, performers started donning distinctive outfits. Jimmie Rodgers sometimes wore the clothes of a railroad

196

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

worker. Others wore overalls and straw hats to create a hillbilly image. In the 1930s, producers found that they could sell more of the same kind of music if they dropped the hillbilly image and used instead the cowboy imagery popularized by singing cowboys in the movies, and grounded in the American cultural mythology. Increasingly, country music artists adopted cowboy suits and other western wear as the attire of the authentic country music performer, a style that continued into the Hank Williams era and beyond. Vestiges of the style remain in the many 'hat' acts popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Country music artists usually are careful to stay close to the clothing styles representing the current model of authenticity, with women deviating somewhat more than men do, and soft-shell artists verging closer to pop music styles than hard-core artists do. In the 1960s, the slowness with which country music artists adopted the clothing and hairstyle conventions of pop musicians helped maintain the distinctions between country and pop music in that turbulent time. Merle Haggard's late 1960s dramatization of the othemess of long hair, sandals, and beads in his song 'Okie from Muskogee' was a strong statement that countercultural imagery was not welcome in country music and that impression management in country music would use other symbols. Vocal characteristics are an important element in appearance. Artists whose speaking style does not have a Southern or rural character will adopt those characteristics in singing to create the impression that they are singing country music. On her recent hit song, 'You're Still The One', Shania Twain includes a short opening monologue that is spoken in a voice characteristic of her Ontario, Canada roots, not the Southern U.S. The rest of the song, including some of the same words, is sung with the strong suggestion of a standard, rural Southern accent characteristic of country music performances. In fact, many currently popular country music artists have to put on an accent when they sing because many have suburban backgrounds and/or are not from the South, the Southwest, or the lower class, and because the pervasiveness of television and other media as socialization agents has helped to eliminate some of the distinctive speech patterns of persons from formerly more isolated rural and/or Southern areas. Some who are from the South, such as the Texan, Clint Black, have much more of a country music voice while singing than while speaking. Although there has been some change in the m a n n e r in country music presentations (behavior indicating that one is playing the role of the country music artist), which has shifted over time with the shifting image of the typical country music artist, it has nonetheless remained fairly close to a standard model. Since the overall impression must be of a sincere, down-to-earth, average person, most performers try to convey through their behavior that they are friendly, easy to get along with, modest and much like their fans in interests and beliefs. On stage, band members try to appear relaxed and talk and joke with one another as if they were in a living room or at informal gatherings. Country music artists also spend much time conveying the same sensibilities in off-stage settings, after performances and at fan gatherings, signing autographs and talking with fans. Of course being a 'real person' can have a negative side too, as Peterson (1997) notes, and some artists such as Hank Williams,

M. Hugkes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

197

Jr., can present themselves as arrogant and rude. The bottom line is that persons who would present themselves as calxiers of authentic country music must come off as regular, real persons, and this must be dramatized even in behaviors that do not involve singing or playing music:. 5.3. Dramatic realization

Setting, appearance, and marmer are useful in impression management because these items embody symbols that have shared meanings. Organizing and displaying these items in various ways serves several different functions in impression management. One of these is dramatic realization. Sometimes the behaviors involved in conforming to a given role do not c-onvey enough information so that an audience can know that the role is being performed, and performers must add elements that embellish their performances to create an adequate impression. This is a problem in country music, since just being able to sing a song impressively or to play an instrument has never been quite enough to convey authenticity. Singing and playing instruments only demonstrates talent and ability, not the broader context of singers and band members with appropriate backgrounds and proper cultural credentials who are carriers of a cultural lradition. The processes of manipulating costumes, hairstyles, and backdrops, being able to talk as well as sing in a Southern or rural accent, being able to tell stories that resonate with the lived experiences of the country music audience, and engaging in stage banter and informal conversations with fans serve the function of dramatic realization in the typical case, though different artists will do this in different ~ays. If there are inevitable problems in a presentation, special elements can be added to dramatically realize the role of country music performer. Charlie Pride, who is black, has faced a significant problem in dramatically realizing the role of a country music artist, because country music has been so strongly identified with whites and white Southern culture from the beginning. Pride has successfully overcome this by conforming more closely than most country music artists to very traditional Southern white vocalizations in his singing and speech, including no African American characteristics whatever, and by identifying with and very frequently performing songs by the country music icon and legend Hank Williams, on record, on concert tour, and when he appears on the Grand Ole Opry (including, importantly, his first appearance). 5.4. Idealization

Goffman notes that performances that are part of impression management conform more closely to the accredited values of society than does people's behavior as a whole. This is not exactly true in the impressions created by country music. No set of accredited values could stand behind the great range of themes represented in commercially successful country music, from the simple good times extolled in Brooks and Dunn's 'Boot Scootin' Boogie' and John Denver's 'Thank God I'm a Country Boy' to the existential fatalism in Dwight Yoakam's 'I'm a Thousand Miles

198

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

from Nowhere' and 'Nothing'. Nonetheless, through the history of the genre, song, artist, and presentation imagery has tended to conform mostly to either traditional values or the values of 'wild side of life', with a strong bias in the direction of propriety, particularly in the early years. As Peterson (1997) reports, during this period different artists would specialize in one or the other value pattern, not both, or they would use different names when singing about sex and drinking than they did for songs about romance, marriage, and family. Hank Williams was among the first big stars to break this pattern and present a dual image that included both value dimensions (Peterson, 1997). The dual value pattern has been common in country music since that time, being clearly represented in the careers of artists such as Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Johnny Cash, and can be observed in lyrical imagery in songs by the contemporary mega-stars Shania Twain and Garth Brooks. George Jones is a good example of one who has shaped his public persona in part by incorporating moral shortcomings involving marital discord, divorce, excessive drinking, and failure to appear at concerts because of his drinking. In fact, he recorded a song highlighting his being a 'No Show' at concerts, and has sometimes allowed the term 'No Show' to be used as his nickname. The important thing here is that, as part of creating the impression that it is about life as it is lived in the real world, country music has tended to idealize both sides of life and the roles they play in the cycle of loss and redemption, a primary theme in the Protestant fundamentalism common in the rural South. No matter how deep people sink into the bottomless pit of desperation brought on by temptation, sin, hard times, or bad luck, they can always be saved. For example, as the public images would now have it, though George Jones was a drunken 'No Show', now that he has 'cleaned up his act', he can laugh about it, and we can all laugh with him. Also, recently in Nashville, a sport utility vehicle that George Jones wrecked while driving drunk was displayed publicly as an example of what can happen when people drive while intoxicated. In court, Jones made no excuses for his actions, said he had been in the wrong, and testified that he had learned from his mistakes. So, even in this more balanced, modem, moral landscape, the balance of power in country music remains on the side of the orderly life and traditional values. As a result, though artists and publicists may let some questionable parts of artists' lives be known, it is the positive and moral dimensions that are emphasized and that journalists are encouraged to write about. And while some hit songs are positive or ambivalent about sex, drugs, and hedonism in general (for example, the Kendall's 1977 song, 'Heaven's Just a Sin Away'), there is a stronger emphasis on the importance of home and family, finding true love, commitment to mom and dad, the importance of friendship and buddies, hard work, honesty, religious faith, and overcoming hardship and temptation. The traditional values side of this dialectic is connected to a larger segment of the market, soft-shell country music, and though the industry waffles back and forth, the publicly expressed bias is on this more profitable side.

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

199

5.5. Maintenance of expressive control

Enactment of roles cannot ahvays be perfect. Inconsistent information is sometimes projected in the course of the presentation that threatens the definition of the situation. There are, in principle, many possibilities for disrupting the authenticity in country music, because impression management occurs both on and off stage, including both public life and what can be publicly known about private life. However, two underlying cultural aspects of country music limit the potential problems here. First, as noted above, country music has idealized the clash and resolution of the morally upright and the morally questionable dimensions of life. If enacted selves reveal their moral weakness, this adds character, dimension, even a little mystification, rather than prompting quick discreditation. Second, since many country music artists are sincere performers, believing that the definition of the situation is the real reality, the expressive coherence required to maintain expressive control can sometimes be relatively easy. It helps many artists to have learned a Southern accent in childhood, to have grown up ~mowing about rural life, to have held working class occupations, and to have learned the social graces of the small community and the church. Instead of the person 'being on' all the time, risking slip-ups due to stress and fatigue, the person only needs to keep being whoever they think they are. Failure to be able to maintain expressive control helps to explain why some very popular artists who have had songs on the country music charts have never made it consistently as country music stars. Linda Rondstadt, Olivia Newton-John, and John Denver are three good examples. None had a traditional rural or Southern background, and none were linked to the structure and organization of the country music industry so that expressive control required to present oneself as a country music artist could be readily maintained. Rondstadt is a person of Mexican and German background from Arizona who originally made her name in countercultural pop music and was part of the Los Angeles popular music scene. Newton-John, the English-born daughter of a headmaster and granddaughter of a Nobel Prize-winning German physicist, grew up in Australia and was a mainstream pop artist who also made it big in the movie musicals, including the hit movie 'Grease' that co-starred John Travolta, had an urban/suburban setting, and showcased 1950s rock music. Denver was a folk artist who grew up in an itinerant military family. After he established his reputation he spent his off time living the life of a wealthy hippie musician in the Colorado mountains. None of these three very successful purveyors of music with a country sound had the inclination, the cultural background, or the life structure that allowed the expressive coherence required to be part of the management of impressions in country music. 5.6. Teams

To Goffman, a team is a small group that cooperates in staging a routine and attempts to foster a single definition of the situation. Country music is replete with teams: artists and their bands, alrtists and their producers, producers and executives, journalists and artists, and radio programmers and all of the above. There are two

200

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

keys to identifying and understanding the dynamics of teams. First, at the core of every team is a secret, something the team knows that the audience does not. Second, any team member can betray the team and disrupt the definition of the situation by revealing the secret. The most common secret is that impression management is occurring at all, that the team is working or has been working on fostering a common impression. One way to think about C r e a t i n g c o u n t r y m u s i c ... (Peterson, 1997) is that it is about breaking into the team secrets, and revealing what was behind all that impression management. Of course the core secret uncovered by Peterson is that authenticity in country music, which should be one of its intrinsic aspects, is a fabrication that is continuously changing and must be constantly managed. Any time artists, producers, and promoters conspire to present an image of a performer or presentation in order to maximize sales, airplay, and/or the popularity of the performer, we have the management of impressions through team performance. Hank Williams' image is among the best of many examples of this that Peterson details in his 1997 book. Before his death in 1953, though it was widely known in the industry that his life was deteriorating, promoters, publicists, musicians and journalists worked as a team, in Goffman's sense, to present his image as one who wrote songs and sang about the wild side of life, but did not live it. After his death, which was caused in part by his dissipated lifestyle including excessive alcohol and drug use, his mother, ex-wives, country music journalists, song writers, producers, and radio station programmers intensified these efforts in creating the image of Hank Williams as a saintly person who had died of natural causes. Though teams of this kind work to foster a single, shared definition of the situation, they are somewhat different from those described by Goffman in that participants are not necessarily in each others' presence and the different team elements can work in a mostly uncoordinated way. There is not one team or a clearly definable set of specific teams in country music. Rather, teams typically come together on an ad hoc basis to do production, concert promotion, television programs, video production, and so on. Mostly these are conventional work and production teams who do standard work and interact in standard ways. But as they do this, they are operating on the basis of shared definitions of the situation concerning what will work as country music. This definition of the situation falls loosely under the heading of the product image (Ryan and Peterson, 1982). Teams share beliefs about what they think people will listen to on the radio and what they will buy in stores, but they focus most of their attention on what they think those in the next stage of production will accept. Songwriters have an understanding of what producers and artists will want to record. Producers and artists have an image of what radio programmers will play on the radio. Radio programmers have an image of what listeners will tune in for. These sometimes cooperating and sometimes competing songwriters, artists, producers, promoters, and radio programmers are what Goffman described as 'in the know'. They constitute a complex team, creating something that is ultimately designed to create impressions in the minds of the audience. At the same time, wittingly or unwittingly, they protect the distinctiveness of the country music genre.

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

201

6. Impression management and threats to authenticity A book has not been written that details how the field of country music responded to the many threats to authenticity over the period from 1953 to the present. When this history is written, I believe that it will show that the responses to these threats were individual and collective attempts to preserve the image of country music as a distinctive cultural product. In the same way that Goffman showed how individuals respond with remedial actions to threats when their attempts at impression management are threatened, the history of country music since 1953 will recount the remedial actions of the industry to ensure that the correct impressions of country music were preserved in the minds of the public. In this last section, I will very briefly discuss three important episodes, the threat from rock music in the 1950s, the threat from countercultural pop music in the 1960s, and the continuing threat from mainstream pop from the mid-1970s onward. 6.1. The threat f r o m rock in the 1950s

As Peterson (1997) showed, a clear and distinct model of what country music was had been established by 1953, but it could have been fragmented and the genre could have blended into contemporary popular music had remedial action not been taken. In fact, country and rock were :~tarting to blend into the hybrid we call rockabilly. The response by the field of country music production to this threat was the creation of the Country Music Association (CMA) in 1958. One of the core functions of CMA is to manage the impressions of country music. It did two things in its early years to control how its audience and potential audience saw country music. First, it developed and implemented promotional schemes to get more country music played on the radio, and most importantly to get stations to specialize by playing only country music (Peterson, 1978). This was not impression management in the conventional sense, but it helped to establish a structure through which otherwise managed performances would have a continuous presence before the public as a single, coherent, category of musical expression. The distinctiveness of the musical and lyrical presentations were thus effectively dramatized on a da:ily basis over the radio. Second, the CMA created the Country Music Hall of Fame, inducting its first members in 1961, and began putting on an annual awards show in 1967, televising it every year since 1968 on national network television. These awards objectified and dramatized the highest traditional standards, and the highest standards of contemporary achievement in country music, giving concrete expression to the evolving models of country music and emphasizing the originality and sincerity in its expressiveness and the traditional elements of the core model as currently defined. In short, these rituals were and are periodic dramatizations of authenticity in country music that create impressions in the minds of the public of the nature and distinctiveness of country music.

202

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

6.2. The countercultural pop threat

In the late 1960s, country music sounds could be heard throughout the countercultural pop music spectrum. Artists like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles all released country-sounding recordings in this period. Some bands with hippie roots specialized in country music, such as Poco and the Flying Burrito Brothers. The Byrds, and later a former Byrds member, Gram Parsons, tried to get a foothold in the world of country music but were rebuffed, finding it impossible to be recognized as legitimate country music artists by the country music industry in Nashville. This negative experience created some bitterness, and the Byrds later recorded a country-sounding song attacking the industry. But country music benefited from this explosion of country sounds in pop music. Producers and musicians made money by producing and playing on records by pop and folk stars. Joan Baez's 1969 'David's Album', dedicated to her husband who was serving time in a federal prison for resisting the draft, was produced in Nashville and included the work of Nashville's premier session musicians of the time. Even the Byrds' sardonic attack on the Nashville establishment, 'Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man', includes the work of Nashville musician, Lloyd Green, one of the top pedal steel guitar players in the industry. Country music also benefited by the enhanced stature it enjoyed through its association with extraordinarily popular rock and pop stars. For example, Johnny Cash's popularity in the mainstream pop youth market increased dramatically when he appeared on television and recorded a duet with pop icon Bob Dylan that appeared on Dylan's album 'Nashville Skyline'. But in spite of all this, the strong communalities of musical style and much musical collaboration, none of these artists, groups, or segments of the pop music world ever became regular functioning agents in the field of country music production on a continuous basis. Why? The basic reason is that these kinds of artists could not present and sustain the expressive coherence required of country music artists. With their hippie hair and clothes, left-wing politics, and idealization of drugs through song lyrics, manner, and lifestyle, these rock and folk artists did not have the cultural background or inclination to present the appearance and manner of country music artists or to integrate themselves on a regular basis into the standard settings: the Grand Ole Opry, county fairs, country radio interviews, Fan Fair, the DJ Convention, and so on. In short, inability to aid in the impression management of country music kept them out. This is a vivid illustration of the fact that being part of a field of commercial music production involves far more that being highly competent musically or being committed to the musical style of the genre. Enactment of authenticity through sincere and/or careful and clever impression management is also a critical factor. 6.3. The ACE case and beyond: Management of the continuing threat

A more serious threat occurred in the early 1970s, and it exemplifies a continuing threat to the distinctiveness of country music that is managed by the continuous cycling of hard-core and soft-shell variants of country music. The success of the

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

203

CMA in spreading country music stations throughout the U.S. had the unintended consequence of pushing country music toward soft-shell and pop music, and away from the hard-core (Peterson, 1978). To increase their listenership in large urban and other non-traditional markets, country music radio stations began to de-emphasize music with alienating hard-core elements, replacing it with country-flavored soft rock and soft-sheU country. This trend resulted in huge sales for very non-traditional sounding country music, and culminated when Olivia Newton-John was named female artist of the year in 1974 and John Denver received the Entertainer of the Year award in 1975. The Academy of Country Entertainers (ACE) was formed in opposition to the CMA to fight the intrusion of pop into country. Though ACE did not last long, the seed of cultural concem had been planted in the industry, which created increased legitimacy and opportunity for those who would promote hardcore country music. The year following John Denver's Entertainer of the Year award was the year of the 'outlaws', with Album of the Year honors going to the hard-core 'outlaw' icons, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser, and Jessi Colter. Though Kenny Rogers and others like him made., pop country inroads through the end of the 1970s, hard-core movement could be seen in the 1983 ascendancy of Ricky Scaggs. This was repeated in the emergence of Randy Travis in the mid-80s and in what has come to be called the 'Class of 1989', personified by a trio of 'hat acts', Garth Brooks, Clint Black, and Alan Jackson, but also included tradition-based artists such as Travis Tritt and Marty Stuart. With the expansion of countr.¢ music into national markets from the early 1960s to the present, the commercial basis of the genre increasingly became soft-shell and pop country music. However, these forms of country music owe their existence to the continuing re-dramatization of country music authenticity in the hard-core sector. Exactly how this is done on a collective basis is not clear. How is it that producers, artists, songwriters, and promoters in the intensely competitive world of country music arrive at a coherent distinctive model of country music, and work to manage impressions in pretty much the saane ways? It is clear that we will need a sequel, possibly titled Maintaining country music ... which will answer this and many other questions about how the field of country music has managed to maintain authenticity and the distinctiveness in the years since its creation was largely completed in 1953.

7. So what?

When I told Richard Peterson about my ideas for this article, he thought the comparison of his work to that of Erving Goffman was interesting, but he wondered 'So what?' Where does this comparison take us, and do we want to go? Readers can decide for themselves if they want to go there, but in addition to the five things I outlined in the opening section, I think it is clear that this comparison of Peterson to Goffman does two things. First, for the Goffman side, it shows how Goffman's framework, which was developed to understand interaction patterns between individuals in everyday life,

204

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

can be extended to the macro-structural level of institutions and organizations. Macrosocial units have to deal with the same problems faced by microsocial actors in fostering and sustaining definitions of the situation, and the solving of these problems can be understood in much the same way at both levels of analysis. Second, for Peterson's side, it provides a set of concepts and a theory to conceptualize the processes underlying the fabrication and maintenance of authenticity. Given the intellectual context of G o f f m a n ' s work, this theory links Peterson's production of culture approach to symbolic interactionism, which emphasizes how meanings emerge and change in social interaction. Adding symbolic interactionist ideas to the production of cultural approach provides a theoretical basis for understanding the emergence and change of meanings in the interactions between culture producers and culture consumers. From this point of view, culture, like the enacted self in Goffman (1959: 253), "is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented ...". Meanings emerge and are solidified but then change as producers interact with audiences in cycles over time. Meanings change and evolve as producers modify products to conform to what they imagine are the demands of the audience, who respond in ways to prompt producers to change, yet again, what they produce. Through these cycles, meanings are not stable, but are ever changing as audiences and teams of production change their composition and orientations. Impression management is a way of understanding how and why these interactional cycles work the way they do.

References Anand, Narasimhan, 2000. The accidental field: Richard A. Peterson's sociology of organizations. Poetics, this issue. Becker, Howard S., 1982. Art worlds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Collins Randall, 1986. The passing of intellectual generations: Reflections on the death of Erving Goffman. Sociological Theory 4, 106--113. Collins, Randall, 1988. Theoretical continuities in Goffman's work. In: P. Drew and A. Wooton (eds.), Erving Goffman: Exploring the interaction order. Cambridge: Polity. Goffman, Erving, 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Anchor Doubleday. Goffman, Erving, 1967. Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face interaction. Garden City, NY: Anchor Doubleday. Griswold, Wendy, 1987. A methodological framework for the sociology of culture. Sociological Methodology 17, 1-35. Manning, Philip, 1992. Erving Goffman and modem sociology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Peterson, Richard A., 1978. The production of cultural change: The case of contemporary country music. Social Research 54, 292-314. Peterson, Richard A., 1990. Why 1955: Explaining the advent of rock music. Popular Music 9, 97-116. Peterson, Richard A., 1997. Creating country music: Fabricating authenticity. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Peterson, Richard A. and David G. Berger, 1975. Cycles of symbol production: The case of popular music. American Sociological Review 40, 158-173. Peterson, Richard A. and Roger M. Kern, 1995. Hard-core and soft-shell country fans. Journal of Country Music 17, 3-7. Ryan, John and Richard A. Peterson. 1982. The product image: The fate of creativity in country music song writing. Sage Annual Reviews of Communication 10, 11-32.

M. Hughes / Poetics 28 (2000) 185-205

205

Ryan, John and William M. Wentworth, 1999. Media and society: The production of culture in the mass media. Boston, MA: Allyn and Baco:a.

Michael Hughes is Professor of Sociology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and Editor of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. His main research interests include racial attitudes, ethnic and racial identity, mental health/illness, and patterns of cultural choice. With Carolyn J. Kroehler and James W. Vander Zanden, he is author of Sociology: The core (McGraw-Hill, 1999).