Daily Planet 11/29/09 12:00PM ET by Q3
On Sunday November 22, 2009, Adam Lambert, ABC-TV and Dick Clark Productions promised a “shocking” performance with “pyrotechnics”. I was surprised that there was very little actual pyro used in the performance, but the performance was undoubtedly packed with explosive content. Adam surprised his fans, detractors, casual viewers and bystanders with what is not the most famous – perhaps infamous – AMA performance.
One week later - after over 10,000 news reports, perhaps over 1 million online comments, and even more water-cooler and dinner-table conversation, the dust is starting to settle. The result in the short term is that Adam’s album is selling well and will be one of the top new artist debuts this year, and Adam demonstrated that he is more that a “shock artist” by following up his AMA performance with two more traditional network TV performances. But Adam also started an international dialogue on a scale that I do not believe he ever imagined. So what happens now?
Culture Shock
The term, culture shock, was introduced for the first time in 1958 to describe the anxiety produced when a person moves to a completely new environment. This term expresses the lack of direction, the feeling of not knowing what to do or how to do things in a new environment, and not knowing what is appropriate or inappropriate. The term “Culture Shock” has evolved over the past 50 years to describe the anxiety and feelings of surprise, disorientation, uncertainty and confusion people feel when they are exposed to a different and unknown cultural or social environment. The Culture Shock process can be used to understand the difficulties in assimilating new cultural influences, the difficulty in knowing what is appropriate and what is not, and the dislike for or even disgust (moral or aesthetical) with certain aspects of a new or different culture.
Culture Shock often consists of distinct phases:
• The Honeymoon: In this first stage, you feel euphoric and are pleased by all of the new things encountered – everything encountered is new and exciting.
• Negotiation: After some time, differences between the old and new culture become apparent and may create anxiety. You may feel discontent, impatience, anger, sadness, and even incompetence.
• Adjustment and Acculturation: You start to gain some understanding of the new culture. A new feeling of pleasure and sense of humor may be experienced and you start to feel a certain psychological balance and start to have a feeling of direction. As you become more familiar with the environment and you start to evaluate the old ways versus those of the new. As the process continues, we begin to realize that the new culture has good and bad things to offer.
For Adam fans, the first phase was when he appeared on American Idol and Toured. Of course, like any honeymoon, it couldn’t last. Now, we have moved on to the Negotiation phase. And eventually, many of us will move into the Adjustment and Acculturation phase.
Moving Beyond Culture Shock to Art
continued HERE.
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