The cultural studies of karaoke.

There's this one cultural studies prof in the English Dept. who has frizzy hair and high energy and is always at events around campus, and she had a panel with a filmmaker that I went to go see, and as part of that panel she talked about karaoke scenes in working class movies, and how there's a desire to realize authenticity by performing a song like the way it was originally performed and thus becoming the object of the gaze etc.

I didn't quite get her, so I asked her at the reception afterwards to clarify, and I disagreed and told her my theory of karaoke, where there's karaoke jackasses who get up and sing in a group to be obnoxious and bond, and then there's karaoke where people think they're on Star Search and get up and belt something out, but then there's good and very moving karaoke, where people have a song they like and they sing it to share it, or they even change up the song to make it interesting, like the time my friend who can sing funk sang Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" in funk style (and I added to the prof that the best karaoke performances often involved men singing women's songs or vice-versa).

She politely pointed out that we were talking about the same thing, and that my definition of good karaoke took place against groups of people who were striving for normativity - some people to be part of the group, and some people to be like the singers they see and know.

"Never underestimate people's desire for normativity," she said.

And then I realized that all the stuff she had been saying that I was confused at wasn't jargon, but was actually incredibly precise analytical terms that had gone right over my head the first time.