"Fun, Fun, Fun, Fun": "Friday" as a Post-Post Structuralist Neo-Marxist Dialogism

Abstract: In the following essay, the author proposes that Rebecca Black's song "Friday" can be viewed as a socio-cultural phenomenon. As such, the work as "text" dialectically synthesizes the views of the Frankfurt School (and in particular, the negative dialectic of Adorno) with the later views of Habermas and the "transformation of the public sphere". Additionally, when viewing the text through this lens, neo-Freudian meanings emerge, and the song takes on the qualities of the Lacanian mirror stage, though instead of the dialectical transformation it remains trapped in a Bakhtinian dialogism of competing viewpoints. (See Holden 2008). 

We must begin by accepting Hegel's notion of teleological progress, and a possible end to historical history (though not, it must be noted, to historical historicity). If this is the case, then one can look at Adorno's aesthetic viewpoint of art as the integration of form and content (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1945). If form is seen as objective, and content as subjective, a piece of art must represent a coming together of opposites, an alienated self dialectically unified to its very "Other." 

If this is the case, "Friday" operates on multiple textual levels. Not only does the song act as a cultural phenomenon, but it also functions on a psychological level. First, to examine the cultural aspects of this object, let us consider the dialectical contradiction between society's "self" and the "Other" (see: Said's Orientalism). The societal self is subjective, while the cultural Other remains a looming objective force, loaded with false meaning that expresses its own alienating qualities of "Otherness" without assuming operative agency as the "Other." 

What we have then, with "Friday," is a clever satire on the notion of teleological process that assumes the very structure of the concept that it deconstructs. The societal self of "Friday" must be Rebecca Black. White, middle-class, an unwitting subject of the cultural hegemony of these forces, her viewpoint is society's viewpoint, and she assumes the role of self. The concentration on inane everyday activities - cereal, fun, the bus ride to school - acts not only subjectively as a portrayal of the hegemonic hypocrisies of modern life under Western late capitalism, but also an objective portrayal of the artist-as-self (and, contrapostively, the self-as-artist) that frames oneself in such a way that one assumes the objective qualities of a society even while operating from a subjective viewpoint. 

The integration of these two elements, however, fails to meet its expected teleolgy. This lack of catharsis reminds the author of Derrida's concept of bricolage (Derrida, 1966), not only with Derrida's idea of a postmodern heuristical wasteland, but also all the connotations to the work of T.S. Eliot that this implies. The hedonistic party that Rebecca Black attends towards the end of the text also makes reference to bricolage, as the partygoers can be seen as an unsatisfying combination of various cultural factors. Hence, the line "Sunday comes afterward" (Black, 2011), which implies the lack of a teleological endpoint even while progressing toward this very thing. The fact that the viewer fails to reach this endpoint, that Sunday never arrives, is indicative of the failure of the dialectic in post-post-structuralism; Bakhtin's notion of dialogism will be addressed shortly.

First, however, we must also deconstruct "Friday" using Freudian operators. In many respects, "Friday" operates as a figure of the Lacanian mirror stage, except instead of the standard psychological dialectic of self-confronting-other, the mirror is warped, and the self is never forced to integrate any concept of "Other" into one's own identity. The lack of school in "Friday" (though mentioned in the text), signifies the lack of this mirror. Lacan's worldview has been warped (see also the work of Axel Honneth), and Black may be suggesting that his metaphysical assumptions no longer hold sway under the hegemony of scientific materialism. 

It should also be noted that the very concepts of "self" and "other" correspond to Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, which pits the Apollinian ideal against the Dionysian. If the party at the end of Friday stands as a postmodern interpretation (and possible ethical refutation) of the Dionysian, what does it mean that the Apollinian (e.g., "school") fails to appear at all? Hence, the question of "which seat should I take?" assumes a whole new meaning; not only is it a question of the self confronted by the alienated Other of the self, but it also must choose the Apollinian (the security of the backseat [Arcade Fire, 2004]), or the Dionysian (the excitement of the front seat). It must be remembered that Black's age (thirteen) must act as a cultural lens for the metaphor of the front seat vs. back seat dichotomy. 

There are two more questions to address, which unfortunately due to space limitations I cannot give the time that they merit. The first is the question of the possibility of a post-colonial reading of "Friday." While Fritz Fanon's views on post-colonial culture certainly may apply (especially with the African-American male, trapped in his car, forced to find a school bus to re-enter the narrative he has been alienated from), one has to wonder if the implicit commentary on Western imperialist hegemony acts in an active sense, or merely surfaces through Foucaldian power structures. I am inclined to believe the latter, though any arguments for the former feed into the dialectic mentioned above. 

Finally, there arises the question of applicability of Bakhtin's dialogism on the structural framework of Friday. While there are many signs of the Hegelian dialectic (later assumed by the Frankfurt School), it has already been pointed out that all of these dialectics fail to meet their expected teleological trajectories. It is possible, then, that "Friday" exists in a state of dialogical flux. Just as Holquist states that "consciousness is otherness," consciousness does assume the state of the Other within "Friday", without ever offering a dialectical transition to a transcendent level of consciousness. The dichotomies of week/weekend, white girl/black male, front seat/black seat, all are pitted against each other without any of the expected resolutions. Rather than the authorial intention, which I believe is a satire on the neo-Marxist emphasis on political dialectic, I see the text operating from within (as well as against) these dialogical parameters. 

Further critical work remains to be done on this text. I am currently working on a book, Consciousness as Alienated Agent Within the Pop/Rap Framework, that will be published in 2012. Hopefully this book will allow me to further integrate the psychology of George Herbert Mead into this neo-Hegelian satire, as well as explore the influence of Judith Butler's writings on Rebecca Black's phallocentric views of her own sexuality.

Works Cited:
Adorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.

Arcade Fire, "In the Backseat" on Funeral. Merge Records, 2004.

Bakhtin, M.M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Michael Holquist, trans. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.

Black, Rebecca. "Friday." Youtube.com. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0> [Accessed March 31st, 2011].

Derrida, Jacques. "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences" in Writing and Difference. Alan Bass, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Holquist, Michael. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Honneth, Axel. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 1995.

Lacan, Jacques. The ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis. New York: Norton, 1988.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy and The Case Of Wagner. Trans. by Walter Kauffman. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.