The Arts in the Age of the Internet
I LOVE social media and the internet. I spend copious amounts of time on the internet, and yet, even at only twenty-four years old, I often feel out of touch with internet trends and the best ways to use each social media platform. I can only imagine how older generations must feel! However, even if we are feeling overwhelmed or out of touch with the internet, we shouldn’t discount these platforms and their trends, nor should we look down on those who use the internet to make their careers. Since its inception, the internet has been an invaluable asset to artists, and through the pandemic, it has become clear that it holds the future of the arts.
This past spring I was the teaching assistant for a class on musical theater, Hamilton, and hip-hop, and I spent a class period on the ways social media can be used for both marketing and creating art. Next semester I will begin writing my thesis on emo music and internet culture of the early 2000s, so I wanted to take this opportunity to lay the groundwork for why social media and the internet are so important to the arts now. In this post, I will discuss three of the most important aspects of social media and the internet: innovation, accessibility, and community.
Allow me to introduce you to one of the best products of TikTok last year: Ratatouille the TikTok Musical. TikTok is a new(ish) social media platform that is primarily marketed to Gen Z kids, but at the start of quarantine a lot of millennials and a handful of Gen X joined out of curiosity/boredom. The app allows users to share three to sixty second videos and has unique features such as stitch, duet, filters and effects, live video streaming, and auto-generated captions. For bored musical theater kids in quarantine, TikTok was exactly what they needed.
It all started with Emily Jacobson (@e_jaccs) who made up a silly song for a TikTok she shared with her handful of followers.
The song was so catchy and nonsensical. TikTok loved it, and within two months it had gone viral. With all of this new attention, it caught the eye of composer Daniel Mertzlufft (@danieljmertzlufft). He took Jacobson’s song and orchestrated it, giving it that iconic musical theater sound. Other TikTok creators were inspired and began making up their own songs, dances, and art to tell the story of Remy and his ratatouille. Many of these can be found in this video, and all of them can be accessed on TikTok by searching the hashtag #RatatouilleMusical. What started as one silly video became an actual broadway production and raised two million dollars to support the Actors Fund. Famous actors and musicians such as Tituss Burgess, Adam Lambert, Wayne Brady, Kevin Chamberlin, André de Shields, Andrew Bart Feldman, Priscilla Lopez, and Ashley Park all performed in the online full broadway production.
Of course, TikTok did not stop at one musical. The Netflix show Bridgerton quickly inspired musicians Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear to create another crowdsourced musical. With 689 million users, the possibilities for TikTok musicals are endless. This type of innovation and creativity would not be possible without social media
Social media is not only responsible for innovation in creating art but also for innovation in marketing art. The majority of you are reading this blog post because I shared it on social media. The music, videos, television, news articles, and scholarly articles that I consume mainly come from social media sharing. It is an incredibly easy way to distribute media to a large number of people within a short time and an essential tool that artists must learn to master. My friend Terrence Parkes is launching his artistic career with this in mind. He says
“Millions of people scroll through social apps daily. The potential to reach such high volumes of others has never been easier. With every new creation of mine, I ask myself, would I click on this if I saw this on my social media feed?”
In my Hamilton class, we examined the ways Lin Manuel Miranda and his marketing team used social media to make Hamilton the success that it was. One of their most successful strategies has been cast members doing “takeovers” on Snapchat, Facebook live, Instagram live, and (more recently) TikTok. Jessica DiLuglio wrote an article about Hamilton’s social media tactics in 2016 where she emphasized the merit of these cast takeovers.
“We get to see how much fun the cast has together and how goofy they are. Their real personalities get to shine, making them individual people — not just Hamilton cast members. It also is much closer than any platform on how we communicate face-to-face. It’s not filtered or altered-it’s documenting the present moment as it is. Again, authenticity.”
One of the hit songs in Ratatouille the TikTok Musical is called “Anyone Can Cook,” and it truly encapsulates what the TikTok musical is all about: anyone can be an artist. All someone needs is a phone with video and an internet connection, and they can create and share with the world. This type of accessibility opens the door to those who otherwise might never have an opportunity to perform or distribute their work.
TikTok is known for its dance trends and challenges, and the great thing about them is their accessibility. Because these dances are primarily made up of arm movements, many wheelchair users have an equal opportunity to participate. More importantly, however, social media has given disabled creators a platform to raise awareness and to educate others about accessibility issues both on social media and in the real world. This leads into my final point, which is community. With 3.78 billion social media users in the world, it is easy for anyone to find their own group of like-minded people. TikTok has been a powerful tool for establishing online queer and disabled communities, but even since before TikTok, Reddit has been the perfect platform for establishing community. Organized into over 2.8 million subreddits, the social media platform is all about building community based on shared interests. Hundreds of these subreddits are relating to music and provide a place for music distribution, discussion, and discovery!
Over the next few months as I write my thesis, I will have many more posts to share regarding online musical community and its importance to young people and marginalized people. It is for this reason as well as the great potential for accessibility and innovation that artists of all ages should put effort into their social media presence and recognize its value as an artistic tool. Now, enjoy watching some TikToks!
