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Scooter and the Postmodern Cheese
Wow, it's been a while since I last posted a thread here...
This might be a bit of a controversy (or not), but here's something I was thinking about the other day: What's wrong with Scooter? Some people seem to hate it with passion and, personally, I believe Scooter is probably one of the most misunderstood acts in the Electronic Dance Music scene. The reasons behind such misinterpretation are numerous, but I hope I can, with this post, cast some light on this problem.
The fact that they hail from the same country as Friedrich Nietzsche is no coincidence. As Gary Aylesworth points out in his article about postmodernism, Nietzsche was an important precursor for the movement. Through his life-worshipping philosophy, he was able to (accidentally, perhaps) lay the theoretical foundations for Scooter's catchy multi-layered mockery.
| quote: | | Music makes its appearance as the last plant among all the arts which grow on the soil of a particular culture—perhaps because it is the most inward and hence arrives last, in the fall, when the culture which belongs to it is fading. (source) |
These quasi-prophetical words by Nietzsche are also interesting in this case because Scooter is a product of the 90s, the decade in which postmodernism seems to have lost its spot in the limelight (refer to the Sokal affair for more on this). It's important to notice that there was far more to postmodern music (as I see it) than Scooter, as it had also spawned a rather organised movement in Tokyo, Japan, known as Shibuya-kei. But, no matter how fun Cibo Matto and Pizzicato Five are, I don't intend to explain their music here, for it doesn't seem to be the object of any prejudice.
Nietzsche's "On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life" argues that the ability repeat an unhistorical moment is fundamental to a culture's life (and Charles Baudelaire later draws on that). That's one of the main idea behind Scooter's dialogue with mainstream EDM (what most of us would consider to be rip-offs). I lost count of how many times I listened to a tune of theirs and recognised a melody. It's there, revamped, with some hyperactive MC babbling about ice cream in a van, and how much the fish might cost on any given day. They're capable of turning any masterpiece into some kind of frivolous parody. Just like media in general manages to turn everything - even tragedies - into tasteless commodities. Discourse analysts would have lots to say about it. But, what matter is that, in Scooter's case, it's fun. Dance music needn't be anything other than that. It doesn't have to change your life, nor save the whales (although this would be kind of cool). As long as you're bobbing your head to the beat, music is doing its job.
And, that's it. Thanks to Eurodance, Eurobeat and most things Euro- back in the 90s, cheese was ubiquitous, and Scooter simply took it to the next level. It was able to rely just on that (which is the biggest difference between them and what was going on in Japan and their zany shibuya-kei movement). It's a tribute to eurodance ephemera, in a decade that saw the death of way too many genres (such as happy hardcore, which ended up being marginalised after the advent of jungle music).
What many producers seem not to have understood is that, if they're "ripped off" by Scooter, the best thing to do is ripping them off back. That's how their social criticism works. Besides, this would end up being a very interesting dialogue after a while. I'd approve of that.
That's the final argument, I reckon: the reason why most people still seem to be annoyed by Scooter is because they insist on taking it seriously. That's absurd, Scooter is just a playful parody on what people think its serious... in that sense, Scooter is not unlike this post 
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