brian fauteux - reflections of the cosmopolitan city mapping arcade fire’s reflektor and its...

Journal of Popular Music Studies, Volume 27, Issue 1, Pages 48–68

Reflections of the Cosmopolitan City: Mapping ArcadeFire’s Reflektor and its Intermedia

Promotional Campaign1

Brian FauteuxUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison

Music is the cultural form best able both to cross borders—soundscarry across fences and walls and oceans, across classes, races, andnations—and to define places: in clubs, scenes, and raves, listeningon headphones, radio, and in the concert hall, we are only where themusic takes us (Frith 276).

On 1 August 2013, a mysterious Instagram account initiated theambitious multimedia, multiplatform promotional campaign for ArcadeFire’s new single and album of the same name: Reflektor. As the campaignunfolded it grew to include a Saturday Night Live (SNL) performance,a number of YouTube teaser trailers, Twitter posts, a late-night NBCspecial that followed the SNL appearance called Here Comes the NightTime, and a low-quality album stream leaked intentionally by the band(see Wheeler). The promotional campaign reflects an increasingly mobileand interconnected listening and viewing experience of popular culture,in which excess and ubiquity are keys to success. But the campaign ismuch more than a succession of digital sounds and images. Early in theReflektor campaign, a series of Instagram photos hinted at the significance of“9 PM 9/9.” The date and time in question not only marked the release ofthe video for the album’s first single, “Reflektor,” but more significantly,a “secret” show by the band, billed not as Arcade Fire but instead as anunknown band, The Reflektors. Before this The Reflektors played a seriesof less-publicized shows in Montreal. These live performances anchoredthe campaign as it unfolded and intensified, highlighting the persistentsignificance and centrality of local sites of production and exhibition inpopular music-making and promotion.

Montreal and New York City were the first two locations for TheReflektors shows and both cities are noteworthy sites of production and

C© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Reflections of the Cosmopolitan City 49

performance for Arcade Fire. This article explores how these cities occupya strong presence throughout the campaign, signaling cosmopolitanism, andthe carnivalesque. Sounds of the cosmopolitan city are linked to ArcadeFire’s increasing accolades and career trajectory. With Reflektor, ArcadeFire draws similarities to other popular rock bands that have turned to amore global sound as their careers progressed (Remain in Light by TalkingHeads, for instance). The cosmopolitan city also parallels recent shifts in themusic industries that afford artists a variety of methods for producing anddistributing music, such as using social media platforms to release music orconnect with fans. It is a site characterized by pluralism and fluid boundaries,themes shared in common with Carnival, a public celebration that typicallyoccurs before Lent in numerous places across the world. The carnival themerecurs throughout the Reflektor campaign and signifies both the inversion ofhierarchies—in this case the barriers between performer and audience mem-ber and the masking of Arcade Fire by The Reflektors—and complicatedissues of cultural appropriation. The sounds of the cosmopolitan city and thecarnival serve as key esthetic markers for the band’s style on Reflektor andembody the complex relationship between the local and universal. Digitalcirculation often evokes ideas of universality and ubiquity, but a noticeableattention to place is just as important a mark of the digital age.

The Intermedia Promotional CampaignReflektor, a double LP with a running time of 85:10 (including a

hidden track), is Arcade Fire’s most ambitious release thus far. The albumdebuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 140,000 copies in itsfirst week, continuing the success and accolades generated by the band’sGrammy award-winning The Suburbs (2011), which also debuted at numberone. Although the band released Reflektor with long-time label MergeRecords, Universal Music Group distributes the album. Previous albumshave distribution deals with Alternative Distribution Alliance, WarnerMusic’s indie distribution arm. Another noted “change in the world ofArcade Fire” is a partnership with Capitol Records for radio promotion(Caulfield). In response to these business decisions, Chris Molanphy ofPitchfork exclaims, “Major distribution? Radio promotion?! These areuncharted waters for Arcade Fire, and virtually any band on Merge. Theband is having its cred and eating it too” (Molanphy). By remaining withMerge and establishing partnerships with majors, Reflektor represents an“in-between” album, symbolizing tensions, transformations, and fluidity in

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not just a musical and technological moment that is anything but certain,but also its surrounding political economy.

Transition becomes a significant theme that runs throughout reviewsof the album. Lorraine Carpenter, a writer for the Montreal-based CultMTL,hints at this theme of transition, claiming that listeners will “notice that thebig-band dynamic is still there, complete with violin, sax and congas, butsome of their new material is fitted with slower tempos and languid grooves. . . But variety brings new dynamics to the mix, and to the mood” (Carpenter,“Here’s Why”). Of course, a band experimenting with and integrating newinfluences to its sound and style is nothing new, or specific to Arcade Fire,but discourses of transition and variety become connected to the band’sbusiness relationships as well as their music.

The Reflektor promotional campaign can be difficult to map, and thatis just the point. It embodies cultures high and low, industries and media newand old, and spaces both local and global. Before the album’s release, thecampaign occupied a number of social media outlets using Instagram postsand Twitter updates to connect fans with short videos consisting of recentconcert footage, or images of carnivals set to audio clips from the new album.Early in the campaign a short video posted to thereflektors.com depicted aperson’s hand writing out the letters of “Reflektor” in an encircled diamondshape set to a discordant, atmospheric soundscape. These same Reflektorlogos were found on sidewalks and walls in select cities. Also buildinganticipation was the music video for “Reflektor,” directed by Anton Corbijn.Upon the release of the video, Stereogum writer Miles Bowe commentedthat, “despite being a little jaded from the tornado of hype that’s gone ontoday, you may find it pretty damn incredible. The whole thing is so big, soweird, so overwhelmingly stylish, and beautiful, not to mention it’s all shotin that stark black and white that made Corbijn iconic” (Bowe). Corbijn isa big name in the fields of photography, music video, and film direction,having photographed Joy Division, directed Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box”video as well as the 2007 Ian Curtis biopic, Control. His presence certainlyhints at the campaign’s high aspirations.

One of the more novel components of the campaign is the late-night, NBC television special, Here Comes the Night Time (directed byRoman Coppola), which first aired following the band’s Saturday Night Liveperformance on 28 September 2013.2 The special is primarily comprised ofthe live performances from the band’s series of secret shows in Montreal,in which masked and costumed attendees dance along to the new music.Performance footage takes viewers onstage with the band members, who


are wearing face paint and matching suits and dresses, as new music ispreviewed (specifically the songs “Here Comes the Night Time,” “We Exist,”and “Normal Person”). The camera also moves into and weaves through thetightly packed crowd, which at times executes partially choreographed danceroutines. Concert footage is intercut with short humorous skits and reveals acommunity television esthetic as it “accidently” airs brief clips from a sitcom“starring” comedian and actor Aziz Ansari. The low quality, DIY esthetic ofthe special is contrasted by the involvement of high-profile celebrities suchas Bono, Ben Stiller, James Franco, and Michael Cera. Concurrently, thespecial offers a preview of music to come, while also aligning the band withthe star power and cultural credibility of Hollywood actors and successfulmusicians.

The extensive parameters of the campaign suggest that it is nolonger enough to simply promote music through the channels offered toand preferred by big industry players (such as Arcade Fire’s star-studdedNBC special and the SNL performance), nor to only draw upon avenuesin line with more independent means for circulating and promoting music(philosophically and practically), such as word of mouth or relying on a greatreview from an independent music blog rich in cultural capital. Instead, thecampaign reflects being in the midst of a messy yet exciting moment whennew promotional practices are being tested against big industry methodsfor circulating music. The campaign makes room for the conflation of anunknown band, The Reflektors, and the Grammy Award-winning ArcadeFire. One’s ability to discover that The Reflektors are indeed Arcade Fireis a key characteristic of the promotional campaign, signifying a culture ofinstant news, the perceived importance of “hipness,” and a heightened senseof connectivity within which the campaign functions.

A series of innovative promotional campaigns for major albumreleases have both preceded and followed Reflektor. These campaigns pointto new promotional practices of the contemporary music industries thatextend beyond Arcade Fire. For example, in 2011 a short-film-as-music-video trend was especially predominant, one that Arcade Fire was a partof with Scenes From the Suburbs, a half-hour short film directed by SpikeJonze. That same year, the Beastie Boys released Fight for Your RightRevisited, a short film that showcases the coming together of variousmedia forms and cultural moments (Kanye West’s Runaway is anothernotable example from 2011). In R. Colin Tait’s discussion of Fight forYour Right Revisited, he explains that the music video’s resiliency throughits transformation from the once-dominant MTV music video format to the

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online, internet video “has actually created an even stronger form of media,ushering in a renaissance of works where music artists have embracedvirality and consolidated their power as producers and directors of theseshort works.” The short film embodies “the new convergent logic of viralvideos and contemporary advertising” (Tait). Similarly to Here Comes theNight Time, the Beastie Boys film features major celebrities such as ElijahWood, Seth Rogen, and Will Ferrell, celebrities who play either young orold versions of the band, which is symbolic of the ways in which it bridgesmusic video forms of the past and present. The film’s myriad componentsmake “the lines between original, extratextual, paratextual and hypertextualdifficult to discern,” according to Tait. He adds that “the film is the sumtotal of all of these references as well as a hub which points outward to manymore,” a point that is indicative of a cultural and technological moment thatlends itself well to a multiplatform, multimedia promotional campaign thatmatches music with film and musicians with actors.

A handful of prominent artists attempted innovative promotionalcampaigns for their new albums in 2013. In fact, 2013 was dubbed “TheYear of the Album-Release Stunt” by Rolling Stone magazine. Arcade Firewas profiled by the magazine alongside Daft Punk and Jay Z as artistswho used inventive or unusual promotional tactics for their album releases.Daft Punk began promoting Random Access Memories by distributingunlabeled posters “showing stark images of the robots’ heads” and by airinga 15 second teaser trailer on Saturday Night Live. A second trailer wasshown at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California(Marchese). Anticipation increased following the launch of the album’s firstsingle, “Get Lucky,” and continued until the album’s premier in Wee Waa,Australia (Marchese). Jay Z’s Magna Carta . . . Holy Grail was announcedto basketball fans in a Samsung-sponsored television advertisement duringJune’s NBA finals. The album was available before its release date as afree download for Samsung Galaxy subscribers. Beyonce ended 2013 byreleasing her fifth studio album overnight (via a video posted to Instagram)and without any warning or promotion, an innovative promotional stuntin itself. The album was released exclusively by iTunes and each songincludes its own music video. Promotional campaigns of this magnitude havepartnered major bands and pop stars with big business and tested innovativetechnological methods for promoting and distributing music. What remainscentral to these innovative campaigns, however, is the prominence of place.Coachella and Wee Waa are integral to Daft Punk’s campaign and asignificant part of Jay Z’s contemporary star power has to do with his


involvement in the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.Locations persist within the multimedia and multiplatform musical universe.Central to Arcade Fire’s Reflektor and its surrounding campaign is thecosmopolitan city, namely Montreal and New York, two significant sitesof production and performance.

Reflektor and the Cosmopolitan CityArcade Fire’s Reflektor campaign overwhelms all channels of

communication and ensures a presence on the multiplicity of platformsthrough which today’s music fan interacts with music on a daily basis,both in-person and online. But the campaign also prominently emphasizeslocal sites of production and exhibition in popular music making. Moreimportantly, as evidenced by The Reflektors’ secret shows, the campaignincorporates cosmopolitan cities with rich and diverse cultural and musicalhistories, primarily Montreal and New York. The cosmopolitan city, heardand seen in both the campaign and the band’s current sound and style, isthe new location in a series of Arcade Fire albums that foreground place—aMontreal borough on Funeral (2004), a rural Quebec church-turned-studioon Neon Bible (2007), and the Houston suburbs on The Suburbs (2011).

The cosmopolitan city can be traced to cosmopolitanism theconcept, one that intervenes in analyses that bind political and culturalrelations between people and society to nation states and to the ideologiesof nationalism and patriotism. The concept claims “detachment fromthe bonds, commitments, and affiliations that constrain ordinary nation-bound lives” (Robbins 1) and, thus, cosmopolitanism helps us to thinkabout the ways in which popular music making and promotion functionin the digital age. Striving to push beyond the banality of Foucault’s“heterotopic excursion” (Harvey 538) and Kant’s cosmopolitanism, which“plagued the inception of national ideology with racial prejudgment”(Mignolo 736), more contemporary applications align cosmopolitanism withdialectic processes and pluralities. Identities, local and otherwise, involveplural nationalities, challenging the dominance of patriotic identity in mod-ern nation states (Beck 76). Cosmopolitanism calls into question modernistnationalisms and their tendency to connect cultures and identities to specificplaces. This tendency has been critiqued as a “retrograde ideology” in a worlddeterritorialized by migration, mediatization, and capital flows (Pollocket al. 579). Key themes of cosmopolitanism include plurality, universality,displacement, relations between the local and global, and social and cultural

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experiences between people, cultural products, and modes and methodsof production. Impressively, music also involves all of these elements.There exists an intriguing parallel between a transition from nationalismto cosmopolitanism(s) and recent shifts in the music industries. Formerly,controlled top-down by those who owned the chain of production, musicindustries today enable a kind of freewheeling liberty that Arcade Firedemonstrates through the Reflektor campaign. Yet, as with cosmopolitanism,contemporary music industries suffer from class difficulties and culturalinequalities, particularly in the age of globalized capital.

Writing on world music, a sound indicative of cosmopolitanism,Steven Feld (2000) highlights this very tension of musical globalization as“experienced and narrated as equally celebratory and contentious becauseeveryone can hear equally omnipresent signs of augmented and diminishedmusical diversity” (146). Feld’s more recent book on jazz cosmopolitanismin Accra, Ghana (2012) illustrates the embodied, lived, uneven, andcomplicated nature of cosmopolitanism, suggesting that the term impliesmore than “some heady abstraction floating in the banalizing academic inkpool alongside ‘globalization’ or ‘identity’” (7). Reflektor, an album thatevokes the cosmopolitan city, accounts for both the progressive connectionsand problematic tensions that are implicated in conflations of the global andthe local.

Much more than an amalgamation of tastes and ethnicities,cosmopolitanism reflects the various cultural practices and experiences thattake place at different space-times, connected in and throughout the local, theglobal, the present, and the past. This argument is a central thrust of MartinAllor’s exploration of Montreal’s Boulevard Saint-Laurent (commonlyreferred to as “The Main”), which nicely connects cosmopolitanism to thecosmopolitan city. Allor argues for “foregrounding the necessity of linkingthe analysis of the practices of cultural consumption to the location of sitesof cultural activity in particular vectors of the local and the global and of thesedimented past and the becoming of cultural agents” (46). An emphasis onthe need for “different conceptualizations of a cultural future less beholdento the story of a single ‘national’ culture” encapsulates the nature of TheMain as a 24 hour street, one with a daily cycle encompassing “differentmoments which involve different peoples and different practices” (Allor48–49). We experience popular music along similar lines as the 24 hourcosmopolitan city, as a listener is never able to express pleasure or distaste fora piece of music as divorced from an accumulation of songs heard, of valuejudgments made, and cultural experiences had. Musical taste results from the


accumulation of affective experiences and memories, the concerts we attend,the songs we hear, and the performing and practicing of an instrument.Like the cosmopolitan city, one’s musical orientation is much more thana representative sample of tastes or of musical and cultural preferences.Simon Frith argues that “if value judgments in popular culture make theirown claims to objectivity (to being rooted, that is, in the quality of objects),their subjectivity can’t be denied either—not, however, by banal referenceto people having their own (essentially irrational) likes and dislikes, butbecause such judgments are taken to tell us something about the personmaking them” (Frith 4). Subjectivities and experiences from different timesand places are paramount to understanding a listener’s relationship withpopular music, just as they are fundamental to the diversity and plurality ofthe cosmopolitan city.

The cosmopolitan city looms large in popular imaginary, the site forwhich the debates and discourses outlined above unfold. Popular culture isconstituted along the lines by which people traverse and experience the city.Through music and film, the cosmopolitan city challenges us to think andrethink the limits of culture, politics, technology, and the self. While othercities can be located in the Reflektor campaign, Montreal and New Yorkare especially central, each doubling as a significant site of production forArcade Fire.

Montreal, the band’s home, is the site of the first shows by TheReflektors in early September 2013. A review of the 9 September “not-so-secret show” at Salsatheque (a salsa club, not a rock venue) describes theperformance as “the (local) climax of an elaborate viral marketing campaignfor their new single ‘Reflektor’” (Carpenter, “All About”). The Salsathequeshows are the basis of the aforementioned late-night NBC special, HereComes the Night Time (the cosmopolitan city doesn’t sleep), as well as for anumber of teaser videos for select songs, the album, and the television specialitself. For example, one teaser posted to the Vice YouTube channel includescrowd footage from a Salsatheque show with one individual costumed as askeleton in the forefront. Written in neon blue, “Arcade Fire in Here Comesthe Night Time” flashes over the course of the 15 second video. The teaserpromotes the television special and the prerecorded material from the in-person live performance entices the viewer. Salsatheque is a significantsite that travels through the campaign and the venue’s significance tocommunicating the cosmopolitan city is made evident by the fact that ArcadeFire played a salsa club, as opposed to one of the many smaller indie rockvenues for which Montreal is known.

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Following the 9 September secret show at Salsatheque in Montreal,Carpenter notes the Haitian influences that have been added to the band’slook and sound, which are significant for locating the cosmopolitan city inReflektor and its campaign. Both the SNL performance and the late nightspecial call attention to this expanded sound, as the stage is especiallycrowded (even for an Arcade Fire show) with former core member SarahNeufeld, frequent collaborator Owen Pallett, a horn section featuringColin Stetson, and added percussionists Diol Edmond and Tiwill Duprate.Carpenter claims that it is no surprise that Arcade Fire has embarked onthis esthetic turn given the band’s “long relationship with Haiti” (Carpenter“All About”). The band and the city of Montreal are both connected toHaiti. Montreal’s Haitian community is the largest in Canada and ArcadeFire multi-instrumentalist and singer Regine Chassagne, whose parentsemigrated from Haiti, has advocated the country’s need for aid followingthe 2010 earthquake, among other Haiti-related activities (see Chassagne).The struggles of modern day Haiti are heard on Reflektor’s “Here Comes theNight Time” (a song that begins with voices and music sourced from Haiti’sannual Carnival and features a percussion-heavy breakdown), particularlya critique of the ineffectiveness of religious missionaries. According to aRolling Stone interview with lead singer Win Butler, many missionaries arenot actively working with Haitians but are rather there to “paint houses” andteach people about God. Butler explains that he feels as though the work ofthe missionaries is misguided because of the deep knowledge and belief thatmany Haitians already have in God (Doyle). This frustration comes acrosson “Here Comes the Night Time” when Butler sings: “The missionaries,they tell us we’ll be left behind/we’ve been left behind a thousand times,a thousand times.” Countries become connected through song. The soundsof the diasporas are the sounds of the cosmopolitan city.

In her review of the album, Carpenter expresses that “strains of duband rara and Afrobeat are used sparingly but definitely help set a tone for therecord” (Carpenter, “Here’s Why”). She notes that in and around the band’srecording sessions—which took place in studios and spaces in Jamaica,Montreal, Lousiana, and New York—“various members travelled to Carnivalin Trinidad and visited Haiti, Regine’s parents’ home country, a place thatArcade Fire has aligned with via musical tributes.” Band member RichardReed Parry explains that there are “a bunch of Haitian percussionists thatplay on this record.” The band started recording the album in Jamaica “andhad taken trips to Haiti and some of us had been over to Carnival in Trinidad,and seen the, like, 80-person steel orchestras, and just absorbing some


Caribbean things. Having those Haitian musicians come and lend a differentpercussionistic feel really changes things up. But we’re not trying to makeGraceland” (Carpenter, “Here’s Why”). On the one hand, Parry’s commentsemphasize the accumulation of Caribbean sounds and styles in the recordingof Reflektor. On the other, he is careful to distance the album from PaulSimon’s Graceland (1986), an album that stands out in popular music historyas being central to debates about cultural exchange and cultural imperialism(Tangari). The Graceland connection points to a perceived tradition of rockbands going somewhere as their careers progress (Beatles, Rolling Stones,Talking Heads, and U2). Carl Wilson discusses this trajectory in his Reflektorreview for Slate, noting that this progression is not always about “goingprimitive,” but rather more about a push towards a stylistic change. Onthe issue of cultural appropriation, Wilson suggests that the trouble withArcade Fire’s Haitian influences is that they are applied “too gingerly.” Theassumption is that “they’re too smart and tasteful to appropriate too blatantly”(Wilson). Parry’s comments work to convince readers and listeners that theband’s expanded sound is a result of “authentic” cultural experiences (Wilsonalso claims that Arcade Fire have a weakness for idealizing authenticity).Through these comments the band both admits to and distances itself fromthe suggestion of cultural appropriation, a process that is emblematic ofevoking the cosmopolitan city through music.

Reflektor was also recorded partially at DFA Studio in New YorkCity (the quintessential American cosmopolitan city) with James Murphy(of LCD Soundsystem). New York, specifically Brooklyn, is the location oftwo back-to-back secret Reflektors shows that, amongst other things, carriedthe campaign into satellite radio through heavy promotion by independentmusic channel Sirius XMU (also based in New York City). Arcade Firecites Murphy’s far-reaching and diverse musical taste as a key reason forworking with the producer. The band’s love for LCD Soundsystem’s musicis another. Commenting on LCD Soundsystem, Parry explains, “If we hadto say who our favorite contemporary band was, that would probably beit. When we saw them on the Sound of Silver tour, it was the best show”(Carpenter, “Here’s Why”). Parry mentions Murphy’s “super-diverse, wide,and extremely excitable taste in music” and adds that it was great to havesomeone whose “specialty is dance music” on board for the new dance songson Reflektor. Diversity and variety, both key components of the cosmopolitancity, are clearly present in the production choices behind the album.

Reflektor sounds like New York, the ultimate cosmopolitan city andthe site of massively significant moments and movements in popular music

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history. Artists who are cited in reviews as standout influences on Reflektorevoke a New York as heard through the coming together of sounds and stylesboth distant and local at key moments in the city’s musical history. Examplesinclude proto-punk in the mid 1960s to mid 1970s and the subsequent newwave scene of New York’s CBGB. David Bowie’s backing vocals on thesingle “Reflektor” are applicable here, as are the Talking Heads comparisons,a parallel that The Atlantic Wire critic Zach Schonfeld feels has been madead nauseam (Schonfeld). Reviews highlight the sounds of disco and thefamous Studio 54 of a late 1970s New York City. Win Butler describesthe band’s new sound as a “mash up of Studio 54 and Haitian voodoo”(Pelly). Diversity and variety are again present in reviews and discussionsof Reflektor, connected, in this case, to New York City.

Following the Montreal and Brooklyn shows The Reflektorscontinued the series of secret shows in other cities including LosAngeles and Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, with funds from theperformances donated to Partners in Health and the neighborhood’s culturalcenter. These subsequent shows are not as integral to the campaign itselfbecause they were not used as source material for additional promotionalmaterial. However, the shows continued the hype and momentum up to thealbum’s release date of 29 October 2013, which was then followed by aEuropean leg of the promotional tour.

What does it mean, then, to evoke the cosmopolitan city throughsound? Part of a cosmopolitan sound is the fact that genres in contemporarypopular music are increasingly fluid. Win Butler, commenting on “theincreasing prevalence of genre-less taste today” says that “the joy of makingmusic in 2013 is you’re allowed to like Sex Pistols and ABBA and that’sfine” (Pelly). But recall, the cosmopolitan city is much more than a melangeof tastes and cultures; it also evokes paths through and between differentspace-times and locations. Both cultural and material capital are required fornavigating and traversing the global and weaving it through the local and thisis a privilege attainable through a successful career. Arcade Fire’s culturalaccolades and accomplishments (The Suburbs won the Polaris, the Juno,and the Grammy for best album) are instrumental in this transition from thesuburbs to the cultural and musical diversity produced by the cosmopolitancity. Trips to Haiti and visits to carnivals become visual components ofthe campaign and of the sound and style of Reflektor. One short clip, inparticular, titled “The Reflektors,” includes images from Carnival in Jacmel.It begins with nighttime footage in the streets and a close-up of a Haitianlicense plate on a scooter. The clip continues to cut between the encircled-diamond Reflektor logo and daytime shots of costumed and elaborately


masked carnival-goers, including what appear to be a devil or a demon andan individual with snakes for hair (“The Reflektors.”).

Cosmopolitanism, according to Jennie Germann Molz, refers to“an intellectual skill, an esthetic savoir faire, and an affective pleasurein experiencing and navigating through cultural difference” (35). An“intellectual skill” and a refined esthetic palate are components of “culturalcapital,” a term that Pierre Bourdieu used to outline systems of culturaldistinction and symbolic exchange. Cultural capital is the reflection of one’scapacity to navigate and critique cultural experiences. The fluid geographic,aesthetic, cultural, and technological boundaries of Reflektor as an albumand a campaign are representative of the band’s increased cultural capital.In addition to winning major awards and partnering with major labels, theband has, for the most part, avoided claims of selling out. Pitchfork, amusic blog that functions as a predominant cultural gatekeeper for newmusic, granted Reflektor a rating of 9.2 out of 10 and the prestigious“Best New Music” label (a label Arcade Fire has received for each ofits four full-length albums) (Zoladz). According to the online reviewaggregator Metacritic.com, however, Reflektor also garnered Arcade Firemore negative reviews than its past full-length releases. Writing for The A.V.Club, Josh Modell says that “At first only its faults—and more importantly,its departures—stand out: It feels dull, overlong, indulgent, and detached”(Modell). Negative reviews are perhaps indicative of overexposure causedby the extensiveness and intensity of the promotional campaign, an issuethat will be expanded on below.

Narratives of travel and experience carry throughout the Reflektorcampaign, including the reviews of the album and its songs and interviewswith band members. Win Butler discusses the influence that visiting Haitihad on the album’s sound and lyrics in a Rolling Stone interview. “I waslearning from what I saw and applying it to my own life, lyrically,” hesays, adding, “I’m not trying to tell other people’s stories. We’re just tryingto allow an experience to change you” (Doyle). Butler’s account becomesmore descriptive when mentioning Carnival in Jacmel, recalling his time“on a beach at three in the morning, and there was a voodoo drummerplaying, and he had been dancing for like, 4 hours with kids and teenagersand they started to get the spirit . . . It really kind of makes you feel like ahack being in a rock band, having musical experiences like that” (Doyle).Jacmel’s Carnival, according to Butler’s account, represents a space oftranscendence and experience. Reflektor marks an esthetic and conceptualturn that expands the band’s sound, style, and broader mythology. It is an

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effective and evocative turn because it expands the band’s sonic boundaries,a move that is symbolic of the band’s increased cultural capital, but also onethat keeps Arcade Fire rooted in place. Reflektor communicates a place ofplaces, the cosmopolitan city.

The Cosmopolitan City and the CarnivalA consequence of the cosmopolitan city’s pluralism is excess. Excess

connects Reflektor’s promotional campaign to the cosmopolitan city and itis explicit through the recurring theme of the carnival. The campaignsaturates a wide range of media outlets just as the city’s carnival overwhelmsthe senses. A multiplatform, intermedia campaign is a modern carnivalsteeped in excess with humor and hyperbole unfolding in reviews, readercomments, tweets, and blog posts. In person at the secret shows, concert-goers were required to be costumed and masked. Win Butler, citing theCarnival in Jacmel, says that the act of wearing a mask and dancing in acrowd leads to what he feels to be a “whole inversion of society.” He pointsto “feeling less of a break between the spirit and the body, and sex and deathnot being completely unrelated. [You] just kind of feel like a more wholeperson, I guess” (Doyle).

The carnival symbolizes both the inversion of social hierarchies aswell as the transnational circulation of sounds and styles. Bakhtin’s notionof the carnivalesque stems from his thoughts on the medieval carnival,one that suggests the destruction of the distinction between actors andspectators. “Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live init, and everyone participates, because its idea embraces all people” (7–8).Bakhtin pointed to the importance of the mask, “the most complextheme of folk culture,” a theme connected with “the joy of change andreincarnation, with gay relativity and with the merry negation of uniformityand similarity . . . The mask is related to transition, metamorphoses, theviolation of natural boundaries, to mockery and familiar nicknames” (40).In addition to the masked audiences at the secret shows, the masking ofArcade Fire by The Reflektors represents the inversion of the cultural capitalaccredited to the band, choosing instead to mount a promotional campaignas a new and unheard-of act. A similar carnivalesque move was executed bythe Beatles for the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, onwhich the band members replaced themselves “with the imaginary groupof the title” (Kohl 85). Of significance is the fact that this inversion cameat a time when the Beatles most effectively severed the line between “high


art and popular entertainment” and garnered “serious critical appraisal andpraise” (Kohl 87). A cosmopolitan sound seems to stem not only fromthe accumulation of cultural capital but also an increase in popularity andprominence. The mask becomes a means by which to prevent popularityfrom overshadowing credibility.

The cosmopolitan city and the carnival enable the inversion ofcultural distinctions and, thus, the coming together of musical soundsand styles across time and space. As an agent of inversion, the carnivalhighlights the ways in which globalization is a complex, two-way processthat includes counter-flows from the periphery-to-center. Keith Nurse detailsthe far-reaching influence the Trinidad carnival has had on carnivals inother cities across the globe (663). He states that “Almost every majorcity in North America and Britain has a Caribbean style carnival that is inlarge part modeled after the one found in Trinidad” (Nurse 661). Carnivalsof the Americas demonstrate the potential to “embody rituals of socialprotest that critique and parody the process of enforced hybridization andtransculturation embedded in colonial and neocolonial society” (Nurse 667).But as carnivals become more “commercialized, internationalized, andethnically pluralistic,” there are instances where carnivals reflect “insti-tutionalized social hierarchies, suffering from racial and sexual stigma,heightened surveillance” (Nurse 671, 676). Positioning the carnival withina contemporary popular musical album must not only acknowledge theproductive aspects of celebrating the inversion of social hierarchies, thepleasures of dance and movement, and the blurring of cultural and musicalboundaries, but also complicated issues of cultural appropriation and theindustrial and economic impetus behind the production of culture.

A number of well-founded concerns about cultural appropriation andmisrepresentation followed in the wake of the album’s release. Such concernsare raised in an Atlantic piece by Hayden Higgins, who points to the potentialfor audiences to not understand the source and origin of the Haitian soundsand styles in the Reflektor campaign as problematic. Higgins has a point.Confusion about cultural influences can be problematic, particularly whenorigins are incorrectly mapped onto the agents with more cultural clout. Oneexample he offers is a certain Mashable.com post that incorrectly assumesthat Arcade Fire created Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus (Higgins). The1959 film, which takes place during Brazil’s Carnival, plays alongside theearly leak of Reflektor. Higgins explains that he was originally unsure ofwhat the campaign’s accompanying imagery meant, but discovered that the“designs were inspired by Haitian veve graffiti, used in syncretistic Vodoun

62 Brian Fauteux

practices to summon the Loa (angels or spirits, messengers to the deity).”Higgins argues that when such images are presented out of context, theyconnote “something else: mystery, exoticness, esotericism,” and that thisis done to grab attention and profit. However, by engaging with a processof discovering the cultural origin of these sounds and styles through hisarticle, Higgins also contradicts the central thrust of his argument, that ofthe audience’s inability to grasp the complexities of cultural and musicalinfluences. It is also problematic to predict how an audience might engagewith music, especially when one assumes simplicity. There are numerousways through which cultural influences travel back and forth between artists,their influences, and their fans. These complexities and their associatedproblems and tensions are also the complexities inherent to the cosmopolitancity, and no doubt of the relations between Arcade Fire, Haiti, and Montreal.

Well before Reflektor’s release, Arcade Fire was used as an exampleby Sasha Frere-Jones in a New Yorker piece from October 2007 onthe disappearance of African-American influences in indie rock music.Commenting on a live performance from Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible tour,Frere-Jones wrote, “And what I really wanted to hear, after a stretch ofraucous sing-alongs, was a bit of swing, some empty space, and palpable bassfrequencies—in other words, attributes of African-American popular music”(Frere-Jones, “A Paler”). He added that “It’s difficult to talk about the racialpedigree of American pop music without being accused of reductionism,essentialism, or worse, and such suspicion is often warranted.” Arcade Fire’sWill Butler (Win’s brother) responded to Frere-Jones’ article and attached anMP3 that included parts of the band’s songs that “steal quite blatantly fromblack people’s music from all over the globe” (Frere-Jones, “That’s All”).Butler encouraged Frere-Jones to “not ignore the Latin element in rock-and-roll history” and to not “forget that miscegenation need [not] be acrosscolor lines.” He used the example of Joanna Newsom who “is stealing OldWorld folk-style music” and mixing it with American Folk, “which is partlywhite and partly black and partly mysterious.” This exchange illustrates thatmapping musical and cultural influences is not totalizing or objective. In thiscase, the creator and the critic locate different influences and use differentwords and terms to make sense of the ways in which different artists andgenres acknowledge and understand their influences.

What is perhaps most applicable from Nurse’s analysis of theTrinidad carnival is that it offers an interesting parallel between the placeof the carnival in global popular culture and the place of the cosmopolitancity in Arcade Fire’s Reflektor. Nurse explains that “the globalization of


Trinidad carnival needs to be viewed as a dual process: the first relates to thelocalization of global influences and the second involves the globalizationof local impulses” (682). Therefore, Trinidad’s carnival is based upon thelocalization of global influences and the exportation of carnival to overseasdiasporic communities represents the globalization of the local (Nurse 682).Similar relationships between the global and the local are present in the waysin which sounds and styles, both global and local and both past and present,come together in the production, performance, and promotion of the album.In the case of Reflektor, sounds of the carnival and the connections andcomplexities between Montreal and Haiti are instrumental in the album’ssound and style, as are the cosmopolitan cities chosen for the first twosecret shows by The Reflektors—the shows that anchor the multimedia,multiplatform promotional campaign, and illustrate the prominence of placein popular music production, and performance in the digital age.

ReflectionKierkegaard’s The Present Age (1846) offers a reflection on

reflection, a critique of what he called “the reflective age,” a cultural momentdetermined by the press and the notion of a public, void of passion andaction. In contrast to a revolutionary age, “an age of action,” the reflectiveage “is the age of advertisement and publicity. Nothing ever happens butthere is immediate publicity everywhere” (Kierkegaard 35). The reflectiveage is one of envy and it “has lost all feeling for the values of eros, forenthusiasm and sincerity in politics and religion, or for piety, admiration,and domesticity in everyday life” (Kierkegaard 39). Kierkegaard positionedthe press as being able to create “that abstraction ‘the public,’ consistingof unreal individuals who never are and never can be united in an actualsituation or organization,” in part, because “the sense of association insociety is no longer strong enough to give life to concrete realties” (60).All that is “concrete” is destroyed in the reflective and passionless age. Thepublic becomes “on the look-out for distraction,” desirous for “somethingto gossip about,” and the people write and talk anonymously (Kierkegaard65, 76). Kierkegaard’s critique of the age of reflection can appropriatelyextend into the digital age, with the online expansive flow of expressionsof envy, the spread of gossip, anonymity, and the prevalence of critique andcontrarianism over passion and action.

Win Butler cites The Present Age as a source of inspiration forReflektor. He says that it sounds as though Kierkegaard is “talking about

64 Brian Fauteux

modern times. He’s talking about the press and alienation, and you kind ofread it and you’re like, ‘Dude, you have no idea how insane it’s gonna get’”(Doyle). Butler continues,

He basically compares the reflective age to a passionate age. Like,if there was a piece of gold out on thin ice, in a passionate age, ifsomeone went to try and get the gold, everyone would cheer them onand be like, “Go for it! Yeah you can do it!” And in a reflective age,if someone tried to walk out on the thin ice, everyone would criticizethem and say, “What an idiot! I can’t believe you’re going out on theice to try and risk something.” So it would kind of paralyze you toeven act basically, and it just kind of resonated with me—wantingto try and make something in the world instead of just talking aboutthings. (Doyle)

By applying the reflective age to the digital age, the carnival onceagain comes alive through anonymous (masked) critique and judgment,and the ease in which one can comment on another’s work versus thetime and effort it takes to be a creator. Butler emphasizes the desire tomove beyond the paralysis of the reflective age and instead to makesomething in the world.

The carnivalesque is also present through a consideration ofthe bacchanal and the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy. In Greekmythology, Apollo, the god of the sun, represents human individuality andcelebrates creativity through logic and reason. Dionysus or Bacchus, the godof wine, symbolizes chaos, madness, ecstasy, and emotion. This dichotomyaccounts for the ways in which a desire to create and contribute is eventuallymet with value judgments and critiques that are increasingly plentiful anduncontrollable in the digital age.

Furthermore, the myth of Orpheus recurs throughout the Reflektorcampaign and it reiterates Butler’s thoughts on Kierkegaard and the reflectiveage. Auguste Rodin’s sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice comprises thealbum’s cover. There are songs on the album titled “Awful Sound (OhEurydice)” and “It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus)” on which the marriedcouple of Win and Regine communicate the mythic couple of Orpheusand Eurydice. As well, Camus’ Black Orpheus significantly accompaniedthe album’s leak. Many reviews of the album point to the myth of Orpheusand Eurydice as it pertains to the theme of reflection (see Pareles), but whatis perhaps more significant is that Orpheus is killed by the mythic agents ofthe carnivalesque, torn apart by Dionysus’ maenads. And as a compelling


addendum to the assertion that place remains a key component in theproduction and promotion of popular music, it is in Orpheus’ demise that wecan locate an essential message that the Reflektor campaign communicates:to be wary of the ways in which the self is cut and chopped into fragmentsonline and in contemporary culture. Our reflections, of our reflections, ofour reflections.

Notes1. The author would like to thank Ian Dahlman, Andrew deWaard, and

David Madden for insightful thoughts and comments on earlier versions of thisarticle, and for the conversations during fall 2013 when Reflektor’s promotionalcampaign was launched.

2. The special can currently be watched on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fFAKrIntzY

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