I ended last month’s column by asking the question: How does the idea of fetishism in entertainment relate to the music industry? It’s a big bag of sticky issues, so let’s unpack it carefully. First, to recap, I borrowed the term “fetish” from anthropology and psychology because it is fundamentally linked to both magic and sexuality in the human psyche. Since the days of pre-history, objects have been imbued with magical power. The fetish is a physical manifestation of a spiritual energy. Possession and ritualistic worship of the fetish makes a believer feel more powerful, connected to that spiritual energy. This is often linked to sexual arousal. No big conceptual leap there.

But there is a modern twist: A fetish has come to mean a practice, not just an object, usually linked to so-called kinky sex. Yes, this is titillating, but I think it obscures the deeper meaning of modern fetishism. It’s not just about wandering into Forbidden Fruit and sniggering at the sex toys. It’s about creating a ritual space where your imagination and your reality can freely coexist. This is where art, and its commercial byproduct entertainment, enter the picture.

I made the case that cultural icons are consciously marketed by the entertainment industry to cater to fetishism. An icon, whether it be a dolled-up human, 2 tons of metal, plastic and hubcaps, or merely a frosty bottle of beer, can be marketed so it is not just familiar to millions of people, but is imbued with magical and sexual imagery to tug on the longings of our subconscious. It becomes a fetish when it invokes in our imaginations a ritual space where we can express our inner longings.

For example, you’re sitting in gridlocked traffic one Texas summer workday and your car AC is broken. Sweat trickles down the armpits of your itchy cotton-poly dress shirt. Staring down from above is a 100 ft. bikini-clad billboard siren, happily sipping a cold beer, or smoking a cool refreshing menthol cigarette, or rubbing a stick of beef jerky between her breasts. You find yourself not just craving a beer, or a cigarette, or that jerky, but somewhere in your reptilian brain believing it will bring you closer to the elusive goal of inner happiness. Or at least that’s what the ad agency had in mind. I think this extends to music as well. Allow me to elaborate.

I tend to look at culture as a balance between activities coming from the wealthy, capital-intensive top sectors of society, and the non-wealthy, labor-intensive bottom sectors, with those of indeterminate wealth filling in the middle like a nervous raspberry jam. Instant pop stars are mainly the result of the capital-intensive top. 20-year success stories are mainly the result of grassroots support and years of road warrior touring. The 20-year band plays its music in small clubs across the country, gradually gaining a fan base. The music becomes familiar to growing numbers of people. Maybe the guitarist has a particular sound, a rootsy twang, or maybe the lead singer has a distinctively gravelly voice. These musical sounds become emblems of the band’s sound. When people hear the band’s songs on the radio, memories are invoked of seeing the band in some crowded bar with a bunch of friends, or maybe seeing them in concert with your future ex-wife. The band’s sound stirs memories, and more than that, it evokes shared experiences with people in your community. In that sense the band’s sound becomes iconic. But its iconic meaning and influence has developed from the bottom up, mediated over time by many people in many ways.

Contrast this with an overnight sensation generated from the top down, manufactured and test-marketed by corporate eggheads with a trough of money to sluice the goldmine. Well, I’m not saying anything you didn’t already know, except that the process of fetishizing musical culture from the top down, like that of other entertainment products, is built into the music industry. By fetishizing a musical product, the industry increases its selling power. The music isn’t just cool sounds, a sonic journey, or even (goddess forbid!) art. It becomes an icon that speaks to our subconscious, purposefully linked to magic and sex. The magic is usually of the Cinderella variety: The music is a magic slipper with the power to gain admittance to the world of wealth, fame and adoration. And we the audience vicariously share in it, but only to the extent that we buy it.

There are many related issues which I haven’t touched on, but I think the bottomline issue is who controls the iconic meaning of the music, which then determines what subconscious longings we invest in it. A classic example is the use of 60s songs of rebellion and freedom repackaged to sell cars (the list of appropriated artists, from the Beatles to Janis Joplin, grows every day). On the other hand, local DJs now have the technology to remix, sample, even add their own voices to recordings, turning a nationally released musical product into their own local performance.

Ultimately the iconic meaning of a musical product may be greatly affected by the ongoing struggle over copyright law. The digital revolution has opened the door to decentralization of musical products, what some call the “expansion of cultural control.” If a musical product can be downloaded, sampled and reworked by anyone, its iconic meaning may become decentralized as well, reflecting a grassroots rather than corporate identity. Unless, of course, we have all become corporate clones by then, in which case I guess everyone would be happy.