{"id":33860,"date":"2012-06-19T08:09:40","date_gmt":"2012-06-19T12:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=33860"},"modified":"2019-05-07T16:09:17","modified_gmt":"2019-05-07T20:09:17","slug":"you%e2%80%99re-at-a-justin-bieber-concert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/19\/you%e2%80%99re-at-a-justin-bieber-concert\/","title":{"rendered":"You\u2019re at a Justin Bieber Concert"},"content":{"rendered":"
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About a year and a half ago\u2014when we were all still riding high on the platinum-certified Justin Bieber of My World 2.0<\/a><\/em>; we didn\u2019t even have the very spirited Christmas album, Under the Mistletoe<\/em>, yet\u2014I spent a day as a guest educator at an elementary school in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In my role as underqualified outsider, I oversaw a battery of improv activities I had made up the night before (taught<\/em> being too strong a word, for I taught those wee lads and lasses nothing, save that pretending to be in a school-bus accident is more fun than learning how to write in cursive). At my command, the Midwestern moppets acted out one fantastical situation after another: they walked through imaginary mansions in a game called \u201cReal Estate Agent,\u201d took turns delivering absurd one-word-at-a-time answers as a guest on my daytime talk show, \u201cThree-Headed Expert.\u201d When the time came for a relatively simple activity that required them to act out situations as I named them (\u201cYou\u2019re at the grocery store!\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re coming home from school!\u201d), I provided a couple of mundane prompts, and then, unable to control myself any longer, played my ace.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re at a Justin Bieber concert!\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the girls threw themselves on the ground in a shrieking rapture; others ran around the classroom in hysterics, shouting \u201cJustin! I love you, Justin!\u201d One young lady, offended by the suggestion that she ought to join this breathless frenzy, stood unmoving and angry, her arms hanging at her sides. \u201cI hate Justin Bieber!\u201d she whined. Most of the boys were with her, groaning, pretending to vomit, plugging their ears. Of all the scenarios I guided them through that day, the imaginary Justin Bieber concert was the hardest to break up. It took me several minutes to regain their attention.<\/p>\n

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WHILE I DON\u2019T HAVE<\/small> very many thoughts of an analytical nature about Justin Bieber, I have, like any West Coast native worth his salt, lots of feelings and impressions. Most of them are positive, and a majority of them are drawn from the documentary 3-D concert film Justin Bieber: Never Say Never<\/a><\/em>, a thirteen-million-dollar project coproduced by the star\u2019s mentor and champion, Usher, and his manager, Scooter Braun<\/a>. Never Say Never<\/em> reminds me of the Leni Riefenstahl Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will <\/em>only in that it features a blond, blue-eyed wunderkind who must draw upon a deep, pure well of inner resources in order to perform feats of crowd-pleasing athleticism, and that it reinforces tired cultural myths about heroism, stardom, and power\u2014aside from that, I have fun every time I watch it. (It doesn\u2019t hurt that it was released on February 11, 2011, my twenty-eighth birthday.) After seeing it for the first time, I walked away totally swaddled in the aforementioned myths, believing not only that I could achieve anything if I worked hard enough, drank the healthful green drinks Usher made me drink after rehearsal, and listened to my voice coach Mama Jan<\/a>, but the following, among other things:<\/p>\n