Have I turned into Victor Davis Hanson?
At least as far as his disconnect from current culture goes.
I can relate to nearly everything he says. I follow news assiduously. But I rarely go to the movies, and when I do I’m almost invariably disappointed.
Music? I think it ended some time in the 70s, with only a few songs penetrating after that (many of them just happen to be by Leonard Cohen, but there are a few others such as this monster, and this tuneful one, and they’re pretty good too).
I probably read the NY Times more than Hanson reports that he does, but it’s mostly blog-related, and in the nature of watching a slow-motion train wreck. I stopped watching network TV news over thirty years ago; I guess I always preferred print to TV journalism anyway. No sports any more, although I date my turnoff point a bit later than Hanson’s: it was when the Red Sox won the World Series.
Then again, maybe Hanson and I are just undergoing the ordinary developmental process of turning into old fogeys.
You, too! I left a comment at Hanson’s blog that he described my defection from our pop culture almost exactly.
Do we, as we age, begin to think more deeply about the real issues of life? Or are the things we valued and enjoyed in our youth irrevocably burned into our psyches such that new and different music, movies, TV news, etc all become no longer acceptable?
Whatever the mechanism at work, it seems to be a widespread phenomenon. Reading Hanson’s confession and the comments was like being in a group therapy session. Everyone realizes that they are not so different and alone in their rejection of the current pop culture. Also, many realize they are just as assiduous as Hanson in tending to their manners, driving within the speed limits, and trying to raise the level of civility.
Whatever is going on, I am happy to be in excellent company.
Hansen knows his history, you are learning it. Hansen knows why such things have turned out the way they have, and you are learning that through your investigations.
the resonance of truth is what causes such moths to seek the promethian flame..
then once you start to pick up facts, and start to validate them, then start to become more realist, you then grow up.
adults are just kids with realism turned on and knowlege of consequences. we all feel as we did when we were around 18, but our 40 year old 18 year old has been beaten up and tested their theories in the world.
at some point, the lies that youth and inexperience are challenged, and we grow up, or something else supports us in stasis.
Neo: You might like Gillian Welch, who performed a lovely version of “The Weight” with Old Crow Medicine Show.
Welch is a singer-songwriter who sounds like she’s doing songs from the Twenties or Thirties Appalachia but no, she wrote them herself and her mind-melded partner Dave Rawlins provides astonishing guitar accompaniment.
huxley: Yes, I’m very familiar with that from You Tube. I like it very much.
I’ve taken the VDH route myself.
I have a weakness for the new TV series like Sopranos, Mad Men, and for escape Burn Notice, but otherwise new movies rarely interest me and mostly I watch movies 1930-1980. Likewise music, with the rare exception such as Welch, and literature as well.
I don’t think it’s just a matter of growing older. We are living in a period where the arts are either exhausted, dissipated or both.
As near as I can tell, no one, not even among the young, is all that excited about the current offerings.
neo: You might give Welch herself a shot. Her first album Revival is the best place to start.
My family and I checked out from pop culture some time ago – no newspapers, no magazines, no cable. The curious and unexpected dividend is greater serenity.
Conversely, time out in public is often more annoying, with CNN blaring to the captive audiences in departure lounges, and now even our gas station has a screen mewling away about the latest Hollywood crap. Are there really so many people who cannot abide their own company, or entertain themselves with their own thoughts, for brief periods?
Watch what the press does to Meg Whitman.
She’s running for CA governor. She’ll be Palinized.
And when exactly did the actors start mumbling and talking out of the side of their mouths?
Having no TV, having spent years away from mass-media pop-culture, when I do encounter it, it disgusts me. It’s cheap, it’s fake, it’s flimsy, it’s got all its values backwards, when there’s anything identifiable as values at all.
What’s depressing about it all is that the market got us here. The rising tide of mind-numbing garbage is what the average customer likes best. It’s a symptom of decline. It’s not the cause. The problem isn’t that people get crap; it’s that they’ve become the kind of people who want crap. Giving them John Huston flicks instead of reality TV would fix nothing.
It’s not easy to be optimistic about our future as a nation if the average American’s brain is marinating in what the media feeds it. All we can do is work harder at providing better alternatives.
…the market got us here.
Retardo: That’s a long interesting discussion.
I don’t think there is a simple answer. It’s not just popular music and movies. The less marketed, more elite worlds of academia, painting, classical music, jazz, theater, sculpture, poetry, and literature are similarly rotted and rotten.
The West is at least in a trough, if not a decline.
My Netflix Q contains all nine seasons of The Waltons.
Popular culture is boring. Compared to the character and plot dynamics of military science fiction, whether American or Japanese orientated, it is completely decadent.
If I want decadence I can get dead drunk, and for far less the cost and time.
But I wasn’t in love with the past for the past’s sake. In point of fact, my best interests are the future, molded with the past in mind. Series like Honor Harrington postulates a reset button on human history to an earlier time, where communication was not instant, where travel from across the world didn’t take a day or half a day. But all of this is set in humanity’s future, where the stars are partially ours.
The same goes for Japan’s epic military science fiction space opera, Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
300 excited the younger generation, what i might loosely call my peers, for the precise reason that it gave grand eloquence to combat leaders that lead from the front but were also political leaders. Something lacking in this American post modern culture.
We cannot venerate our leaders as the Russians or Chinese do, because we are suffering from a lack of faith, a depression in our hopes and aspirations for the future because we can find nothing strong enough to be proud of in our past.
Individual liberty, self-sufficiency, and independent used to supplement for hero worship, even in the case of FDR or JFK. But where is self-reliance now? Can’t play dodgeball because somebody might lose?
Retardo, Huxley:
I think it’s what’s being PUSHED, not the arts and literature itself, but what can be easily found, and in fact is blindy thrown at people all the time.
It’s not the market that has got us here, but the MARKETING. In a population the size of ours, it’s almost impossible to find a movie or a book that don’t get marketing and dissimination, and the “suits” at both Hollywood and publishing houses are stuck circa 68 and pushing works to “afflict the comfortable” which in fact neither afflict nor interest anyone, being a repetition of mind-numbing pc crap.
Take the movie Second Hand Lions, for instance. Almost everyone who has seen it loves it, but most people never even knew existed. And I could give you a list of books — many more, since they’re easier to produce and easier to bury — that came out, never got on bookstore shelves (Bookstore chains can choose to “skip” an author from the very first book, with marketing untested. Because they don’t think it will sell. But they never test it.) and was taken out of print in a year. Harry Potter arguably was one that evaded the system by coming out in GB first, ditto most of Pratchett. (And Pratchett they managed to bury in the US for almost two decades, due to horrible marketing, after he was massively big in GB.)
Editors, marketing people, and I’m sure the same in Hollywood consider it their business to “mold” people’s taste. What I’m seeing is more and more people — and it can’t be an age thing, as I’m younger than Neo — turning away from what is being “pushed” and reading/watching the stuff of decades past. Also, larger and larger numbers turning away from reading and/or watching anything. A lot of the young men seem to turn to games.
I have a fever, and I’m at risk of emulating the length of Artfldgr’s comments, if not their usefulness, since I’ll just ramble aimlessly. So, I’ll finish by saying that I don’t think marketing got us here. Ideologues have proven they value ideology over money. See current Hollywood slump.
There are still a good number of young people writing good music. It’s a pleasure to discover them – since many of them are not heavily promoted.
It’s the fundamental basis of a power hierarchy, Portia. Those that get boosted to the firmaments then look down and try to keep anybody else from climbing to their same level. They kick them over and say that this is for their good, because a small elite body got to a high position. They just won’t let anyone else get to where they are. They won’t let power distribute down to the most people at the bottom, but instead hoard it at the top.
In any system, entertainment, political, or military, the effects of this is as usual. Very standard, very consistent.
And there are a stubborn few of us writing old-fashioned books, about community, and honor and courage … of course, most of the other IAG authors are doing so outside of the mainstream media machine, or as I like to call it “the literary industrial complex” with the easy access for the chosen few authors to the talk shows, the front racks at Barnes & Noble and reviews in the usual prestigious publications.
Meanwhile, my books are selling very nicely, locally – and I have a full schedule of book club talks in the next month – so Dr. Hanson’s remarks and all the comments, including Neo’s resonate with a large, but fairly quiet underground of consumers. My first historical novel, “To Truckee’s Trail” has a nice little trickle of sales, even though I am not doing anything to market it, and the Adelsverein Trilogy (about the German settlements on the 19th century Texas frontier) is going gangbusters in Texas … all below the current pop-cult radar. Frankly, I think there must be a lot of us there!
I think it’s what’s being PUSHED, not the arts and literature itself, but what can be easily found, and in fact is blindy thrown at people all the time.
Portia: I keep my antennae up and I search stuff out if I sense something, but even so ….
It’s not that there is nothing out there — there are some fine things like Second-Hand Lions and the works of Terry Pratchett. However, there is just not that much and pretty close to nothing at the amazing levels of, say, The Beatles or Hemingway or the Godfather.
It breaks my heart that the usual buzz about some new book, movie, album, or artist is only a faint echo of what I remember when I was young. From reading, I know that generations before mine also experienced that, perhaps even more so.
I am in the same situation as Hanson, and he is absolutely right. But I am more relaxed about it. Things change, but life remains wonderful. Yes, I miss the communal experience of seeing a great movie on its first weekend, or a tv show or sports event. Can´t be helped. Once a year must suffice.
On the other hand, there is so much great stuff to discover out there. I have at least 20 unread books waiting for my attention. So what if some of them were written by dead guys? I am my own tv programmer; my netflix queue has 112 DVDs in it.
Then there is the miracle of the internet. Without it, I might never have heard of Victor Davis Hanson. Or you guys. In fact, I would be a different person.
There is still some good music out there – not much, but it´s there – and centuries of music to discover. You can spend all your life on just one genre. In fact, Life is too short. That is my only complaint.
Oh, the buzz is there, Huxley … I think you mean, that the buzz is all manufactured, and that what turns out to be all about is actually pretty thin, pale and savorless.
I used to adore going to the movies, and seeing something within a day or so after it had premiered and I read the review. Chalk it up to being overseas for such a long time, when whatever it was that the buzz was about, it wouldn’t hit the AAFES circuit for six months.
And then I realized that in the last couple of years, there just wasn’t much I was willing to go and pay $10 plus, and sit in a theater, and spend a couple of hours of my life watching.
Sad, really. I’m sure there are still movies that I’d be willing to go see … it’s just that Hollywood can’t be bothered to make them, these days.
http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2009/10/19/quote-of-the-day-from-george-will/
VDH is lamenting his experience of what is designed to visit nihilism upon us.
you can find the same missive in different related areas if you take the time to look. you can find it in missives of the comminterm, you can find it in theory papers here, you can find it especially in the open from the works of adorno marcuse and other frankfurt school members and later thinkers, you can even find it in cleon skousens “the naked communist”. (obma acts like he is using that one like a key to how to behave).
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
All those when applied lead to a VDH person if they have experienced the mediums prior to their modernization.
so much socialist realism, and things all over its not funny, and yet, most people dont have an idea.
even funnier is that some plagerize famous pieces from soviet era, and when they execute a variation here, they are celebrated like super geniuses. (borofsky walking to the sky is such a variation)
you can see the practice of replacing the movies that VDH loves with remakes so that the older ones show less. want to see the three musketeers, usually its the keefer sutherland version, not the one from the 70s that tried to be period (and which series has the longest uncut sword fight).
if you plop your kids to a xmas show, you may not realize that they redid some of them using quick digital versions which remold the original story but use the same characters. your thinking ranking bass, but what they are seeing is something else.
we watch and read spiderman, but we never pick up the marxist story that is there… the oppressed peter parker, who is taken advantage of by the cigar smoking fat cat j jonah jameson, and who has a aunt who needs care. we never ask why he doesnt just sell images to the highest bidder? but this downtrodden everyman is really a super hero inside…
willy wonka made in the image of a fop poet named byron, played by gene wilder, was a bizarre embedd of turn of the century slum life, melded with modernisms, and turned into a moral lesson in doing whats right. how about the remake?
the original movie of dr doolittle was a marvelous musical with all kinds of fun things from the books like push me pull yous. the new one that replaced it was basically a situation comedy. of course the morals of the original were gone in the remakes.
how often do you see hans christian anderson with danny kaye? cant have that today, can you?
its all part of the cultural march through the institutions. in this case literature, family, education, history, law, etc…
‘Man needs his worst things for his best ones’ Nietzsche – Thus spoke Zarathustra
Freud theorized that humans are born with unfocused sexual libidinal drives, deriving sexual pleasure from any part of the body. The objects and modes of sexual satisfaction are multifarious, directed at every object that might provide pleasure.
and thats what we are kind of following. attempting to create man who does not learn social rules of whats right and wrong… before the child learns the socially accepted norms
well, these telivision shows, and other venues explore this by providing this. in this way, suspense and horror stories which are constructed within the framework of social morality, are acceptable because they are sanitized and so we find them scary and pleasurable.
but for the person who comes from this school, the horror story should not be restricted to pleasurable entertainment, but instead should be exploring the experience of the sexual sadist and the pleasures within that rather than set that apart and be imprisoned by socially accepted norms.
they violate norms to shatter them in some bizarre concept of working a system. that is whether freud is correct or not correct doesnt matter to the concept that what they are seeking to do is exploit a fact to work a natural system to some imagined end.
this core thing informs so much of their behavior its not funny. want to know why gays are celebrated? because unlike the rest of us, they havent fallen prey to social convention. why is piss christ so important? because the social convention of respect for religion, is being shattered.
and who are the ones who see and enjoy this? elite people. if you wanted a science fiction analogy, the tall think people so bored with life that they need to instigate perverse behavior in others to be entertained. they have shed social convention and morals, but unlike the serial killer, the terrorist, roman polanski, etc… they still do not act out and so celebrate those who can do what they dont have the nerve to do, but dream of in their frustrations.
adorno and his primitivation of music by pumping up the sound, and driving the beat making us suggestible to the phrases used.
all this junk is done with the idea that a demoralized, unhopeful, depressed nihilistic population would then turn and embrace communism (the point of the frankfurt school).
dont forget the side thing of also seeking to establish any one who doesnt like socialism (by whatever name), must have an authoritarian mind and so could not be reformed (and was tacitly crazy)…
VDH, basically knows there is someplace he can go and so avoids the nihilism. my wife and i do to. we gave up on saw at part III. we didnt find exploring real sadism (vs the play type most fool with), was a form of entertainment.
so much incredible stuff to read. but we dont have the 13th grade reading level of the public during the time of james fenimore cooper, we have a 5th grade level with the confidence of unearned accolades.
at least for now we can still see the movies and such. but note that under socialism, there will be no economics as you are used to, and so there is no reason to offer them any more.
Retardo Says:
“What’s depressing about it all is that the market got us here.”
Still, it was pushed by leftist ideology….
Hollywood does not give us what we want. It gives us what the people running it think we want (with a big dose of what they want, regardless of our thoughts, thrown in too)… and the people running it don’t think highly of us. The apple vending machine skit from Taxi comes to mind too.
102 shows this week on the networks will all feature themes of public service. How often and how much more will this be done? was it done in the past? will the show inform viewers who do not know its a push that they are going to be pushed the way 101 other shows will?
the fact that entertainments that we generally pay for in some way are now some alternative way to influence the population to act and we dont see how its not the same as informing them.
how can you tell the difference? sit in on any conversation of how its constructed and you will see that the idea of influencing the population is the point (ergo a lot of lesbian/gay tv, including their own channels for what amounts to a small percentage of the population. if they were the measure of what was needed to make a station, we would have a whole bunch of stations with higher public percentages).
that this works at all on some, gives the leaders and others the idea that they can control and handle everything through all these means.
anyway the attitude is to the young who are easy to work, and drop the old
if you all are old fogeys then what am I??!? I went through that process around age 19. (i am currently mid 20s).
the process for me started when i lived with 3 roommates and i just could not take one more episode of the oc or sex and the city or one more song by nelly. it was all downhill from there. i have no regrets.
incidentally i find that i would much rather hang out with old fogeys than the under 30 crowd.
I mostly checked out of popular culture a long time ago as well. Movies, music, TV shows, etc., were all bring, flimsy, pointless, and, there was no there there, just a tattered, pathetic facade. Only occasionally one can find something of at most passing interest.
I think the difference between myself at 18 and myself three decades later is, at 18, I was a curmudgeon by choice.
This is FANTASTIC !
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/10/19/ind-retailer-gets-spike-in-rock-salt-orders-for-sen-snowe/
Climate crisis mongerers have to lie to convince people
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28456.html
I’m not quite as removed from popular culture as VDH, but I’m close. There are a few TV shows I enjoy with my wife (the “procedural” crime dramas like Law & Order, CSI, and Criminal Minds), and some on my own (Mad Men, and the replay of “Band of Brothers” that comes on every once in awhile). Theres some new music I like: the White Stripes, Coldplay, etc. And a few new movies (so shoot me, I saw and liked the new version of “Fame.”)
But there is so much I cant stand or care to watch. Anything Hip-Hop/Rap, for example. I go to movies only very occasionally . . . before “Fame” last week, it was “Star Trek” a few months ago. To tell the truth, I dont follow pro-sports too much either. And the values and attitudes displayed in some of these products of the media these days is very unappealing. Maybe I’ve just become turned off by society itself. It can be pretty depressing if I guide myself by what I see in others.
I’m an afficionado of something I heard of a few years ago: “cocooning”. Essentially creating one’s own society in one’s home and one’s immediate environment. At home, we play DVDs of what we want (good positive old movies, for example), and in the car I listen to what I want (good music, either old or new, but no rap). Theres even an old folkie song from the Seekers that I’ve taken as an anthem: “A World of Our Own” Live my own life with my family, and just ignore the nonsense out there.
For my 2 cents worth: I think it all went downhill gradually (see the movie “Blast from the Past” for a comical take on this), but it REALLY hit the skids in the Grunge-Rap-negativity heavy early ’90s.
Two great men from Canada:
Mark Steyn and Leonard Cohen – that’s a pair that beats a three-of-a-kind.
Can anyone doubt that Hanson’s example should be emulated and encouraged? I must suppose that this “withdrawal” from the culture is closely related to his amazing productivity. And therein lies the key: that classical virtus and mens sana are the keys to a more productive and sustainable way of living.
I think that we must be approaching a break in the culture that will be marked by the emergence of new and astonishing acts of creativity, and the end of the cultural ancien regime.
“like a Mark Knopfler or Coldplay”
Coldplay is the only cd I’ve bought in a couple years… too funny.
Oh, the buzz is there, Huxley … I think you mean, that the buzz is all manufactured, and that what turns out to be all about is actually pretty thin, pale and savorless.
Sgt. Mom: Well, these days, yeah, but I’m talking about the buzz I knew as a kid when the next Beatles or Stones album came out or later the next book by John Fowles or poetry collection by W.S. Merwin or movie by Coppola or Scorcese. We were all on the edge of our seats for that next thing.
Just as previous generations waited for the next book by Hemingway or Faulkner or the great new Miles album or Stravinsky piece or Picasso period.
That’s not happening these days.
El Gordo has got a point — so what, we get to go back appreciate the old stuff that we missed because we were being overflowed the great new stuff back then.
I think that we must be approaching a break in the culture that will be marked by the emergence of new and astonishing acts of creativity, and the end of the cultural ancien regime.
Oblio: Bang!
Yes, something is bound to happen to pull us out of the current doldrums, and art will start moving again.
Same boat here, I have created my own environment tailored to my life, I have to disagree with VDH about books though, while no where near classics I find Vince Flynne, Scalzi’s and Lee Child’s books very good.
Since I fly all the time I usually read one book per flight to the east coast. It is hard to find good ones but they are out there. SGT Mom, I will check out yours, the lesson from this is that there is a huge market out there, barely tapped.
neo, how does your productivity since you famously changed your mind compare with your productivity before?
Well, I’m a big believer in digital video recorders. I get to watch all the stuff I love (House, Castle, Numbers, Chuck – when Chuck finally comes back after the Winter Olympics) without the horrible ads and “film at 11” news promos.
Ken Burns new National Parks series was tremendous.
There’s wonderful music out there too. Maybe I have a different perspective from most, since I’m an active singer in a symphonic chorus – last year our organization premiered two new works – but music is incredibly active, vital, and present in my life. And that includes the Old Stuff. Every performance is unique and thrilling – and not always in a good way! – but that’s what makes music special. It’s like a painting in time.
There are some tremendous folk and popular talents out there too – Chris Thile on mandolin (wow – jazztastic!) and anything by Jakob Dylan or Counting Crows. Have a listen to Shawn Mullins’ 9th Ward Pickin’ Parlor for some amazing musicianship and songwriting chops.
As for pro football, fuggedaboutit. I’d rather watch a game like last weekend’s Oklahoma vs. Texas match. Watching the teams compete like champions and congratulate one another – winners and losers alike – after the game made me proud of those young athletes.
Take heart, America. Be interested! Avoid what you hate and look for what you love – it’s out there, you’ll find it!
I’ve been on the VDH / Neo disconnect track for a long time too. I rarely go to movies anymore. Haven’t been in at least 5 years. I love the old ones, particularly those from the 1930s and 40s when females knew how to dress in style and themes commented on the human condition in one way or another and the wit was sharp and fun. I love my TCM channel and my Netflix account. I haven’t abandoned TV completely, but I don’t watch any contemporary programs with the exceptions of football (MNF is on now) and The Office and Mad Men. All of my news comes from online and from a few radio talk programs I listen to when I’m driving to and from my work. I don’t even have an ipod, but I do have custom cds of the old (and new) Dylan, Van Morrison, The Band, Ray Charles, Leonard Cohen, Eric Clapton and others of and from that time. Those are / were musicians who can write. I also enjoy classic C&W artists but only the old ones such as Patsy Cline, Hank Williams Sr, and Kristofferson’s early tunes. They could write too. Patsy could sing. I can’t think of any contemporary rock and roller, jazzer, or rapper that give me tunes to carry during the day. Nor can I think of any contemporary graphic artists who speak to me. Well, they speak but to me but then its emptiness they convey. I love the lyricism in color and form from Matisse, Picasso, and lots of others from the 19th and early to mid 20th century, including French Impressionists, 1950s and 1960s American abstract expressionists such Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and others. I read non-fiction almost exclusively and particularly histories and biographies of individuals and times I’m interested in knowing about.
I could go and on about the extent of my disconnect from 2009 culture. It doesn’t bother me one iota. I’m too busy doing stuff I like to do. One of those things is restoring a classic 1960 MGA roadster. You know – that’s the kind that has carburetors that you can actually work on and get your hands dirty. I plan to drive it around on Saturdays and Sundays once its done, show off, and wave to people as I pass by them. I want a 1930s-type aviator cap to go with it with googles. And, of course, I’m busy anticipating Dylan’s new Christmas album.
JohnC: the 1930s-type aviator cap sounds pretty sharp.
But I’m not sure about the googles.
JohnC:
Perhaps you could Google for where to buy a 1930s-type aviator cap.
two smarty pants! googles = goggles
Neo,
I’m so angry this morning after watching this —
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/10/19/cnn-asks-psychiatrist-why-do-people-listen-to-rush-limbaugh/
arghh
These people just don’t get it. The radio on the left coming from San Francisco is angry to me. The radio from the so-called “right” is upbeat and positive and about America’s success to me.
These people on CNN – arghhhh !
This and the VDH column are two of the sadest posts that I have read from two of the bloggers that I most admire.
I remember my parents and grand parents saying exactly the same thing to me for liking the stuff that you now venerate. I am afraid that it is a process of aging rather than a decay in popular culture.
There is nothing wrong with that but it is just the usual cycle and nothing more. I am 46 and try to keep current, I like rap and modern movies but I also like older stuff.
I do draw the line at the NY Times though, but then I found it unreadable 20 to 30 years ago too!
My husband and I stopped watching TV for the most part some years back; we haven’t made it a rule for our three kids, because they never watch network TV anyway (Mythbusters and Disney Channel – even our oldest likes it, and I consider Disney’s fantasyworld less harmful than pretty much anything I’ve heard about on the networks or the more popular cable channels), but as the hubby and I sit in our serene living room chatting every evening, more often than not the kids abandon TV and come join us. We do family game night; we have good multi-generational discussions; we like one another’s company and prefer to be in one another’s company actively – not just sitting beside one another on the sofa. Very good stuff.
Since I can’t see “buying” every new book I want to read (based, I admit, on popular reviews) for my Kindle, I’ve taken to trying to fill in the giant holes in my literary education by downloading as many classics as I can to it via the various free, Project-Gutenberg-related sites. I’m embarrassed to say that it’s work for me to read some of these books; I’d prefer, often, to pick up the latest Evanovich marshmallow or even one of the horrible wooden Scarpetta “thrillers,” but I’m sticking to my guns and reading things that take actual effort and yield an actual reward.
Next step: sorting the household paper-book library so as to get rid of the chaff, and building it up to ensure that my kids don’t grow up in ignorance.
Yes, I agree with VDH and Neo that current popular culture is pretty thin gruel. For me it is the didactic nature of movies and television. They give us the same little leftist morality plays over and over:
1. Marriage is horrible
2. Religion is oppressive
3. Tradition is bad, new is good
4. Fathers are stupid, mothers are smart
5. Kids are smart, parents are dumb
6. Business is evil
That is pretty much it. There are a few brilliant exceptions, but to me these are exceptions that prove the rule. It has been a remarkably consistent set of messages for the past 50 years or so. The clothes, the scenery, the music changes, but the themes remain. After a while, you just get tired. I can’t stand listening to – let alone watching – network television. It makes me want to leave the room. No new movies for a long time now. No NYT.
Far better to listen and compare different people playing the same Beethoven piano sonatas, go fishing, read old books, hunt a wild turkey, build furniture, split firewood, travel, make new friends.
Darrell – thanks for promising to check out my books – I think you would like them very much, as they are sort of old-fashioned in a good way. About four years ago, I began to feel that we had to remember where we came from, to be reminded of our shared history, and to recollect that our ancestors were decent, brave and honorable (within their lights) and that the US itself was a breathtakingly grand experiment in government by the people. Writing about all this in the form of historical novels was a way of making it more readily and painlessly accessible … so there you go. And I am already working on the next two.
There is good new and ready-to-be rediscovered old stuff out there, as E reminds us – it just takes a bit of looking for. It isn’t going to be just dropped into your lap.
This popular “establishment” culture that is up in our faces every day is all about opposing “traditional” values and norms. The irony: this leftist worldview is now the norm. As they destroy traditions, they have nothing to fill the void. All they had was opposition and opposite-ness.
I would have to agree with Ben-David above, it is such a pleasure to discover some wonderful new stuff that is out of the “mainstream”. That’s why I subscribe to Sirius satellite radio, no commercials, new talent, plus all the golden oldies you can stand. If you do much driving it is essential imho.
Most of popular culture is aimed at the youth demographic because they are the ones that have the money to spend, they don’t have mortgages or bills, they live with Mom and Dad. So I don’t feel ancient when I turn on TV or check out the movies and feel nothing but ennui. Nowadays when I look at People magazine in the doctor’s office, I don’t know any of the so-called celebrities on the pages. It’s like these are Pod people that have secretly been replacing the real stars, and nobody notices this.
I also think that as one ages and the hormone levels drop, the triggers that spur interest, are not activated. Besides after a while one begins to realize one has seen the movie before, and done better. I mean are you kidding? A remake of the classic Cape Fear, or the great comedy The Italian Job, or Psycho? Why waste the money?
As for music, ugh. I get that I don’t get hip-hop, it’s not made for my ears. But the pop stuff is so dull. It’s at the level of Sesame Street.
I do love lots of TV these days, all the police procedurals, especially Criminal Minds. We are avid fans of Antique Roadshow, and I love The Dog Whisperer, having just acquired a rescue dog. We watch Dexter and the Tudors on Showtime. This week they have week long salute to Monty Python on IFC, great stuff.
The movies are not great these days, the industry has been crushed by the combination of Writer strike/Actor strike threat, and the disappearance of credit in the financial system. Lots of movies are ready to go but the studios can’t find enough financing.
But every year there are some gems. Of course if you are left leaning, you probably find more movies that don’t offend your sensibilities but even so there are a handful of good movies. And at my age I don’t really have the time for more than a handful of movies per year.
JohnC: I simply could not resist.
You’re forgiven.
I was thinking about this discussion, and felt the urge to comment again. I was thinking about what it is about today’s culture which most bothers me, and after thinking about it, it came to me. It bothers me that artistically-inclined young people growing up today are caught between a rock and a hard place. Heres what I mean:
When I was growing up, I was your typical nerdy art kid… the kind that was more interested in going to the library than in keeping up with the NFL… the kind that was into drama more than into any sports. I was a sensitive, book reading type of kid who really got into music. (I made up for my unathletic youth during my young adulthood, when I got into a lot more athletic and physical activity… weightlifting, boxing, outdoor sports, etc… but that came later.) When I grew up in the ’80s, there was a cornucopia of music and media that I felt like I could get into: I loved the music of U2 (along with any number of ’80s groups), Speilberg’s movies, and the books of Kurt Vonnegut. And the ’60s were still popular at that time, in a retro sort of way, so i could throw in Dylan, the Beatles, Hendrix, and the overall burst of creativity that came from that era… the burst of poetry, drama, art, etc… and, moreover, the encouragement to love art that was so present at that time. I could get into all sorts of artists from Peter Max, to Warhol, to Salvador Dali (yeah, as an odd teen, I started with all the weird stuff)…. I could get into all this with some sense that it all had some meaning, and that it could matter. As naive a statement as that may sound, it was important to an odd, arty teen like me… just as important as imagining oneself winning a gold medal in the Olympics, or playing in a Super Bowl, was to an athletic teen.
I am inclined to feel that an arty/nerdy teen today would feel as if they are confronted with a world of art/media which is generally either negative and nihilistic (i.e. a lot of so-called Hip-Hop), or derivative and duplicative (i,e. one of many Britney Spears copies which litter the airwaves), or both (I still cant quite enjoy the new “Battlestar Galactica,” but thats just me.). To find some element of positivity, youre more likely to find it in the world of sports and athletcis, . . . which is good if youre into sports, or if youre an athlete… but what if youre not? What if youre an arty kid like I was… it seems as if theres just a void out there now… why be into art when its so pointless?
Hopefully, as some have said, this is just a “trough” and soon there will be a renaissance of creativity.
Well, there you go… thats my spiel. I had to unload it. I actually clicked onto my internet connection just to spew this.
(I still cant quite enjoy the new “Battlestar Galactica,” but thats just me.)
It’s not just you. I don’t think a dark space opera has ever been envisioned, but there it is. The opposite of light comedic and adventurous space opera, like science fiction in Star Trek.
Did you read Mutineer’s Moon by David Weber yet?
I mostly quit watching entertainment TV sometime in the 80s, although I did eventually start watching Seinfeld during the 90s, after it had already been on for a few seasons.
After that, I still watched the History Channel and Discovery Channel for a while, but even they have degraded considerably. I was still a news junkie, but that came to a screeching halt last year. I essentially quit watching TV on Election Night. I turned it off that evening, and didn’t turn it on once for a good three weeks afterwards. Now I only use it to watch baseball and occasionally football. (More on that in a moment.)
I’ve been a big music fan since I was a teenager, but I finally got sick of the constant knee-jerk leftist drivel spouted by roughly 99% of all the musicians I listened to, so I decided to stop supporting them. Ditto for Hollywood movie stars.
About the only exception I make these days is Bob Dylan. After his early “protest song” period in the 60s, he’s mostly kept his political views to himself, and just concentrated on making good music. And he’s anything but a nostalgia act, too. His last four or five albums have been among the best of his career, believe it or not. I saw him this past summer at a minor league baseball park in Allentown, PA. He played about 14 or 15 songs, and all but three were from 2001 and later. It greatly amuses me to think that there must have been some people in the audience who hadn’t been following him closely sitting there scratching their heads and thinking, “I don’t recognize any of these songs.”
The only sport I ever really cared about is baseball. I was a big fan in my younger days, but gradually fell away from it, especially after the 1994 strike that cancelled the playoffs and World Series. And after that came the ridiculous obsession with home run records, which we now know was fueled by steroids. But I’ve been following it more in recent years, particularly since the Phillies have been doing rather well lately. Still, I probably know more about the 1912 World Series than I do about the 2002 World Series. I have a hard time even keeping track of who is playing for which team nowadays. And as for the current Phillies team, they seem to be a decent bunch of guys as professional athletes go. I don’t hear much about them being involved in scandals, arrests, or thuggish behavior. I guess we have to take what we can get these days.
This is one of the funniest talkbacks I’ve seen in a while. I’m glad you all took the time to write in between gumming your apple sauce and shouting at the local children playing on your lawns. Pop culture is what you make of it and it seems that the majority of you are too angry or stubborn to look around and see that there is music and art out there that is not only worth checking out, but quite extraordinary. It’s not like there wasn’t crap when you were young. The next time you’re longing for the music of the 70’s google the billboard top 10 from each year and try to listen to any of those songs back to back. The mainstream is often mediocre, dig a little, oldtimers, and have some fun with what’s out there.
hyperfish: Ah, but our crap was such good crap!
And just you wait—a few decades and you might be singing our tune 🙂
hyperfish:
One thing that our “Crap” has which much of today’s “(c)Rap” (the “c” is silent) doesnt have;
an actual harmony
or do I mean melody ??
Hell, both.
hyperfish,
what i think you dont realize is the back story to all this kind of thinking.
you assume we dont know whats playing today, we are not the old foggies of the past (who werent that old fogie behind closed doors).
let me give you a tiny bit of why we are saying this this time around, and dont agree with you. the reason is actually quite subtle, and obvious but because its obvious, its assumed.
think of music from 1900 on..
we really didnt have recordings of music till what year? before that, how did humans entertain themselves? well, so many people could play instruments, that there was a consumer market for printed music and the ‘hits’ were songs you could play and sing yourself with friends.
at the time the pinnicle of music was recent hits by brahams a few decades back. new sounds abounded, and one could buy some of the new hip music and jazz. with so many people playing music at one time and purchasing sheets, more complicated forms were always being worked on. (same with literature).
at this time we had not been sold on socialism and socialist realism and such. so what we were into is uplifting, upthinking and so on…
so as we move forward the invention of recording media was a hit. edison being a key player here. moving more forward REPRODUCTION was possible.
and the frankfurt school arrived and wrote all kinds of stuff declaring the future in teh same way. after all it was a time of a lot of utopian literature. and so you had wells, and others. and marx wrote his stuff. lenins russia was mostly pr greater than it was or ever is.
what happened is that adorno talked about primitivation of music… and how he could get a bunch of phds to jump around and dance in a circle if you increased the beat… lyrics almost were meaningless, and one would not listen to them. making the music suggestible.
we went from being producers ourselves to mostly consumers.
in a world of jugglers, juggling three balls is nothing. in a world of people who cant tie their shoes and add, well, juggling three balls is a whole lot.
us old fogies mostly learned to play…
the music that was produced was often at a higher skill level, much more original, oh… much more original.
the sounds you are used to hearing, including that amazing music is mostly derivative. read the lyrics to the hook brings you back.
its now a process… and the process doesnt create anything new, it just rehashied the old. it stopped making real progress and entered a realm of constant swirling with no reference…
that is, its disconnected and so once everything is like that we are on a treadmill where we no no past and see no future, and everything is the way it is because thats the way it is and has always been.
isnt that a creepy end to this?
well, we listen to this new music, and we know how simplistic it often is. how derivative it is.
after the realm of music written for enjoyment, you had media used for changing our cultural values a bit at a time. it wasnt natural, you can read about it and how it was done.
the 60s represented the last of the age of the musicians who were playing for musicians…
that was its last breath, before consuming music in mass production completely took over it.
after that. the stuff that came out as new, was not really new, it just paralleled the art concept given to the graphic world.
it became discordant, it became inharmmonic, it became very political, or suicidally nihilist.
i grew up during this transition and i wathced it go from mostly people with good homes, to people who tried to outcompete on how abused their childhood was…
i remember when paul was right, everyone wanted to right a little love song.
but then, socialist realism was added, and songs had to be sung for a cause, well one cause.
all the way up till you have the group that opened for obama playing the soviet unions national anthem.
read the turns of phrase of some of those old tunes.
even the musicians were much more well educated, and if you were educated, you knew it.
hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way, is just a paraphrase from hendry david thoreau.
today, you can endlessly recycle the past that the young are ignorant of.. even in politics. after all, why should only the last century be about mass murder, when there is a whole new fresh crop of those willing to try it again?
there is definitely a downward trend in cultural media since socialism…
us fogies know it was better before in this case.
this time its different because this time, has not been a recycle of times past, this time has been the decline from the industrial rennaisance and the peak of man as individual.
god didnt just die last century
the individual did too…
welcome to the hive…
Neo: Sad but true
Artful Dodger: A Blues Traveler reference? That’s pretty hip of you – I see what you’re point is and that you have a an impressive breadth of knowledge on modern music history, but I still think if you want to find good music, it’s out there. Just because it wasn’t the song you lost your virginity to, or smoked dope with your buddies, doesn’t mean it’s not good. And if you think that musicians still aren’t making music for other musicians, that’s just wrong. You’ve also made a case for the video medium with your argument. There was a time when the public was simply consumers and only large studios had the ability to make a movie. Now, kids have access to camera and editing software where if they want to, they can create whatever they want – sure most of it will be derivative as well, but luckily for us, not everyone is Stan Brakhage. Your whole rant on socialism makes me think you’ve let your fears sour you ears. I’m pretty sure every Kiss song was for the cause of getting Paul Stanley/Gene Simmons/Ace Freely and maybe Peter Criss laid.
Ymarsakar Says:
Did you read Mutineer’s Moon by David Weber yet?
Not yet, nor was I aware of him. But searching for him has caused me to discover the Baen Free Library , which I do intend to explore.
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Pop culture and I became estranged in the ’70s, when TV and Hollywood stopped looking at the real world for inspiration and fell in love with their own reflections. Nowadays, it seems, most TV shows especially are based on other TV shows, not life. Yes, exceptions exist. But not enough to make it worthwhile for me to try to find them in the local (foreign) TV listings. And so-called “reality shows” are anything but. My divorce from Pop Culture was final around 1983, when the last MASH episode ran, Hill Street Blues went into a precipitous decline, and the final episode of the original Star Wars trilogy was shown. So now, it’s sports, History/Discovery/NatGeo channels, the occasional news program, and maybe one movie per year for me.
I’ve been more tolerant of music. While classical is still my genre of choice (real classical, i.e., Beethoven, Bach, Handel, not “classic rock” or some such), I’m with Hyperfish on still being able to find good music. Just don’t ask me who the musicians or composers are. But I’ve heard plenty that I’ve liked from up-to-date performers. Maybe I’m not a total old fogy yet;-)
I still think if you want to find good music, it’s out there.
I didn’t say it wasn’t, but there is a big difference between a plain with so many buffalo you don’t HAVE to look to find a good one, and having to sift through 2 tons of dirt to get a half ounce of gold.
Just because it wasn’t the song you lost your virginity to, or smoked dope with your buddies, doesn’t mean it’s not good.
I just explained that when 80% of all played music themselves, crappy stuff was HARD to find, then you point out that good stuff can STILL be found.
To say what you just said is to assume that the only reason someone thinks something is good because a pavlovian effect tied to orgasm and association, is to completely miss my point while pretending to get it.
What I mean is that music whose majority basis was written using only three chords, does not compare to Spanish guitar, ragtime, folk, Irish folk, etc… in fact, its ‘sound’ was a mish mosh of what they heard and could combine by ear. Last attempt at this was Paul Simons album as he searched for something new to steal from, cause unlike syphilitic Scott Joplin, couldn’t envision a whole new kind.
And if you think that musicians still aren’t making music for other musicians, that’s just wrong.
Ah.. again… take one basket with one loave of bread, give it to a youngster raised on crappy debate, and you get a enough loaves to feed an army.
I am not saying they don’t, I am saying that at one time; almost everyone played an instrument who was from a good family (which was most families). The number of people who can play an instrument today, can read music, is completely smaller than the number of people in the past. AND like in literature whats being written is much simpler. Yes there are pockets of other things, but the quality and quantity do not prevail as before.
People are still making buggy whips for those who still have buggies but it’s a nonsense argument to make todays buggy whip maker with the INDUSTRY that existed and is gone now, as in music.
According to a 2003 survey:
“half of all U.S. households surveyed (54 percent), had a member who played an instrument.”
We have a large number of ACTUAL players, but have no where near the number of professional level players as in the past. every bar that wanted music, had to hire musicians. Every club that wanted music had to hire musicians. Every place that wanted any music had to hire musicians to play. Depression era parents knew that a child who learned to play would potentially be able to survive playing for coins.
After mass production, you only needed a few musicians. Even on Broadway, they have cut them down to a few and a special machine that replaces them.
You’ve also made a case for the video medium with your argument.
Well yeah. Because video hastened the destruction… no longer was a person judged by the pinnacle of their ability and the quality of the music they wrote, they were now judged by how they looked, moved, played to the camera, and how funky their costumes were.
As the song said: Video KILLED the radio star.
You see, when it was radio, you ONLY cared about the quality… when it’s all performance, and quality suffers, you get todays grinder.
You get groups that are not natural assemblies of friends, but are auditioned and then put together to have a look. R-Angels was a group I watched being manufactured (that I think failed). That is, my friend was the owner of a top recording studio (and I mean top, with one of the best sound rooms in the world. Very famous). They never worked with groups like R-Angels, the level and quality just weren’t there.
Another way to look at it, yes they had hamburgers in the past, but they didn’t have McDonalds.
I don’t have time, but you can look up a interview with david Crosby where he explains how the suits came in and the suits didn’t care about quality. I think he puts it like this. he was sitting in the office, and a guy came in and said I just sold 100k of albums. David said, who did he sell? the man replied, I don’t know, who cares?
David in that interview also pointed out that if video was around in the 60s, he would never have become a god in music. That roy orbison, tom petty, Aretha franklin, and a whole host of uglies would not have made it. Paul Williams wrote a lot of wonderful lyrics and tunes, and he could sing, but he was short, and didn’t look good, so he made more giving the music to fronts. Famous people who don’t really write much that buy songs to turn into hits. Been going on since Elvis copied Twitty.
Pink Floyds dark side of the moon holds the record for sitting on billboard charts. Want to know how long? It was STILL on the charts as of may 6 2006.
PINK FLOYD’s landmark DARK SIDE OF THE MOON album scored another major record in America last week (ends05MAY06) by becoming the first recording to spend 1,500 weeks on the Billboard charts.
The 1973 album was the highest debut on the Top 200 when it entered the chart at number 98. The album stayed on the chart for 736 successive weeks before it fell out of the Top 200 in 1988.
Dark Side of The Moon has since notched up a further 759 non-consecutive weeks on the chart. The album has now sold an estimated 40 million copies worldwide.
From 1973 to 2006 the album was STILL on the bill board charts.
Do you really think that the music of the most recent groups will be played 100 years from now?
I will give you another perspective.
When I was a kid growing up.. the old tunes were going out, and the new ones came in.
With fonzy and such, the 50s was oldies.
Today the music of the era we are talking about is played on mainstream stations and is NOT considered an oldy!!!! That is, they are not played for the nostaligia that your talking about, they are played like an echo.
The last echo of the quality music that was highly original even if derivative.
Check out Kodais peacock variations THEN listen to Eleanor Rigby and the rest of the music on that album.
Now, kids have access to camera and editing software where if they want to, they can create whatever they want – sure most of it will be derivative as well, but luckily for us, not everyone is Stan Brakhage.
And most produce junk. And the really really great stuff is not being watched or consumed because they are too busy making junk to actually take lessons, learn and so on.
Our Marxist world has moved art and music to discordant harmonies, nihilistic lyrics and themes of death, suicide, sexual depravity and such are the NORM. (meanwhile most whining haven’t had rough lives compared to the NORM in the past).
Your whole rant on socialism makes me think you’ve let your fears sour you ears. I’m pretty sure every Kiss song was for the cause of getting Paul Stanley/Gene Simmons/Ace Freely and maybe Peter Criss laid.
Spoken by a true young and restlessly ignorant. Though I agree with your comment about Kiss!!!
What have YOU actually experienced and know about socialism? that you get assistance for college classes? What I know is I don’t know where my family is buried. They were exterminated. I don’t know where my other side of my family is. they were exterminated.
That is, a huge vibrant family that had lived in their own land for more than 500 years, had to flee and those who remained were tortured to death to make socialism.
Want to know where the perversion in music as performance art came from. study the decadant years of the Weimar republic. Ever see CABARETE?
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!
Fremde, etranger, stranger.
Gluklich zu sehen, je suis enchante,
Happy to see you, bleibe, reste, stay.
They are singing of the decadent times that SOCIALIST Hitler used to rise from.
Want to see socialist realist music?
Socialist realism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_realism
Todays music is either phantasmagorical or socialist realist as far as the main mass.
is the basic method of Soviet literature and literary criticism. It demands of the artist the truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development. Moreover, the truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic representation of reality must be linked with the task of ideological transformation and education of workers in the spirit of socialism.
so folk music in the US stopped being about the volk and started being about politics.
everything became political and the more it became that way, the less quality there was.
the reason was that the idea was to change the people through every medium possible. and so uplifting music is a no no… disparaging music, nihilism, rap, etc.
heck. Why don’t you read about amil? H RAP BROWN… its his race poetry that RAP is celebrating… he is in jail now for killing a cop I think… tupak and the others were funded by their PARENTS… founding members of black national socialists and the panthers.
Hows that for changing music?
Novelists were expected to produce uplifting stories in a manner consistent with the Marxist doctrine of dialectical materialism. Composers were to produce rousing, vivid music that reflected the life and struggles of the proletariat.
The fact that the septemberists play the communist international should be a clue of the domination of this form of art.
Its what made the soviet union a gray dreary place… even less artistic than shakers.
Like all youngsters who come up, you think you know a whole lot.
But you don’t know crap,and you wont know till you get older.
Experience is what you THINK you have till you get some
I doubt I’ll learn much when I’m older, because if Comrade Obama starts offing intellectuals I’ll be low on the list 😉
hyperfish: Comrade Obama isn’t going to off intellectuals, like Pol Pot did. He’ll go for Joe the Plumber types and bitter clingers, as well as Fox News commentators.