Tom Matlack regrets the influence of America’s pernicious popular culture.
“Once you ‘got’ Pop, you could never see a sign again the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again.” —Andy Warhol
I’m pretty sure that Andy Warhol is turning over in his grave right about now. Pop art is a way to critique reality. It’s a way of seeing a deeper truth in the most mundane as well as the most famous. But it was never intended to stand in for the thing itself.
America of 2011 is a world where fantasy and reality have traded places. Where popular culture has become our center point of gravity, our common language, a replacement for the grave problems of our time that are too ominous to take seriously. We get our news from Jon Stewart and Chelsea Handler, while The New York Times and Walter Cronkite’s old CBS have become a joke. The feminist movement of the 60s and 70s has culminated in The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills delivering 2.2 million viewers after the show induced the husband to one of the stars to commit suicide. Not to be outdone, Jersey Shore delivered 8.5 million viewers.
So where are exactly are we when more people care about Kim Kardashian—a heroine, by virtue, of a leaked sex tape and a mindless television show—than war, famine, poverty, or prison? Dead, I would argue.
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As a nation, we’ve always loved fantasy, from science fiction books to Hollywood celebrities. Television, radio, and print have been filled with mindless drivel from day one as a way to ease our troubled minds. The switch isn’t our need to escape from the harsh realities of the world, but that the escape has become the way we actually define the reality. We are no longer escaping from the world into pop culture, we are living it 24 hours a day without really caring about the truth. We’ve entered a deep sleep and resent anyone who tries to wake us from our slumber with the downer of facts, figures, and true life.
True Life is an MTV show after all.
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How is it that we’ve fought three wars that no one really seems to care about, allowed mortgage scams and national debt to crater our economy, and squandered an immense human capital lead on the rest of the world?
I don’t know, but it sure does feel like some odd mixture of video games and The Bachelor doesn’t it?
Propaganda has historically been used by totalitarian regimes to justify their existence. Many of our greatest writers and artists have pointed out the hypocrisy of the capitalist system here in America. They touched the truth known by the thinking populace but not spoken out loud.
Pop culture of the past relied on a populace that was thinking, grappling with the deeper meaning of life and our collective challenges. It had an edge that forced us to look at ourselves more critically.
The truth is that reality television and our current obsession with celebrity has no such underlying social commentary. It’s the kind of propaganda used in the past to control the minds of masses of humanity who are actually suffering unspoken atrocities. The difference here is that there is no dictator shoving this stuff down our throats. There is an enemy, and it’s us. We have chosen to tune out.
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What the hell do we do when most people care more about Jesse James’s marital plans than the inability of the majority of 10th graders to read at grade level? Do we need some sort of national shock treatment?
For better or worse, the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech makes it impossible to ban reality television and the likes of Kate Gosselin on the grounds that they are rotting our collective minds. We actually need to change the pop culture dynamic by means of inspiration, not coercion.
One of the central factors driving the change in our national consciousness is exactly how we get information. It used to be the case that there were a limited number of trusted news sources that were held accountable to exacting journalistic standards. The national debate was framed out by facts presented by the likes of Woodward, Bernstein and Halberstam. The nation watched Walter Cronkite report on the shooting of JFK and didn’t question his motives.
Today there’s Fox on the right and MSNBC on the left. We really can only take hard news with a large dose of humor, like The Daily Show. And most people get what news they consume on Internet blogs like the Huffington Post that have no journalistic aspirations whatsoever. It’s all one big rush for page views. Even the most supposedly erudite news sites have to stoop to celebrity and, yes, porn to generate economic return. One of the favorite techniques on HuffPo and the like is to post two scantily clad young women, celebrity or not, and ask readers to vote on who is hotter. It’s a fair cry from reporting on the ground in Vietnam.
One could certainly argue that this fatal flaw in the American system has existed from the beginning. The potent combination of freedom of speech and commercial news has inevitably sent us down this rat hole of replacing the truth of our world with soap operas and fully believing the fiction is real.
Newspapers have always been ad supported. Broadcast news had to push product. It’s been a shotgun marriage doomed to fail. Provide the most reliable news possible, expensive to produce, to attract eyeballs that you can allow Madison Avenue to convert to revenue. The measure of success really isn’t the quality of the news, it’s the power of the advertising buried inside that news wrapper.
So now we no longer have the news or the wrapper. It’s just junk selling junk—and a country in a state of meltdown, blissfully unaware of what is really going on. Many more Americans know Charlie Sheen than German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the key player in trying to save the Euro and stem the tide of national debt defaults that has already had a profound impact on our economy.
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As BBC Trust Chairman, Lord Patten of Barnes, said:
The BBC is a core part of our civic humanism in this country. What do I mean by civic humanism? I mean our sense of shared citizenship, regardless of our different backgrounds. I mean the understanding that citizenship is underpinned by a common set of values, a common conversation. And an acceptance of mutual responsibility for our individual and collective welfare. How does the BBC fit into that? By providing a public space for argument and creativity. By being a party to the public’s engagement with democracy. By allowing citizens to test the trustworthiness of the information they get from those in authority. The BBC is both personal to each of us and universal for all of us. It creates a form of social capital.
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How about if we created an independent trust in the United States whose only mission was to report on issues, with objectivity and impartiality, with direct impact on our democracy?
With Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and many other billionaires expressing concern about doing something concrete to save the world, perhaps they would match a grant by the Federal Government to endow this organization. Citizens could contribute too, but there would be no on-air telethons or sponsorships. When I listen to NPR or watch PBS, I am not sure if it is public or private service. I also don’t think the charge of liberal bias is without merit. These organizations could be folded into the new American Media Trust, but they’d have to alter their mission and give up their fundraising techniques.
Rather than creating a national platform to monetize through ad dollars, the trust would create a national platform to engage citizens in thoughtful debate via excellence in journalism—the kind no paper, or broadcast network, or website in their right mind can now afford. Wars, famine, education, poverty, prison, race, the economy, unemployment, art, and science are just a few categories that need a national discourse based on deeply-rooted facts. I am sure there are many others.
I don’t believe that we are innately stupid. Or that our diminished attention span for serious material is anything but a habit born out of the vacuum created when pop culture-combined-with-technology took over brains.
The world and our country, in particular, is at a tipping point. There are serious issues to discuss. And as much as I love Jon Stewart, I am not convinced that laughing at his jokes is moving the ball forward. Our love affair with Snooki most certainly isn’t.
In a politically divided country where every factual statement is broken down along party lines, each side with an alternative view of the “truth,” it’s all the more imperative that well-meaning citizens have an independent source of news and information. One that isn’t fighting off a financial death-spiral but is chartered with doing important work, solely because it’s important.
—Photo CBC.ca (AP)
“For better or worse, the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech makes it impossible to ban reality television and the likes of Kate Gosselin on the grounds that they are rotting our collective minds. We actually need to change the pop culture dynamic by means of inspiration, not coercion.”
Actually no. The First Amendment only protects political speech. One would be hard pressed to demonstrate that stuff like Jersey Shore has any substance in it, political or otherwise.
Apparently you haven’t actually read the bill of rights. That’d be a good start to remedy our nations problems. The vast majority of people could tell your everything that’s going on with their favorite show, but couldn’t list the bill of rights.
I would not hesitate to call “Pop” a “cultural mode.” In the Kardashian and Fox, MSNBC world, it appears to be a mode of transaction, communication, or requisite style. It is as shallow as it is sickening-sweet.
This article is right on the money — We’re (Americans) are very much a product of our environment. Twitter may be the best example of how far we’ve truly fallen — a nation of ignorance. The average American is grossly uninformed — we’re the laughing stock of the industrialized world and we’re doing absolutely nothing about it. Our very own government goes as far as to foster this ignorance. I’m not okay with it. While our planet dies a slow and undoubtedly certain death — while the fabric of not only our nation, but the bulk of industrialized nations unravels… Read more »
This is the exact thesis in “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, which was written back in the early 1980s and predates the rush of pop culture the Internet and the growth of cable outlets has produced. It’s a fascinating read, and the author even addresses a few remedies he sees.
One man’s incomprehensible violent spectacle is another man’s embodiment of manly virtue. One man’s synthesized wall of over-amplified noise is another’s sacred dance floor release.
Worst case scenario, as we descend from our present fin de siecle weirdness into a climate change/peak oil shock, popular culture will be there to hold our hand with lifestyle bullshit content about celebrity fortresses, foraging on a budget, and so forth. On to the Matrix/Brave New World/whatever lies in store for us!
Some good points. However, as Sprizouse commented, from a moral – or amoral- point of view, there’s nothing new under the sun. Snooki, Kardashian and their ilk are only the latest iteration. Hollywood and the media would probably answer, “is this not what you want? If not, why are people watching?” We have a myriad of options for news. If the local and national are unsatisfying, international options are immediately available. How trustworthy or biased these options are will always be something to be aware of. Consider the source. Stewart’s been on long enough to establish his particular biases, and… Read more »
Not having read the other comments, my immediate reaction is to say “Watch Russia Today!” Or “RT” as they call it these days. It’s Russian propaganda, but since its interests do not necessarily coincide with those of the United States, RT is an invaluable part of a balanced media diet. Call it the fifth estate.
Somebody needs to update wikipedia with the pop culture related deaths:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate
Wow, you’re all over the place with this post… and most of it isn’t good. Where are the links to any of the stuff you’re talking about? The majority of 10th graders not reading at grade level? Is that a verifiable fact? The reason I ask is because “articles” like yours have been written for, um, THOUSANDS of years. No really, THOUSANDS! I’ve personally been reading about the decline of pop culture and the growing stupidity of youth for at least 25 years. Yet things like the Flynn Effect demonstrably show those postulations to be nothing more than postulations. And,… Read more »
I think America is dancing dangerously close to a totalitarian state. We are being numbed by inane pop music, vapid reality tv and processed chemically-treated food. Fans are being patted down at football games all for the looming fear of the foreign other. Children are being vaccinated in schools without the need for parental consent. None of this allows for a nation to feel anything other than apathy and it is rather terrifying. It is in this moment that I want to run off to the woods, forage or farm my own food and start creating a different reality. However,… Read more »
“With Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and many other billionaires expressing concern about doing something concrete to save the world, perhaps they would match a grant by the Federal Government to endow this organization. Citizens could contribute too, but there would be no on-air telethons or sponsorships. ” While this sounds like a promising idea, what if these money men decide at some point to get a return on their investment and start finding way to squeeze profit from this Trust? I personally believe that parents should encourage their schools to teach media literacy, just like sex education, its logical to… Read more »
How come you didn’t mention Al Jazeera. I think they’re about as close to what you’re describing as a modern news outlet can get.
I don’t believe there could ever be a thing as impartial news or objective reporting since we’re infallible human beings. Have you checked out independent news sites? Provide an example of objective reporting.
Hey Hugo and Tom http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-N6j699vzA&feature=relmfu
A culture that lets its taste in music, and most other things, be set by 16-year-olds, is in more trouble than its addled brains are capable of realizing.
thats so true.
One of the most amazing comments I have read. Great response sir.
Amazing post! I don’t know how many times I try to drill it into people how U.S. television is corrupt. But then again, this is something that goes way back. What did people do during the second war? They “escaped” reality by heading to the movies to laugh their little hearts out while the world fought. Are we no different today? I applaud those on Wall St. and all across the world who are taking a stand. It’s about time we ignore the BS the government has fed us and dedicate ourselves to making a change. We rely on political… Read more »
If there is anything that is “mindless drivel,” it’s this well written piece. Lacking any kind of reality this piece exhibits a complete lack of context to what came before and what is now. It’s more than just a little unfortunate that the thoughts expressed indicate that it is assumed that any reader will be just as myopic and unthinking. For what it is worth, the piece is an example of “pop culture” thinking at it’s worst.
“The feminist movement of the 60s and 70s has culminated in The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills delivering 2.2 million viewers after the show induced the husband to one of the stars to commit suicide.”
Got to love those good old warranted factually accurate statements – just like the good old days.
As far as I can remember people have always had this problem of caring more about pop culture or the glamor and crap that our society seems to make a huge deal about while not really giving a damn about our reality because quite frankly it isn’t all that interesting to us apparently.
Well, Jill, the music video came and went and came back again. As 1/2 of Burrowing Owls, please check out our offering on the OWS phenomenon:
http://youtu.be/afrTLf4HUmE
Bread and circuses.
I often wonder where are the protest songs of our generation. We have been at war for 10 years, the economy is in the toilet and our political process has been hijacked by special interests and extremists. Where are today’s songs like “Ohio” and “For What It’s Worth?” Pop culture was once (sometimes) an instrument of social change. Now it’s only a way of making us drunk on our own excess.
You better stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Also, what about moves like the NYT charging for its articles on the Internet. That seems like another way to go to make sure that journalism gets enough money to thrive.
I’m intrigued by the idea of a public trust for real journalism. It does seem like we need some way for reporters to be able to make enough money to do research. Three worries: Would anyone watch or listen to the shows? NPR and PBS already exist and people aren’t choosing to tune into them. Maybe part of the solution is getting the content into a format that more people will watch. Why throw out NPR and PBS? I’d love to see them get rid of pledge drives, but they can’t without more government money. That won’t be coming for… Read more »
In an otherwise great article, why take a swipe at feminism? It surely had nothing to do with the rise of reality TV or a show about rich women who don’t work.
Ah, yes, the good old days of 1950’s media. When Lucille Ball had to fight just to be able to have a pregnant belly on camera, and the network still refused to use the word “pregnant” because it was too suggestive. (And this is for a child conceived completely within a marriage – the two people were married to each other on the show AND in real life, and it was still taboo to talk about pregnancy.) When Little Ricky did finally arrive, more people watched that show than watched ANY of the political events of the 1950’s – Army-McCarthy… Read more »
Don’t forget about the 1950’s Comics Code that publishers imposed on themselves. No comic book stories were allowed to show anyone in authority in a bad light, including clergy and teachers, and all criminals must be apprehended and punished by the end of the story. This indirectly led to the creation of Mad Magazine, another one of the cultural high points of the fifties. Good times.