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Post by maolsheachlann on Mar 12, 2017 12:07:41 GMT
I would like to know what contributors think about pop culture. It's a subject that has long fascinated me and towards which my opinions have vacillated dramatically.
Is pop culture good or bad?
Should we do our best to avoid it completely?
Is some pop culture good and other pop culture bad?
Is it corrosive to our Catholic faith?
Does it dilute national identity (if we even have such a thing anymore)?
Does it lower our cultural and intellectual standards?
This thought came into my head as I was looking at the newspapers this morning and realising that even respectable newspapers give so much space to celebrity interviews, without any apparent bashfulness.
I deliberately haven't defined pop culture, as I think it's impossible to define. Different people have different definitions. Is Sherlock Holmes pop culture? Is Citizen Kane pop culture? Are The Dubliners pop culture? That seems to me a part of the discussion.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 17, 2017 15:35:24 GMT
Neither. We should be cautious and assess it on its merits, but it's not possible to avoid it completely. Yes. Yes, it can be. Yes, because it is so internationalised - though it can also promote a dumbed-down version of national identity (cf all the Glasgow Celtic scarves visible in the Republic over the last few years.) Yes, to some extent (though in some instances it can be a gateway to deeper study and understanding of its subiect. Sherlock Holmes and the Dubliners were definitely pop culture; Citizen Kane IMHO not (though some of Welles's later films regarded as masterpieces, such as TOUCH OF EVIL, are). KANE pioneered all sorts of techniques that were innovative (hence it's not pop culture) but were soon absorbed into mainstream cinema.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Mar 17, 2017 17:38:25 GMT
That's very interesting, Hibernicus...so is your definition of high culture, or art, based on formal innovation?
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Post by assisi on Mar 19, 2017 14:36:15 GMT
I tend to think of pop culture by the sayings it seems to spawn and the cliched attachments it holds.
Right at the beginning Disney and children's movies tend to push the following:
Be true to yourself
Aim for the stars
Note that 'you' are the special one and potential fame awaits.
As one gets older, particularly in teenage and young adult age, there is a tendency to imitate the pop star, sports star or celebrity that one likes best. How they dress, what they eat etc.
As time passes things start to get a bit more tricky. Some of the admired ones die early through drugs or suicide. For the follower this can be good or bad. Bad, in that their hero is no more. Good in that their hero can now be deemed an icon and cannot do or say anything that will spoil the ideal.
If you are lucky the hero will be a semi-recluse, withdrawing from society partially or altogether (Agnetha from Abba, Kate Bush, Enya). That way they maintain mystique and don't mess up. There may be a hint here also that these pop hermits actually don't like their fans too much.
Further on in the life of the pop culturalists, they are growing older and more world weary. One of the ways of coping with the realisation that they are not going to get anywhere near the stars, and they have compromised their 'true to yourself' slogan, they will try many coping strategies. They will try to make a pseudo technology from their hero's activities (e.g. their guitarist hero who immersed himself in many genres, tried different methods of playing, played around with the mechanics of his guitar etc...is some kind of demi-god).
Other strategies include the 're-invention myth' where undue praise is heaped upon stars who apparently change in mid flight: Madonna or David Bowie (whose persona's include Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke). This seems to go against 'Be true to yourelf' but probably isn't because all they are really doing is putting on different clothes and make-up and still being true to themselves (i.e. attention seeking).
Another strategy is for the pop culturalists themselves to have one last go at pop culture during their multiple mid life crises. Start up a blues/rock/jazz band with some of your like minded friends or buy a big motor bike and tour some exotic country. Only problem here is that eventually you catch a reflection of yourself in a shop window and find out that you are not James Dean or Jimi Hendrix, but more Van Morrison or President Higgins.
All in all it is sad and superficial but the final irony is that they will all eventually become stardust when their yearning days are eventually over....
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Post by maolsheachlann on Mar 19, 2017 18:49:49 GMT
Well, the motto of UCD is "ad astra", and this phrase has been used in innumerable institutional mottoes long before pop culture really took off. I don't think it has to mean fame and celebrity.
As for "be true to yourself", I've often puzzled exactly what this means. Indeed, as Assisi points out, the "self" seeems to be utterly transcendental in modern usages-- you may have to betray everything you once believed, and to fly in the face of our own biology, to be "true to yourself." Was "Here stand I, I can do no other?" its origin?
Many interesting and insightful observations in your post, Assisi, but it does pertain mostly to popular music and the cult of celebrity. There's so much more to pop culture than that-- all the sit-coms, action movies, romantic comedies, gameshows, Top Gear-type shows, newspaper cartoons etc. etc. in which we all immersed, even the squarest amongst us.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 20, 2017 21:37:05 GMT
Formal innovation is not necessarily a mark of high art, but it helps (because one index of pop culture is familiarity). Besides, KANE is to a considerable extent the work of a single artist who was able to shape it as he pleased (not only was Welles director and principal actor, working with a team of actors he had put together in his theatre, but he had a contract which gave him final cut - a guarantee that the film would be released without studio re-editing). A much better example of pop culture as work of genius from the same era is CASABLANCA - it doesn't have a single author, and most of those involved, apart from the actors, had relatively undistinguished careers, but the ensemble produced something remarkable. It also illustrates the fact that "to yourself be true" as the theme of pop culture is really a 60s innovation, though it has earlier roots. I remember when THE ENGLISH PATIENT came out - the hero actually betrays a desert route to the Nazis to pay off a grudge over the death of his lover, causing thousands of allied casualties. Not only does the film exculpate his action, quite a few critics who defended it maintained that CASABLANCA would be a superior film if Humphrey Bogart handed over Paul Henried to the Nazis and went off with Ingrid Bergman.
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Post by Account Deleted on Mar 22, 2017 14:50:52 GMT
What’s been said about our pop culture so far emphasizes the character of it today. I feel our pop culture demonstrates that our society is increasingly self-centered, perhaps as a result of our environment of consumerism. Even the mantra of “be true to yourself” in practice becomes “let me be true to myself” - few really extend it to the "other" person. Pop celebrities are such because people see them as somehow admirable which (if the celebrities we hear about are any indication) seems to be predominantly about money, physical beauty, and lifestyle. Young people in particular see celebrity icons as having the answers they need (perhaps due to an erosion of quality role models in their own families - but that's another discussion). I don’t see too many celebrities in the popular culture today that people want to emulate because of their quality of character, knowledge-ability, intellect, or charitable lifestyles (in short, the Christian virtues). I stand to be corrected on good examples of pop culture icons - I'm not too familiar with them all! Pop culture isn't a contemporary phenomenon. It has been around as long as people has been able to communicate and record. To an extent, contemporary pop culture is an assimilation of what popular culture from previous generations has survived record, remains in the public consciousness, and is allowed to pass the filter of today's social mores.
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Post by assisi on Mar 23, 2017 18:31:59 GMT
Well, the motto of UCD is "ad astra", and this phrase has been used in innumerable institutional mottoes long before pop culture really took off. I don't think it has to mean fame and celebrity. As for "be true to yourself", I've often puzzled exactly what this means. Indeed, as Assisi points out, the "self" seeems to be utterly transcendental in modern usages-- you may have to betray everything you once believed, and to fly in the face of our own biology, to be "true to yourself." Was "Here stand I, I can do no other?" its origin? Many interesting and insightful observations in your post, Assisi, but it does pertain mostly to popular music and the cult of celebrity. There's so much more to pop culture than that-- all the sit-coms, action movies, romantic comedies, gameshows, Top Gear-type shows, newspaper cartoons etc. etc. in which we all immersed, even the squarest amongst us. I must confess that I see 'pop culture' as really starting in the 1960s with television being the main enabler. I attempted to summarise, rather flippantly, the main messages and direction behind pop culture rather than try to analyse the content of the various manifestations which would take an eternity to do as it is ubiquitous. It can be politicised. Soap opera writers will often highlight a controversial and current social topic such as portraying rape, gay relationship, racial tension in a particular way that may influence the general public if there is a referendum or government vote just around the corner; it is usually accompanied by the disingenuous statement 'we need to start a conversation about these issues and bring them out into the public domain'. But I just cannot take its credibility seriously, although its influence is major (just look at the celebrity criticism of Trump in the U.S.). As for the entertainment itself I would call most of it trash. But there are admittedly a lot of what I call box sets (tv series) that are very well made, slick and addictive, although the content may be far from inspiring. I must admit to enjoying the TV series 'Lost' from the ABC studio in the U.S. Down the years I would have occasionally watched other box sets such as Dexter, Walking Dead, True Detective, 24, the first series of the Wire and several others - again slickly made, and each episode ending in such a way to entice you back for more. You know the series is well made but at times you are slightly depressed by the content, its morality (or lack of) and some of the gratuitous violence. But I keep coming back to the same thing. There are common threads or messages throughout this culture, all the more interesting because it is almost entirely secular. I mentioned a few of them in the first post and suggested they were all self centred. Just to give 2 more examples of pop music 'anthems' that are very popular, which illustrate this, you have Elton John's 'I'm still standing' and Gloria Gaynor's 'I will survive. There you have it. An initial burst of enthusiasm and idealism (Youth), an effort to rationalise and make sense of life (early adulthood) and thereafter a pat on your own back if you can survive and function after the wheels come off your dreams.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 24, 2017 20:59:47 GMT
Oh, there was pop culture in the nineteenth century - music halls, penny dreadfuls, Tin Pan Alley commercial songwriters. (Father Faber's hymns, for that matter - they were deliberately simplified to be aimed at poorer audiences.) It should also be borne in mind that high culture has its own weaknesses, it can be over-refined, academic and manneristic (i.e. obsessed with working out minor details at the expense of overall proportion), even gnostic.
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Post by Account Deleted on Mar 26, 2017 21:51:29 GMT
I just happened to be reading this evening: "Take anything of which it may be said, 'Look now, this is new'. Already, long before our time, it existed. Only no memory remains of earlier times, just as in times to come next year itself will not be remembered." Ecc 1:10
On a morning we devote to the Lord, I happened to be watching the tail end of a program that encapsulates the pop culture of Sunday mornings today - "Sunday Brunch." Among the happy-go-lucky venier of cocktail and food recipes, laughing and joking celebrities, viewers are exposed to promotion of their current wares by each "guest" on the show, a dis-ordinate amount of ad breaks, and witty snippets of secular soundbite wisdom. Notably, one American guest shares her philosophy with the TV congregation "do whatever it takes to make you feel happy." These are the preachers and font of wisdom for the masses now. And this is the primary diet of values most people receive. But, no doubt, my disenchanted assessment of it would not be in the "spirit of the show."
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Post by Account Deleted on Apr 21, 2017 23:42:20 GMT
One thing that strikes me as being unique to our present age is the internet as a pop culture medium. On reading this article today, I'm reminded that the internet and "on-demand" has proven itself to be (especially when marketing the next controversial "sensation" to a global audience) a way to softly by-pass what censorship State regulated broadcast channels are held to. This, in-turn (in my view) is further pressurizing and weakening the broadcast regulation attitudes in general. www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/catholic-leaders-urge-extreme-caution-for-new-netflix-series-31586/I trialed netflix for a month last year, and discontinued when I realized how much disturbing and sensationalist "mature" content it actually contains. Very little on it I could comfortably watch as "entertainment". Thoughts? Is content censorship dying?
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Post by hibernicus on May 8, 2017 19:25:02 GMT
Formal content censorship (in relation to sex and violence, with a few exceptions) has been pretty much dead for a long time. I went to the 1988 film WORKING GIRL at the Lighthouse cinema yesterday (they're having a retrospective of Sigourney Weaver films - she plays the villain) with only the vaguest knowledge of the plot, and I was struck by the following: (1) A couple of decades earlier, this would be considered soft-porn; there are nude and topless scenes. The hero (played by Harrison Ford) at some points comes across as borderline creep. (2) It's a striking example of faux populism; the villain(ess) is a preppy Ivy League grad with inherited money, our heroine is a bluecollar secretary commuting from Staten Island to work in Manhattan, and the film is carefully calibrated to emphasise that she is loyal to her bluecollar pals but she's ultimately too classy for their life, though when she gets to be an exec she keeps in touch with her secretary pals (at least for the first day). The deus ex machina is a benevolent corporate boss, one of whose achievements is that "he introduced Japanese management techniques when everyone else was kow-towing to the unions". (Did I mention the film was made by Twentieth Century Fox, belonging to Rupert Murdoch who had just crushed the print unions on his British newspapers?) Our heroine gets her big break by diligently reading the NEW YORK POST, a famously sleazy tabloid owned by a certain Rupert Murdoch. Maybe my revulsion at Point 2 is a bit sentimental and reflects my instinctive deference and belief in teamwork, which hasn't done me many favours, but the film still leaves a nasty taste because it comes across as manipulative.
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Post by maolsheachlann on May 8, 2017 20:23:00 GMT
What hasn't done you many favours-- teamwork or your belief in it?
I'd argue that you don't have to be pro-union to be pro-teamwork. I'm not anti-union, by the way. Aren't Japanese management techinques all about teamwork?
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Post by hibernicus on May 9, 2017 20:32:26 GMT
The point is that Japanese management techniques are top-down hierarchical, in a way that requires the employees to do as they are told without any independent mechanism to guard against exploitation. Oddly enough, the villain in the film, who manipulates her subordinates by pretending to be their friend while treating them as servants and stealing their ideas, is a very striking example of how trust, deference and loyalty can be exploited. Oh, I agree that there were wrongs on both sides in the Wapping dispute (the print unions were refusing to print newspaper articles they didn't like, insisting that non-jobs be maintained even when their duties had been eliminated by new technology, and insisting on all sorts of dodgy work practices) and indeed in the wider trade union wars of 70s and 80s Britain. It's just that the line equating union-busting with inventing sliced bread and developing microwave technology (literally) is so obviously geared to what Murdoch was doing at the time that it's hilarious once you notice it. I've never been a union member, but as I grow older I get uneasy about it. It seems to me that powerful independent trade unions are pretty much a requirement of Catholic social teaching (not just the post-Vatican II variety, either) and the way in which they are not just being restrained but deliberately eliminated by major corporations makes me very uneasy. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Edward_Manningen.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gibbons
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Post by maolsheachlann on May 9, 2017 21:01:02 GMT
Private sector unions are important, but I don't have much time for public sector unions-- I say this as someone who works in the public sector and has undoubtedly benefited from their activities. I was a member of SIPTU but I left because of their stance on abortion.
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