The music industry mostly accepts the notion that "real" artists only write about struggle - generally related to some type of drug addiction, criminal activity, or violence. Take the praise showered upon Eminem for his recent return from years of pill popping, the lauding of Madonna for singing candidly about her salacious affairs, and the American Dream narrative projected onto rappers like Jay-Z and 2Pac. The topics broached by these individuals, drug use, broken families, violent death, and other social pathologies, somehow imbue the artist with authenticity not present in Ms. Swift's tales of adolescent love and heartbreak.This meme expands beyond the music industry, such as every season of The Real World including a sexually abused individual, an alcoholic, and a number of individuals with generally horrible childhoods, like the guy this season with both parents in jail for being hardcore drug dealers. To grow up in a middle-class, two-parent home is considered boring, uninteresting, and somehow "unreal" as compared to the supposedly more vibrant environments with pervasive teen pregnancy, divorce, drug abuse, and crime. In this, we see the perversion of the once venerable American dream, the "by one's own bootstraps" replaced by the badge-of-honor "I had a fucking bad childhood so praise me because I made it out, motherfucker."
White middle-class suburbanites, the class engaging in what was once seen as good and normal, are considered "sheltered from the real world" and somehow not privy to "real experience." Thankfully, not all of us have fallen for this idiocy.
We see this in popular culture as well. Awhile back I praised Forrest Gump as a fantastic conservative movie showing that a simple man who makes good decisions and cherishes personal relationships can thrive without need for society's materialism and frivolity. But not everyone agrees, including the "conservative" blogger Allahpundit at HotAir who had this to say:
Civilization ends: Greatest film character of all time is … Forrest GumpAllahpundit (dumbest name ever?) considered Scarlett O'Hara the only "realistic" character in the poll. Telling as Ms. O'Hara had three children by three different men and
People who are fascinated by Forrest Gump must watch Elvis’s movies and find his characters amazing.
"she used her charms shamelessly to get what she wanted including lying, cheating, and even marrying her sister's beau. Nothing she did was beyond shame if it got her what she needed. And she needed money as God was her witness, she would never be hungry again if she had to lie, cheat or steal or sell poor lumber for the better quality stuff."OK, I know Forrest Gump isn't realistic per se, but Allahpundit's derision clearly stems from the underlying simplicity of the character. Gump upholds boring traditional values while O'Hara is a lying, cheating embodiment of modern moral decadence - and somehow this is "real." Another instance is Pleasantville, a popular 1990's movie that makes this criticism nauseatingly obvious and goes even further in basically flashing neon lights on the screen for its racial allegory. The film depicts 1950's America as hopelessly naive and that one can only escape such emptiness by having casual sex.
Let me qualify this somewhat and partially agree with these leftists. They're somewhat right in noting that socially conservative enclaves like Mormon Utah feel fake - because in a way, they are. But that's the beauty of civilization; it tempers our carnal urges and allows us a safe environment in which to live. Civilization has done away with whimsical murder, rape, and that whole trivial food supply thing. So perhaps these isolated places of social continence don't arise in an entirely organic fashion; but who cares, it works great.
Final note: this qualification regarding "fakeness" doesn't contradict what I said above, if we consider "reality" and "vibrancy" without regard to what makes for good headlines, fodder for neighborhood gossip, or worse, the nightly news. Stable suburban families provide "real", loving environments with plenty of emotional satisfaction. These suburban environments are "real" because they exist and they're "fulfilling" because nothing beats loving families and a close-knit social community and then there's that whole not dealing with crazy people, crime, teen pregnancy, drug use, trash, and general listlessness.
36 comments:
Liberals portray suburbanites as mired in false consciousness, unable to see the true nature of their life because of their class and its oppressive relation to lower classes, usually blacks, of whom a select few have reached a true political consciousness. This mutant Marxist meme is why their views are seen as authentic whereas the suburbanites' views are seen as fake.
Agree with your basic idea, but can't you come up with a better 'normal' character than Forrest Gump ? Appaling movie about a stupid, unbelievable character. How about Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life' ?
This is definitely MindWar against the normals. It glamorizes anti-intellectualism and freeloading on society.
What we normals need to do is be high achievers, and raise our kids something like Amy Chua (tiger mom) raises hers, and shuts out mass media.
If you don't consume mass media, as I do not, this message doesn't come across at all. The MindWar missiles do not hit the target. Homeschooled kids often grow up with minimal exposure to mass media MindWar.
http://mindweaponsinragnarok.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/homeschooled-white-kid-wins-intel-prize/
Liberals tend to raise Liberal children who also seem to have a tendency to be highly dysfunctional, low end achievers. At least this has been my experience in my own world having lived in a very liberal neighborhood.
My neighbors with very liberal views of society, often actually chastised me for the way I was raising my children. They ended up with children who were drug addicts, gay, teenage pregnancies and mixed racial children. They even pretend to be proud of this--but you can see the jealousy where my own children's success is concerned.
The whole 'thing" in other words, is a way of excusing the failure of their ideology to produce responsible, healthy members of society.
The grungier it is the more authentic it is in the minds of many people. Using a lot of swear words is thought to establish some type of "street cred". I couldn't count the number of people I've met who embellished their backgrounds to make it seem rougher and tougher than what it actually was, thinking that made them more impressive. Living in what's regarded as a sheltered environment is just as "real" as living anywhere else; more boring, perhaps, but still real. I guess the general public prefers danger, conflict, drama and narrow escapes as a part of it's fantasy life; it's so much more exciting and sells better as a consumer product.
'Chicago' said basically what I was thinking:
"...I guess the general public prefers danger, conflict, drama and narrow escapes as a part of it's fantasy life; it's so much more exciting and sells better as a consumer product."
The first thing that came into my mind was when I was reading this article was "this sounds like the 'drama' that modern 'womyn'/feminists seem to want in their everyday lives".
It sounds like a plot description of those awful mind-rot soap operas (the daytime, and especially the evening ones) that clutter the MSM with their awful tripe. It is not any coincidence (I think) that womyn are the biggest fans of such garbage programming, which panders to the lowest, most base desires -- but it's DRAMA!
Any thinking person should avoid such drivel -- if you HAVE to watch the tube, watch PBS!
"Fake" and "authentic" are just bullshit code words for "not in conformity with liberalism" and "in conformity with liberalism", respectively. If you accept the liberal premises, then these terms have meaning, but if you don't then the terms are meaningless.
"They're somewhat right in noting that socially conservative enclaves like Mormon Utah feel fake - because in a way, they are."
No, they only "feel fake" because everywhere else is mired in toxic liberalism and that's what you're used to. The deformed monster that crawls out of the toxic waste spill thinks fresh water "feels fake", but that don't make it so.
To say this has something to do with the bogeyman of 'Liberalism' is to completely ignore history. A couple of commenters have already pointed this out - and I'll reiterate it and make an additional hypothesis.
When it comes to entertainment, people desire that witch is different from their own realities. These juxtapositions are what create effective an compelling satire and drama. The fact that a plurality of people in our society seem to be attracted to narratives of dysfunction probably sugests that the exact opposite is what they are experiencing in their own real lives.
The fact is that everyone gets up and looks in the mirror everyday - the things that entertain them are the thing they don't see in the more metaphorical mirror of their everyday lives.
To try to cast this as a liberal shibboleth is an example of cognitive contortion. It's what makes a good deal of ideologically driven commentary like this so inane. The right likes to lay claim on a sort of dispassionate common-sense, this type of analysis does no service to that claim.
Very swiftly Ms. Swift will be "slutting it up" in order to stay in the biz. They all do otherwise they end up like Tori Amos.
Think Rihanna.
Swift is next.
One,
I just started a new blog and have some thoughts I want to share with you about this post:
http://imnotherzog.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/rockin-the-suburbs/
Check it out and comment over there! You are still the man!
@One
"Allahpundit (dumbest name ever?) considered Scarlett O'Hara the only "realistic" character in the poll."
You're misrepresenting him -- he put "realistic" in quotes, and said that she was simply the "most" not "only" realistic character, of the top five. I'm not sure how you could argue -- the others were Gump, James Bond, and Hannibal Lecter.
@Mack
"When it comes to entertainment, people desire that witch is different from their own realities."
I disagree. Some people may want this, and I'm sure a lot of people would put it on their list of cool things entertainment can do. But I think entertainment in a story comes from conflict. If there's no conflict, the story's boring.
Of course, that doesn't mean that a great story can't be about the triumph of decency. Forest Gump has a lot of conflict -- nothing but.
"The fact that a plurality of people in our society seem to be attracted to narratives of dysfunction probably sugests that the exact opposite is what they are experiencing in their own real lives."
Well, that's obviously bogus. Life is hard all over. So, you've taken a wrong turn somewhere.
"Allahpundit (dumbest name ever?)"
Not if the writer is a South Asian Muslim. "Pundit" means "scholar" in Sanskrit.
Instapundit is probably the dumbest name ever, and an oxymoron to boot.
@Dave
You off with regards to both your comments.
You said:
I disagree. Some people may want this, and I'm sure a lot of people would put it on their list of cool things entertainment can do. But I think entertainment in a story comes from conflict. If there's no conflict, the story's boring.
Of course, that doesn't mean that a great story can't be about the triumph of decency. Forest Gump has a lot of conflict -- nothing but.
I didn't make a comment regarding decency - I said that people typically derive entertainment from experiences that differ widely from their own. If you want to argue that the Gump character is typical and existed just as most people in our society commonly exist I think you will have a hard time convincing anyone that saw the movie.
You also say:
"The fact that a plurality of people in our society seem to be attracted to narratives of dysfunction probably sugests that the exact opposite is what they are experiencing in their own real lives."
Well, that's obviously bogus. Life is hard all over. So, you've taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Life is hard - sure - but dysfunction is universal? Give me a break. A prime example of how wrong you are is seen in reality television - none of which is unscripted and is injected with unbelievable amounts of concocted drama. If what I assert weren't the case then then the most popular show on tv would be following the mundane life and travails of a suburban family who got to work and watch tv every day and maybe go to Disneyland or Vegas once a year.
Look at what happened to TV over time. The 1950's featured Leave it To Beaver, Father Knows Best, the Rifleman, followed by shows like Bonanza in the 1960's. A middle class society centered around a nuclear family in various forms with mostly White people, watched mostly by men.
The inflection point comes in the early 1980's to late 1970's, based on a post I did on my own site. I did a study of the nightly Fall Prime-time lineup of each TV season.
Wikipedia has the complete lineup for the TV season going back to 1948. I started I think in 1975-76, not sure, and ended in 2009 IIRC. I counted a show based as female-skewing if it featured mostly actresses, had soap opera plots, or was a sitcom. Thus Vega$ was male skewing (action-adventure with a male lead, no real female lead) and Dallas was female skewing. I counted only the Fall prime-time hours as announced (network best guess at what people would want) and counted male and female hours for each network every night. Then I'd add them up for the week. From the mid 1980's onward TV became utterly female. To about only 20% or less male skewing hours.
Women as noted above love soap opera dramas about dysfunction. Thus what Liberalism is really measuring is female-driven culture.
Not if the writer is a South Asian Muslim.
I'm almost, but not entirely, sure that Allahpundit is a Jewish of roughly neoconservative persuasion.
The name Allahpundit is an old joke - when he began blogging, he pretended to be Allah. It was actually kind of funny.
I agree with your overall point. "Reality" is a concept that is so big and important that the left considered a prize to be fought for and won at a time when the amateurish right had no idea such a thing could even be fought for and won.
Ice-T loves to make the point, in various songs, that healthy families and safe neighborhoods are not "reality". Only crack and rape and beating your mother's head in with a Louisville slugger are "reality".
It's interesting, because leftists love to invert everything so much they even invert classic gnosticism - The dirty, opaque, dead world is real. Energy and virtue are figments of your imagination. Usually I think of modern leftism and gnosticism being peas in a pod but, when leftists need to sell crack and/or hip-hop records, they will be inverted gnostics until they get the money.
"Reality". Sheesh. The difference between "reality" and an empty cardboard box is that one of them is empty, desiccated, and forgettable, while the other can be used to store soda cans.
"The music industry mostly accepts the notion that "real" artists only write about struggle - generally related to some type of drug addiction, criminal activity, or violence."
Bach, Mozart, Handel
nah, they weren't "real" artists!
LOL
I agree with your basic point. The other word liberals like to throw around is "privilege," which basically tries to make upper middle class whites feel ashamed of the fact that they had a stable home with two parents who sacrificed so that their children could go to good schools.
Liberals love to throw around words like "sheltered" and "privileged." But as you point out, the whole point of civilization is to shelter people, i.e. to protect them from nasty things like cold, hunger, and crime. And to privilege them, i.e. to bequeath advantages on our descendants which they did not individually earn.
I'm proud to be privileged and I'm doing my best to privilege my own children.
Oh please, you're overthinking it. The attack on the 'burbs has long been nothing but just one more example of white-hating racism by another name. That's why you never see non-white suburbs attacked. It isn't the setting, it's the people. It's not how "real" they aren't, it's how white they are.
"I'm proud to be privileged."
Good for you. I'm more proud of the things I myself actually earned.
"I'm proud to be privileged."
Good for you. I'm more proud of the things I myself actually earned.
Gotta agree with Dave here. Well said.
Though I think what sabril means is that being privileged shouldn't be considered a bad thing (which goes without saying in non-liberal twilight zone).
You're misrepresenting him -- he put "realistic" in quotes, and said that she was simply the "most" not "only" realistic character, of the top five. I'm not sure how you could argue -- the others were Gump, James Bond, and Hannibal Lecter.
*nods*
In addition, if he were going for the most unpleasant character, he would not have chosen Scarlett O'Hara over Hannibal Lecter.
The first poster, Lemniscate, has it most right, I think.
Oh, and "Forrest Gump" was an absolutely stupid movie.
In "Pleasantville," Reese Witherspoon's slutty character stayed back in the '50s to "remake" herself, thereby offering her a sort of redemption. This could be interpreted as supportive of traditional values.
American history shows that there has always been a certain ethos about humble origins. Lincoln born in a log cabin and all that goes with it. "Rags to riches" was a phrase originating in the 19th century. The tendency of electoral candidates to minimize the silver spoon some were born with. This is a very strong theme throughout our political and social history. But this was almost always associated with working hard and bettering yourself. Lincoln reading by candlelight to educate himself. Fast forward to the last 30 years and we are seeing that theme get mixed up with feminism in a horrible way: hard work and scholarship are now deemphasized in favor of "doing what feels good".
"Pleasantville", a movie Roger Ebert loved by the way.
1950 was the year I gradiuated from Rahway High in New Jersey. Behind me were Carl Sagan and Arthur Taylor. Sagan became the most famous astronomer in the world and Taylor the president of CBS. Rahway High was a very good public school loaded with Ivy League candidates.Barbara Jean Wolf left Rahway several years earlier at age 15 to achieve her BS degree at the U. of Chicago by age 18.
My Rahway was a world apart from Rahway today, not to mention a New Jersey that seethes with malfunction and alienation. In my immediate neighborhood the parents, almost always in bunches of two, were middle-class in a manner that was quickly changed by the Sixties. America got wealthy very quickly and the more talented elite differentiated itself by "moving up" to semi-palaces on lakes,etc. Wealth became much more conspicuous.But for a short while my little paradise blended lawyers and doctors, as well as businessmen, together in a temporary stasis as America's economic engine revved up.
Dysfunction only began with James Dean and Marlin Brando. The Civil Rights movement won and the dysfunction narrative gradually yet inexorably gained control of minds. Liberalism, while denying the reality of shame, shamelessly played on the guilt of average Americans for whom racism became a legacy of disaster.Liberalism gradually stripped Americans of their pride and dignity by glorifying garbage in art and music while praising endlessly the depravities of the underclass.Christianity, the soul of America, was degraded by the pagan leftists of The Greening of America. Beckett's Waiting for Godot spoke volumes about the growing effects of secularism.
Still, even by 1960 most Americans wished to "move up the ladder" by not only improving their wealth but improving their character. Wealth, however, helped shape a culture that evolved into emptiness. Godot did indeed return as a demon who erodes all higher values.In the name of liberalism our tolerance grew great enough to tolerate evil. To be criminal became respectable as the arts glorified violence and depravity.Pop culture became a cesspool that now treats porn as mainstream art. Why not? No standards are real in the post-modern arena of subjectivity. Even modern science is the enemy of a liberalism that denies the fundamental assumption of science that the universe is uniform. The absolutes of liberalism-freedom and tolerance, are the gateways to Armageddon.
"Good for you."
Thank you.
"I'm more proud of the things I myself actually earned."
So what? I'm proud that my country put a man on the moon but it has nothing to do with my point about privilege.
"Though I think what sabril means is that being privileged shouldn't be considered a bad thing (which goes without saying in non-liberal twilight zone)."
Essentially yes. Dave's response is basically a subtle shaming tactic in which he insinuates that I (sabril) am more concerned with unearned advantages than earned ones.
Hey, like Obama said in 1990: the suburbs (i.e. white people) are boring.
@ Anonymous:
Surprisingly I had never heard of that particular (and rather illustrative) slip-up from Obama. I'm shocked this was never really covered, especially in the reactionary sphere. Here's the full quote for anyone interested:
"I'm not interested in the suburbs. The suburbs bore me. And I'm not interested in isolating myself," Obama told the Associated Press in an April 1990 story. "I feel good when I'm engaged in what I think are the core issues of the society, and those core issues to me are what's happening to poor folks in this society."
Anyone want to guess who "poor folks", ostensibly not from the "boring suburbs", really refers to?
"Anyone want to guess who 'poor folks', ostensibly not from the 'boring suburbs', really refers to?"
Yes, it's kinda like how "urban" has become a code word for "black."
Anyway, at a societal or community level, boring is usually good.
"Anyway, at a societal or community level, boring is usually good."
Yup. While I won't deny artists always probably were less stable than average, they didn't glorify dysfunction. Cultural Marxism maybe.
There's a reason 'May you live in interesting times' is a curse.
Good for you. I'm more proud of the things I myself actually earned.
Doesn't that just make a you a pussy for not giving up what you haven't earned and then earning it? How about re-earning what you already have just to prove to all of those silver spoon motherfuckers like Sabril that there was no element of privlege involved?
I hope you are proud of yourself for that retarded comment. Stupid is, as stupid does.
While we're on this general subject, why is it that when the left talks about the cities being centers of creativity and light they never include such cities as Detroit, Camden, or Newark? Surely these cities, too, are products of liberal belief and policy, indeed the ultimate product. The plain fact is that there are basically only two types of liberal cities in America; Detroit/E. LA, and those on their way to becoming Detroit/E. LA, or, well that's pretty much it except for a few place like San Francisco where they have managed to build a system of economic apartheid, or a few places like Minneapolis or Seattle where "diversity" just really hasn't reached yet. (And what these bastions of SWPLers create isn't much to brag about, and virtually none of it will be remembered 5 minutes, much less 5 years, after it was created. )
So, kiddies, the tactic of the day: "Say, Mr. Liberal, why is it that you don't include Detroit, Camden and Newark in you list of liberal urban creativity? No, seriously."
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