Cookie Dough Nation (first attempt)

[substitute]

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 1 Cor 11

Nick and I talked about culture tonight. I was still thinking about the conversation about Chuck Klosterman I'd had with threepunchstuff and we were on a similar topic: what the hell happened to culture in the last 20 years, and why are we assholes for not liking it?

I don't like:

• Junk pop culture
  
  
• "Retro" nostalgia for previous junk pop culture
  
  
• New junk pop culture made by pasting together previous junk pop culture
  
  
• Ironic references to junk pop culture made in order to at once enjoy crap and pretend you're superior to it
  
  
• The last 20 years of culture being in spasm remaking versions of itself, so that junk pop culture is now all slightly worse versions of earlier junk pop culture
  
  
• The glorification of junk pop culture as the new high art

I do like:

• High culture: Mozart, Zen gardens, Dante, Egyptian sculpture, gamelan.
  
  
• Disruptive modernist high culture: Marcel Duchamp, Jorge Luis Borges, Erik Satie, Virginia Woolf, Alfred Jarry.
  
  
• Disruptive pop culture: Bebop, Punk, New Wave film, DIY publishing, psychedelia, culture jamming, hip hop, graphic novels.

I am frustrated by a cultural environment in which many people do not want to grow up. The rallying cry of "we won't eat our vegetables!" is awfully sad. Partly because grown-ups eat their vegetables as a matter of course, but mostly because vegetables taste good if you take the trouble to try them. The Klostermans of this world hate any well-made thing, anything that demands full attention for more than a minute, anything that isn't sweet on the tongue, anything unfamiliar or challenging.

It's fine to drink chocolate milk sometimes, or put a Star Wars figurine on your desk, or listen to the horrible record you bought when you were 10. As your life's entire culture it lacks.

Last night I saw a woman of about 40 purchase cookie dough at the supermarket, eat about half of it in line, and then as we both left get into a bright yellow Tonka truck and drive away listening to A Flock of Seagulls on her car stereo. Chuck Klosterman, the post-modern irony crew, and her friends all think that's cool. I think she could do better and enjoy life more.

Note: I may continue to bore on this topic or even just rewrite this thing a few more times, because I'm not quite there. Sorry in advance.

Comments

[jeffholland.livejournal.com]

I'm not a big fan of social hierarchies, but I do enjoy structure of idea, like the Roget's Thesaurus, which showed not only relation of ideas, but almost a mystical order to the universe. Which leads me to believe that it's the post-modernists hatred of Aristotle (not undeserving) that is throwing out category and mashing everything into unrecognizable lumps of shit. And while juxtapostion and surprise are great, the spice of life maybe, all of this recombinatory mayhem is beyond the limits of enthusiasm. What's missing is a little platonic splendor. Doesn't have to be the three-eyed god of Grxxderoak.

On the other hand, a good friend of mine is a post-modern fiend. And I happen to be a fan of his out of high school loyalty.

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Aristotle... yes. Hierarchies are a big problem, but a big pail of goo is troublesome too. Babies flying out of bathwater everywhere.

As in almost all such cases of a trend gone wild, individual postmodern pastiche artists, nostalgians, and kid kulture freaks have done great stuff. As a movement it makes me ill, though.

[jeffholland.livejournal.com]

Hooligans! Miscreants!