Cookie Dough Nation (first attempt)

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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

Irony is the bridge between idealism and collaboration.

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The war on French culture was a war on artists, homosexuals, and intellectuals. Like European or Russian anti-semitic campaigns it was carried out in barely concealed code.

Generals and secret policemen hate intellectuals. High culture is an obvious target for neofascists, and in the U.S. we always have a ready supply of Babbitts to rouse. It's not quite "shoot everyone with glasses" yet; it's been sufficient so far to discredit scientists and academics.

The thrust of American business for the last 30 years has been towards cheaper and nastier things sold to more and more people with higher and higher profit margins. The failure of craft you mention is symptomatic of the way we make money here.

Science is now "junk science"; literature is for old women and sissies; art is an immoral plot carried out by suspect elites; and even good food is suspiciously Continental, even Gallic. We're on the verge.

Klosterman would make an excellent Minister for Youth Culture in a post-modern fascist state. It really doesn't matter if they're kicking people's kidneys out at the police station if I have my XBox and my Crunch Gators, does it?