essential poptimist reading

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

I was originally going to write quite a long bit about this book, but then I thought I might save that up and just ask YOU LOT if any of you have read it.

Not everything in it rings true, but the core observations (mass/pop culture is getting more cognitively demanding), and the fundamental inference (our brains WANT to be challenged) are things that everyone here will probably agree with. It's never a good thing to agree wholeheartedly with an argument/book, at least it feels wrong/uncomfortable to me, but my disagreements here are minor to trivial.

indeed the "mass/pop culture is getting more cognitively demanding" thing is so obviously true, but he actually goes into quantifiable specifics in a nice way. plus it's nice to have someone actually bloody well saying so forthrightly and in public, rather than the usual crap "going to hell in a lowest common denominator handbag"

he doesn't actually touch on music much at all (i'm going back to find that bit, cos there was something ironically slightly rockist about singles v albums he mentions) but it's still poptimism.

anyway. anyone?

Comments

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

I wrote about it (http://claps.blogspot.com/2005/05/i-had-first-heard-about-steven.html#links) at some length, back when it came out in the US last year. It's definitely worth reading, though, as I say, I think it overlooks some fairly big points, which Johnson wrote me to say was fair, but those things were sort of beyond his purview, and that he had addressed them somewhat in previous books. I also think that talking about pop being "good for you" is sort of antithetical to the purposes of pop.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

agree with a lot of what you say, and tho i'm shy of anyone who wants to talk about rapture, i'm totally with you that that is an inseparable part of pop culture - and what i referred to in the longer response up there a bit. BUT the amount of information thing in old telly is totally OTM.

repeats of old dramas are not watched so much by ppl who haven't seen them, and are usually then equated with less demanding dramas of today. someone watching repeats of dallas might do so in the same way as they'd get into a routine of watching an aussie soap, but a teen fed a diet of 24 and Lost would find it plodding and tiresome. I myself watch 70s scifi, and while I'm aware of the slow spoon-feed-the-audience pace of events i consciously make allowances for it for the enjoyment of other qualities - principally the weirdness of the stories.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

dallas vs 24 = apples vs lemons a bit surely, thrillwise? dallas was not a thriller (ok haha NOR IS 2Zzzzzzzz but that's not the point i'm making)

so what about the professionals vs 24? *sings words to professionals themetune*

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

actually i think a clearer comparison -- which makes the complexity point but maybe also somewhat undercuts johnson's optimism -- is to compare a VANGUARD thriller of today with something like (the incredibly useless) SPOOKS; that's where you really feel the draggy lameness of structure and technique (except you also have to be aware the cultural darwinism has not yet offed spooks and its ilk...

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

the success of spooks baffles me. fair point that 24 v dallas isn't a fair comparison. actually he falls down on some of his examples a few times. tho you'd be fair pushed to disagree that LotR adaptations had more main players than Star Wars, some of the characters he cites i can't even recall.

tho this is perhaps cos i am old, and i didn't actually like LotR that much

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

in the commentaries they actually said the number of LotR main players at some point and i was astonished how FEW it was! unfortunately i can't remember the number either

just doing a count-up in my head it's about 30 i think

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

try the same with Star Wars. hard to get past half that

i shall attempt 1xhomology

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

jarjar binks = legolas

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

"i'm shy of anyone who wants to talk about rapture"

Can I ask why?

A while back I got the really strong feeling that my attitude toward art was kinda religious in nature, or I guess more accurately that modern evangelical Christianity was searching for a guilt-free way of getting the feeling I get out of art, which sure is an egotistical thing to think. My blog subtitle for a long time was "we are pentecoastal" and now it's "god hates your tears." I guess I haven't thought about this very thoroughly.

[koganbot]

I browsed the book last year for about two minutes at Barnes & Noble, thought the guy was a good guy, then forgot about him totally. So I haven't read enough to know if you're treating him fairly, but your criticisms sure seem on the money, and Johnson's concept of "cognitively demanding" seems absurdly narrow. Maybe I'll post about that below. In the meantime, though, I'll respond to "talking about pop being 'good for you' is sort of antithetical to the purposes of pop." I disagree. The relationship between "fun" and "good for you" is fraught in pop, and probably always will be. It's fraught in my life, too. My posting on Poptimists contains an element of "I am engaging in moral and intellectual exploration" - like I'm an Ashlee Simpson song or something - which is "good for me" and helps me to rationalize my spending time here rather than spending it making the money that will get me out of debt. But then, engaging in moral and intellectual exploration also makes Poptimists more fun, so...

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Johnson's idea of "good for you" seems to line up pretty closely with what, say, an American newsweekly's idea of "good for you" would be; he ascribes qualities to pop that we are more familiar seeing associated with community service and playing classical music to infants. I think he's doing this pretty purposefully--he's trying to make the case for pop's value to middlebrow America, not to intellectuals--but it made me all sweary, and I think understandably so, since pop to me seems to be engaged in much more lofty pursuits than merely growing more neurons. I tend to see moral and intellectual exploration as part of the "good life" rather than being "good for you" with all its dutiful connotations (if something is good for you then not doing it is naughty and pop definitely seems naughty to me) but I guess this is splitting semantic hairs at this point. Anyway, the book's worth a read if you go into it with those caveats I think and I'll send you my copy if you want (and if you promise to ignore my notes). His analysis of TV is probably the best, but it's also the lowest-hanging fruit, I feel.

[koganbot]

Denver Public Library has the Johnson book, so I won't have to borrow yours, but thanks for the offer.

You have to understand that when I was 12 I actually conceptualized listening to Top 40 (and gritting my teeth through the songs I didn't like) as "doing my homework," i.e., trying to keep up with my peers (though if I hadn't liked any of the music, I wouldn't have stuck with it for the next 40 years).

I think part three of my book (which by the way can be borrowed from the New York Public Library, if that's near to you) can be summarized as "a little puritanism is better than no puritanism; a little puritanism is better than too much puritanism." One of the book's heroes is a Calvinist theologian.

Don't mean to break off the conversation, but I have to go listen to Mariah Carey. It will make me a better person.