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

[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