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

Re: HMMM THINKING ABOUT THIS A BIT HARDER

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

his "good for you" is just an antithesis to the "it's making our kids into zombies" dross. what he's actually saying is that pop culture is making our brains work harder than it did. and he's not trying to validate individual items of pop cult, and asking to say A > B bcz C, but that "as a whole" culture is becoming more demanding and complex, and that this is bcz in some aspects of culture, our BRANE demands it. the 'as a whole' is important.

the hongroidness of it hadn't escaped me, but there is something to it, but principally it is NOT a trumping value - because he's looking, and admits so, at something quite narrow. that there are other things he's not even looking at. starting with the entire "content"