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]

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.