Lacking Tangent
So, I decided it's been long enough. I want to watch The Return of the King. To refresh myself, I pulled out my dvd of The Two Towers to watch over the last two evenings. I've had the damn thing for a year. I hadn't realized I hadn't seen the movie until I was ten minutes into it. I'm quite familiar with the books having read them so many times over the last 35 years, so maybe that is why I didn't feel the lack. I think I was in 7th grade the first time I read them, and by the time I was out of junior high I'd probably read them at least five more times. I slowed down to once every year or two after that until about five years ago. I'd say this is about the longest it's been between readings.
So in the next few weeks it will be time to watch the final installment. What a treat. I'd have made more of a deal over the second movie, had I realized I hadn't watched the damn thing yet.
Despite being culturally challenged, and not having seen the last of the Lord of The Rings series, or the last installment or two of Harry Potter, nor the last HP book, the world seems to still be dysfunctioning as before.
For the Hell of it, I picked up one of my old Louis L'Amour books yesterday. I know, but I do enjoy them. This one was written 1955, and the protagonist is walking through Dodge or Kansas City after a time in the hills musing to himself, "I never saw so many things I didn't need." (Paraphrased I'm sure.)
We've had mostly shit on the retail shelves for longer than any of us have been around. Yet we, or at least I do, seem to think our race and society have recently plumbed, what were until now, undreamed of depths shallowness and depravity. Maybe not folks. Avarice, out of control materialism, facades aren't so new. We aren't even original in our defects, in either concept or execution. I do like to think that we are at least occasionally finding new territory when it comes to our more admirable qualities.
So in the next few weeks it will be time to watch the final installment. What a treat. I'd have made more of a deal over the second movie, had I realized I hadn't watched the damn thing yet.
Despite being culturally challenged, and not having seen the last of the Lord of The Rings series, or the last installment or two of Harry Potter, nor the last HP book, the world seems to still be dysfunctioning as before.
For the Hell of it, I picked up one of my old Louis L'Amour books yesterday. I know, but I do enjoy them. This one was written 1955, and the protagonist is walking through Dodge or Kansas City after a time in the hills musing to himself, "I never saw so many things I didn't need." (Paraphrased I'm sure.)
We've had mostly shit on the retail shelves for longer than any of us have been around. Yet we, or at least I do, seem to think our race and society have recently plumbed, what were until now, undreamed of depths shallowness and depravity. Maybe not folks. Avarice, out of control materialism, facades aren't so new. We aren't even original in our defects, in either concept or execution. I do like to think that we are at least occasionally finding new territory when it comes to our more admirable qualities.
3 Comments:
I've been musing on similar points lately regarding the facades, the shallowness, and the culture mash-ups. As communications have sped up and extended their reach, it seems that cultural trends have followed suit. For instance, in the 70s we had a nostalgia wave that encompassed the 50s and a little bit of the 60s. Today, the nostalgia backwash encompasses the 70s, 80s, and 90s all at the same time. Ms Spears represents 70s clothing and Dukes of Hazzard mentality with a bit of 90s musical touches thrown in.
Equally interesting/disturbing is how these trends have been translated and beamed out to the rest of the world. Cultures from Asia and Africa are amongst those embracing these trends almost as quickly as Americans. MTV and other channels as well as the Internet have sped the delivery and today there is less translation (or tweaking) to meet new cultural norms.
The effect of all of this has been a profoundly conservative movement of cultures. Not only in North America, but around the world mass communications on today's scale have translated into a strip mall world. Big box stores such as Costco and Wal-Mart can be found in many countries marketing many of the same goods. Kids in Tokyo, Australia, Germany, and Mexico are all wearing the same style of jeans and listening (and trading) the same style of dance music. The pressure to be hip and up to date, to text message your friends incessantly, to carry the cell phone, to chat online is homogenizing the world. This homogenization is what I refer to as a conservative (small "c") trend.
Is this a good thing? I don't think so. I worry that a lot of attractive differences will be lost. But, it could also be the rumblings of a middle aged man preparing to be a grumpy curmudgeon. I'm not happy with where I've seen the trends take us thus far. I'm uncomfortable with the speed of these changes. Yet, there's always hope that these changes will become more two way instead of the American hegemony paving over endlessly.
I try to read LOTR every year... it's an addiction with me.
The speed of changes bother me too, and given the way I tend to radically change my life on a regular basis I think I can say it's not purely curmudgeonly on our part. If we were moving towards things new and diverse I'd be excited. When I see someone plugged into an ipod two images come to mind. First is the inwardly focused doofuses of the 50 and 60's with their transistor radios, whom we mocked. Then we put on our Walkmans... Then I think of Matrix coppertops. Neither flattering images, and both representing a sad trend of towards a disconnected society.
There are things like E-mails and these journals which tend to broaden communication, so it is not all bad, unless overall it tends to homogenize us. I find text messaging to be a dumbing down. Using emoticons and abbreviations instead of using subtle vocabulary, and literary devices. We're well beyond point where the average Elizabethan peasant who couldn't read or write, would consider the average modern college grad to be a functionally verbal illiterate. The old language itself, is not the hard part of Shakespeare to communicate to modern audiences. The hard part is the more advanced use of language to express more comples thoughts. Modern media has made us more visual than auditory and language based. I bet many a doctoral dissertation has been written on the subject.
Technology is only one field, and I wonder if there are any others where we are actually moving forward...
Well, I just started reading The Hobbit again. I need to excape out of tech world. With more to do these days the four books will take more than a week.
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