6 ms·

The cultural consumption of hundreds of millions (if not a larger audience) is not silly or trivial, it is a key part of the foundations of this civilization. T

The cultural consumption of hundreds of millions (if not a larger audience) is not silly or trivial, it is a key part of the foundations of this civilization. The position of dismissing it cavalierly is a cultural indulgence for those who want to prove how serious of a person they are, which of course is the silliest cultural act mentioned here.

fullshark 3y ago
Yeah until you pay $10k+ to have your kid learn about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and you go back to dismissing it.
- dmd 3y ago
  Shakespeare was considered in his time to be bawdy, throwaway pop culture.
  - brigadier132 3y ago
    You missed the point that it's about the money spent. Unless you think paying $10k to study Shakespeare is also a good use of money.
    - defrost 3y ago
      Dunno what David Tennant paid to study Shakespeare at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland but it landed him work at the Royal Shakespeare Company and a pretty lucrative stage and film career. Being Scotland and not the US there was likely some of that socialised education helping out, so I guess that might have taken the edge off cost a bit. Still, it seems pretty worthwhile.
      - brigadier132 3y ago
        Bringing up any celebrity to prove a point that something is worth spending absurd amounts of money to study seems silly. Is that the lie we sell now? Get into debt to become a movie star?
        defrost 3y ago
        Ditto Terence Tao - celebrity mathematical genius. Clearly Shakespeare and Mathematics are of value to some. Also, screw Hollywood - stage is where the challenge is, for many big movie stardom was never the goal.
        hnbad 3y ago
        Y'know, it's kinda funny that despite the commecialization and streamlining of the German university system following the EU reforms in the mid-2000s, German universities will still insist that the value of higher education is the refinement of the mind, scientific literacy and all that Humboldtian jazz whereas in US-influenced social spaces it's now apparently heretical to suggest that academic study of anything that does not directly translate to a workplace education or pay rise is not a scam. Maybe, just maybe, the problem is not that someone might think attending lectures on a TV show you don't like is a waste of time and effort but that they will have to decide between that or having an income and the only way for them to do it is "spending absurd amounts of money". Maybe, just maybe, literally no degree is worth "spending absurd amounts of money" and the primary function of degrees in the economy is literal virtue signaling (i.e. demonstrating endurance) and networking (or compensating for a lack of social capital if your family doesn't already provide you access to the right networks). Maybe education shouldn't be so heavily privatized and so absurdly expensive to begin with. Maybe privatization results in more economically useful degrees but reduces the overall quality of education as an intellectual endeavour and entices vast amounts of people to go into crippling debt to do academic busywork to get the meaningless trinket necessary to make it past job application filters.
        brigadier132 3y ago
        Less is more. If you want to make a point just make it instead of wrapping it in the bs. And if your point is that people should embrace learning outside of the confines of the education system, yes I agree. You shouldn't spend any amount of money to be taught Shakespeare. Just read Shakespeare. If you are not motivated to learn it, don't. > Maybe education shouldn't be so heavily privatized Education is not privatized. The majority of education is public and / or not for profit. The problem with education is not profits. Non profit institutions are raising the cost of education to absurd heights and it's on track to be $1 million for a 4 year degree. You can't blame capitalism for the rising cost of education as much as you'd like to. Blame the left wing administrative class.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    And if people are still discussing Buffy and Madonna 400 years from now, that might be relevant.
    - atmosx 3y ago
      Most likely they won’t be discussing either 20 years from now.
      - zie 3y ago
        Buffy ran from 1997 -> 2003. So it's been 20 years since the end of BTVS, and here we are still talking about Buffy. :). So it has at least a 20yr lifespan, maybe 40? We shall see.
      - hnbad 3y ago
        It's been over 20 years since the last episode of Buffy aired. Madonna's most relevant period was in the 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s, which was 30 years ago. Both are still considered influential and pivotal. I'm pretty sure "they" will be discussing both 20 years from now even if you haven't been discussing either in the past decades, especially if you don't have any interest in Media Studies. Even if you think Buffy had no cultural impact beyond its own fandom, it's an interesting piece for analysis if you are interested in how media changes over time. For example it represents a great specimen for the change from episodic to serialized formats (with the first season following a more typical 90s "monster of the week" format to the final season mostly forgoing episodic plots in favor of the season-long story arc). And no matter how tiring it may sound the umpteenth time: it disrupted the traditional gender roles in media at the time, an oft-cited example being the very first episode opening with a young romantic couple where the girl is revealed to be the vampire rather than the victim (an inversion of a well-established horror movie trope at the time) and unlike other media this wasn't a throwaway gag but instead part of a general attitude to gender roles throughout the show. Joss Whedon has rightfully fallen out of grace but Buffy was a collective effort of numerous show writers, cast and crew. The point never was to revel in its flawlessness (which would be absurd: even fans will spend hours explaining to you what problems the show had) but to use it as a specimen for understanding shifts in cultural attitude and genre. If you're not interested in media beyond mere consumption (which is fine, mind you) none of this likely means anything to you. You can listen to and enjoy music without having to understand the nuances of musical theory and what individual artists influenced each other's style or whatever. But if everyone was only ever interested in anything at a surface level... well, you wouldn't be here, right? It's kinda in the name.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - everybodyknows 3y ago
    Source? Queen Elizabeth took his work seriously enough: https://broadlytextual.com/2017/12/15/i-am-richard-ii-know-ye-not-that-drama-and-political-anxiety-in-shakespeares-london/ https://broadlytextual.com/2017/12/15/i-am-richard-ii-know-y...
pessimizer 3y ago
The study of it is often silly and trivial, because it generally rests on characterizing the output of a very few corporations [*] with arbitrary, associative observations, then declaring that those observations tell us something interesting about the consumers of the material i.e. everyone. This is silly. The rest is people competing on effusively praising of some obscure pocket of pop culture, with the aim of remarketing it with the academic as the (paid) authority. That's trivial. I have to say that it's a bad sign that only defenses one can come up with of an academic field of study is that it's also a part of "this civilization", and that everyone who dismisses it's importance is just trying to impress people. Which makes them even sillier than Madonna studies, I guess, because trying to impress people by not talking nonsense is actually bad and a sign of insecurity. [*] I remember when Ben Bagdikian was warning us that only 50 corporations determined the majority of what we read and watched. Now you could get the men who get a veto over most of what we see and say to fit inside a medium-sized bathroom. I resent cultural critics trying to diagnose me based on their financial incentives.
- bbatha 3y ago
  First by providing a lighter course subject these courses are often a fun intro to the field of study that can get students more interested in more traditional subjects in the field. Secondly, Limited cultural centers is exactly a reason to study it because everything is controlled by those corporations and it’s impossible to understand modern society without it. Should we throw away most of the masterworks of the renaissance because they were funded by the Medicis? Should we throw away medieval European art because of influence by Catholicism? Even though those corporations control everything individual artists still have voices even if it’s mediated by power structures. If say in a hundred years a professor wanted to offer a course covering the late 20th century and early 21st century culture not including artifacts produced by those corporations would be incomplete at best. An analysis of modern culture needs to start somewhere and why not something like Madonna or Buffy that students can personally connect with? Now I’m fully sympathetic to arguments stating it’s too modern to have that objective eye since our analysis will be rooted in the same cultural frame that’s mediated by extreme corporate power. But even that has value.
atmosx 3y ago
I am not sure that “wait, wait… don’t tell me” (a 50s radio show) had more impact than Hanna Arendt because of show’s popularity. In 200 BC leaflets with Alexander the Great gossip stories were heavily requested and consumed. I don’t believe they affected western civilization as much as Euclidean geometry. Broadly speaking pop culture has a short lifespan. Does not seem to be that interesting or impactful in the long run. For example we have many articles complaining that we live in an era of incredible artistic ugliness where most works of art produced will hardly endure 50 years. They might be wrong (although I see where they are coming from, contemporary arts currency is shock not awe or beauty, it is a byproduct of the post modernist, high-tech society). On the other hand, po culture surely helps to explain many aspects of the current civilization and problems of the day. Are these problems interesting? Maybe, to the extend that is interesting to know how they made tea in China 1200 years ago or who would be the Emperor’s wife.
- tzs 3y ago
  > I am not sure that “wait, wait… don’t tell me” (a 50s radio show) Are you sure that's the show you are thinking of? The only show with that name I can find is from 1998-present [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Wait..._Don%27t_Tell_Me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Wait..._Don%27t_Tell_Me!
- pvg 3y ago
  Pop culture doesn't just concern itself with the trivial and there's plenty of high culture is long-surviving pop culture. Alexander gossip? We've got that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Romance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Romance More recent previous pop culture - Shakespeare, Dickens.
  - atmosx 3y ago
    That is true. The fact that something is popular doesn't say much about quality. I stand by my point though: Euclidian geometry affected our civilisation more than Alexander novels. ps. I have a hard time putting these authors next to Buffy and Madonna. Maybe I'm wrong, time will tell I guess.
- 3y ago

fullshark 3y ago

Yeah until you pay $10k+ to have your kid learn about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and you go back to dismissing it.

dmd 3y ago
Shakespeare was considered in his time to be bawdy, throwaway pop culture.
- brigadier132 3y ago
  You missed the point that it's about the money spent. Unless you think paying $10k to study Shakespeare is also a good use of money.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Dunno what David Tennant paid to study Shakespeare at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland but it landed him work at the Royal Shakespeare Company and a pretty lucrative stage and film career. Being Scotland and not the US there was likely some of that socialised education helping out, so I guess that might have taken the edge off cost a bit. Still, it seems pretty worthwhile.
    - brigadier132 3y ago
      Bringing up any celebrity to prove a point that something is worth spending absurd amounts of money to study seems silly. Is that the lie we sell now? Get into debt to become a movie star?
      - defrost 3y ago
        Ditto Terence Tao - celebrity mathematical genius. Clearly Shakespeare and Mathematics are of value to some. Also, screw Hollywood - stage is where the challenge is, for many big movie stardom was never the goal.
      - hnbad 3y ago
        Y'know, it's kinda funny that despite the commecialization and streamlining of the German university system following the EU reforms in the mid-2000s, German universities will still insist that the value of higher education is the refinement of the mind, scientific literacy and all that Humboldtian jazz whereas in US-influenced social spaces it's now apparently heretical to suggest that academic study of anything that does not directly translate to a workplace education or pay rise is not a scam. Maybe, just maybe, the problem is not that someone might think attending lectures on a TV show you don't like is a waste of time and effort but that they will have to decide between that or having an income and the only way for them to do it is "spending absurd amounts of money". Maybe, just maybe, literally no degree is worth "spending absurd amounts of money" and the primary function of degrees in the economy is literal virtue signaling (i.e. demonstrating endurance) and networking (or compensating for a lack of social capital if your family doesn't already provide you access to the right networks). Maybe education shouldn't be so heavily privatized and so absurdly expensive to begin with. Maybe privatization results in more economically useful degrees but reduces the overall quality of education as an intellectual endeavour and entices vast amounts of people to go into crippling debt to do academic busywork to get the meaningless trinket necessary to make it past job application filters.
        brigadier132 3y ago
        Less is more. If you want to make a point just make it instead of wrapping it in the bs. And if your point is that people should embrace learning outside of the confines of the education system, yes I agree. You shouldn't spend any amount of money to be taught Shakespeare. Just read Shakespeare. If you are not motivated to learn it, don't. > Maybe education shouldn't be so heavily privatized Education is not privatized. The majority of education is public and / or not for profit. The problem with education is not profits. Non profit institutions are raising the cost of education to absurd heights and it's on track to be $1 million for a 4 year degree. You can't blame capitalism for the rising cost of education as much as you'd like to. Blame the left wing administrative class.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  And if people are still discussing Buffy and Madonna 400 years from now, that might be relevant.
  - atmosx 3y ago
    Most likely they won’t be discussing either 20 years from now.
    - zie 3y ago
      Buffy ran from 1997 -> 2003. So it's been 20 years since the end of BTVS, and here we are still talking about Buffy. :). So it has at least a 20yr lifespan, maybe 40? We shall see.
    - hnbad 3y ago
      It's been over 20 years since the last episode of Buffy aired. Madonna's most relevant period was in the 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s, which was 30 years ago. Both are still considered influential and pivotal. I'm pretty sure "they" will be discussing both 20 years from now even if you haven't been discussing either in the past decades, especially if you don't have any interest in Media Studies. Even if you think Buffy had no cultural impact beyond its own fandom, it's an interesting piece for analysis if you are interested in how media changes over time. For example it represents a great specimen for the change from episodic to serialized formats (with the first season following a more typical 90s "monster of the week" format to the final season mostly forgoing episodic plots in favor of the season-long story arc). And no matter how tiring it may sound the umpteenth time: it disrupted the traditional gender roles in media at the time, an oft-cited example being the very first episode opening with a young romantic couple where the girl is revealed to be the vampire rather than the victim (an inversion of a well-established horror movie trope at the time) and unlike other media this wasn't a throwaway gag but instead part of a general attitude to gender roles throughout the show. Joss Whedon has rightfully fallen out of grace but Buffy was a collective effort of numerous show writers, cast and crew. The point never was to revel in its flawlessness (which would be absurd: even fans will spend hours explaining to you what problems the show had) but to use it as a specimen for understanding shifts in cultural attitude and genre. If you're not interested in media beyond mere consumption (which is fine, mind you) none of this likely means anything to you. You can listen to and enjoy music without having to understand the nuances of musical theory and what individual artists influenced each other's style or whatever. But if everyone was only ever interested in anything at a surface level... well, you wouldn't be here, right? It's kinda in the name.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  Source? Queen Elizabeth took his work seriously enough: https://broadlytextual.com/2017/12/15/i-am-richard-ii-know-ye-not-that-drama-and-political-anxiety-in-shakespeares-london/ https://broadlytextual.com/2017/12/15/i-am-richard-ii-know-y...

pessimizer 3y ago

The study of it is often silly and trivial, because it generally rests on characterizing the output of a very few corporations [*] with arbitrary, associative observations, then declaring that those observations tell us something interesting about the consumers of the material i.e. everyone. This is silly. The rest is people competing on effusively praising of some obscure pocket of pop culture, with the aim of remarketing it with the academic as the (paid) authority. That's trivial. I have to say that it's a bad sign that only defenses one can come up with of an academic field of study is that it's also a part of "this civilization", and that everyone who dismisses it's importance is just trying to impress people. Which makes them even sillier than Madonna studies, I guess, because trying to impress people by not talking nonsense is actually bad and a sign of insecurity. [*] I remember when Ben Bagdikian was warning us that only 50 corporations determined the majority of what we read and watched. Now you could get the men who get a veto over most of what we see and say to fit inside a medium-sized bathroom. I resent cultural critics trying to diagnose me based on their financial incentives.

bbatha 3y ago
First by providing a lighter course subject these courses are often a fun intro to the field of study that can get students more interested in more traditional subjects in the field. Secondly, Limited cultural centers is exactly a reason to study it because everything is controlled by those corporations and it’s impossible to understand modern society without it. Should we throw away most of the masterworks of the renaissance because they were funded by the Medicis? Should we throw away medieval European art because of influence by Catholicism? Even though those corporations control everything individual artists still have voices even if it’s mediated by power structures. If say in a hundred years a professor wanted to offer a course covering the late 20th century and early 21st century culture not including artifacts produced by those corporations would be incomplete at best. An analysis of modern culture needs to start somewhere and why not something like Madonna or Buffy that students can personally connect with? Now I’m fully sympathetic to arguments stating it’s too modern to have that objective eye since our analysis will be rooted in the same cultural frame that’s mediated by extreme corporate power. But even that has value.

atmosx 3y ago

I am not sure that “wait, wait… don’t tell me” (a 50s radio show) had more impact than Hanna Arendt because of show’s popularity. In 200 BC leaflets with Alexander the Great gossip stories were heavily requested and consumed. I don’t believe they affected western civilization as much as Euclidean geometry. Broadly speaking pop culture has a short lifespan. Does not seem to be that interesting or impactful in the long run. For example we have many articles complaining that we live in an era of incredible artistic ugliness where most works of art produced will hardly endure 50 years. They might be wrong (although I see where they are coming from, contemporary arts currency is shock not awe or beauty, it is a byproduct of the post modernist, high-tech society). On the other hand, po culture surely helps to explain many aspects of the current civilization and problems of the day. Are these problems interesting? Maybe, to the extend that is interesting to know how they made tea in China 1200 years ago or who would be the Emperor’s wife.

tzs 3y ago
> I am not sure that “wait, wait… don’t tell me” (a 50s radio show) Are you sure that's the show you are thinking of? The only show with that name I can find is from 1998-present [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Wait..._Don%27t_Tell_Me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Wait..._Don%27t_Tell_Me!
pvg 3y ago
Pop culture doesn't just concern itself with the trivial and there's plenty of high culture is long-surviving pop culture. Alexander gossip? We've got that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Romance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Romance More recent previous pop culture - Shakespeare, Dickens.
- atmosx 3y ago
  That is true. The fact that something is popular doesn't say much about quality. I stand by my point though: Euclidian geometry affected our civilisation more than Alexander novels. ps. I have a hard time putting these authors next to Buffy and Madonna. Maybe I'm wrong, time will tell I guess.
3y ago