I got tagged with this meme on Tuesday. Turns out that I already answered it two months ago, and so did OGIC!
Never let it be said that we’re not on our toes around here….
Archives for 2006
TT: Uncommonly hopeful
I’m getting a lot of e-mail about this posting. So far, this is is the letter I’ve liked best:
I’m always a little amused when I catch someone–including myself–lamenting
the supposed demise of “common culture.” I think we all feel a sense of loss
when younger generations don’t recognize things we thought were important
and lasting when we were their age. But we tend to take for granted the
amazing amount that does get passed on. I’d bet, for instance, that a higher
percentage of college kids recognize “West End Blues” today than in
1978…or 1938.
I’d also bet that a very high percentage of contemporary high school kids
could recognize over half of Levitin’s list–probably way more than half if
even a little prompting was provided.
This is just anecdotal evidence, but about five years ago on a trip to the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I heard a class of black second graders on a
field trip provide perfect, spontaneous accompaniment for the Isley Brothers
“Who’s That Lady” when it came over the loudspeakers. Later the same day I
saw two twelve-year-old white girls walking along singing “Stop In The Name
of Love” and doing those old Supremes’ hand motions while they walked.
Granted those kids were in a museum, which implies that somebody cared about
passing this stuff on, but then again, most kids have SOMEBODY in their life
who fills that function. In the case of pop music, the general culture helps
out more than usual, but even in areas like literature, painting, etc. it
happens a lot more than we think.
On the other hand, if somebody actually could kill off common culture, it
would be the sort of person who is asked to explain rock and roll with six
records and uses one of his picks on “Wonderful Tonight.”
(…Though I would love to know which record or six “explained” Elvis to the
octogenarian scientist and therefore placed him well beyond the level of
collective understanding thus far obtained by three generations of rock
critics.)
Anyway, long time reader who’s never e-mailed before. It’s a fun topic so I
hope you get lots of feedback.
How nice to find a ray of hope in my mailbox!
TT: Uncommonly tuneful
How many of these songs do you know well enough to whistle?
– “All My Ex’s Live in Texas”
– “Back in Black”
– “Blowin’ in the Wind”
– “China Girl”
– “Hot Fun in the Summertime”
– “Hotel California”
– “Instant Karma”
– “Jailhouse Rock”
– “Jolene”
– “Light My Fire”
– “Maria”
– “Money”
– “My Favorite Things”
– “Over the Rainbow”
– “Roxanne”
– “Satisfaction”
– “Sheep”
– “Superstition”
– “That’ll Be the Day”
– “We Will Rock You”
No, this isn’t a test. Here’s why I’m asking: Daniel J. Levitin uses these songs as illustrations in the opening chapters of his new book This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (“For example, the main accompaniment to
TT: Almanac
“Shakespeare’s plays are works of philosophy–philosophy not argued but shown.”
Roger Scruton, Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life
TT: Stiff competition
Earlier today I sat on a rowing machine at the gym and watched with mounting amazement as the plasma TV screens above my head flashed the latest bulletins about Mark Foley and the shootings in Pennsylvania. The thought occurred to me that these must be hard times for the aspiring novelist, what with life constantly upping the ante on imagination, and no sooner did that thought flash through my mind than I found myself recalling these words of advice to the writer of fiction:
The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make them appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock–to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the blind you draw large and startling figures.
Flannery O’Connor said that–forty-nine years ago. Plus
TT: The best we can do
It occurred to me after writing this posting that I’d used the phrase “Man cannot live by masterpieces alone” in print before, so I Googled it. Sure enough, I found it in a review of Spider-Man that I published in Crisis four years ago. Some of what I wrote then is very much to the point now.
* * *
Criticism, it seems, is a risky business. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, several reviewers who panned Star Wars: Episode II–Attack of the Clones received death threats via e-mail, along with sundry other communications of somewhat lower voltage. This one caught my eye: “The mere fact that you actually get payed [sic] to write movie reviews is the last shred of proof I need to rule out the existance [sic] of God.”
Not wanting to shake anybody’s faith, I decided I could live without seeing Attack of the Clones, but I went out of my way to catch Spider-Man. The tug of nostalgia proved irresistible: I have fond memories of reading “Spider-Man” comic books as a boy. More recently, I taught a course in criticism at a large Eastern university this past year, and I was struck by how many of my students were interested in writing about today’s comics and had smart things to say about them. Having praised Ghost World last year, I figured I should give Spider-Man at least as fair a shake.
On top of all this, I felt it was time to make a preemptive strike on snobbery. The other day I gave a talk about movies to a roomful of priests, one of whom asked me if I reviewed only “highbrow” movies. Considering that I’d just showed them Comanche Station, a Randolph Scott Western, the question seemed a bit odd, but I happily explained that I liked and wrote about all kinds of movies. In fact, my guess is that I’ve spent more time watching popular movies than art films–and gotten more pleasure out of them, too….
Spider-Man is a movie to which you can safely send the kids, and even accompany them without sentencing yourself to two hours’ worth of agonized squirming. But I’d never pretend for a moment that it’s anything more than a piece of pretty good, morally unobjectionable trash, and as I left the theater, I couldn’t help but ask myself: is unobjectionable trash really the best we can hope for out of American popular culture circa 2002?
“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity,” Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, a book I judged to be a masterpiece not long after I put aside my comic books. I know better now, and I also know that there is a great deal to be said for pure frivolity. Man cannot live by masterpieces alone, not even bona fide ones.
On the other hand, take a look at this list of non-highbrow movies released a half-century ago: The African Queen, The Bad and the Beautiful, The Big Sky, Five Fingers, The Greatest Show on Earth, High Noon, Hangman’s Knot, Kansas City Confidential, The Lusty Men, Monkey Business, The Narrow Margin, Pat and Mike, The Quiet Man, Ride the Man Down, Singin’ in the Rain, and Son of Paleface. The only things these films have in common are that they were all made in Hollywood and that I happen to like them. Not one opened in an art house (though several are now regarded as classics and can be seen on museum series). If they are representative of what Americans regarded as routine movie-house fare in 1952, then what does that say about America in 2002? Nothing very good, I fear.
TT: Almanac
“An important part of every writer’s task is to use proper names judiciously. Shakespeare’s names–Ophelia, Prospero, Caliban, Portia, Bottom, Titania, Malvolio–summon character and plot, and also seem to light up regions of the human psyche, so that we can say, knowing what we mean and without other words to express it,
TT: WhoseTube? ArtsTube!
In case you missed it, The Wall Street Journal posted a free link over the weekend to my “Sightings” column about YouTube and the fine arts:
YouTube, like the other new Web-based media, is a common carrier, a means to whatever ends its millions of users choose, be they good, bad, dumb or ugly. You can use it to watch mindless junk–or some of the greatest classical and jazz musicians of the 20th century….
To read the whole thing, go here.
If you’ve followed the Journal‘s link to this site in order to check out my list of YouTube fine-arts links, go to the right-hand column and scroll down until you see Satchmo’s name.