The Fundamental Things
In the latest Ricochet podcast, Mark Steyn drops by to talk with Mona Charen and Jay Nordlinger. After discussing assorted demographic, political, and fiscal apocalypses, the three wind up the segment on the state of pop culture.
Steyn mentions Nat King Cole calling up the main Capitol Records office in L.A. in the early 1960s, after helping that record label put millions of dollars into its coffers during the previous decade, only to hang up in disgust, when the receptionist answered the phone by saying, “Capitol Records — home of the Beatles!”
In retrospect, the best of the Beatles’ music has held up reasonably well, and the Beatles’ ambitions set a pretty challenging benchmark for the best of the pop musicians that followed in their wake, an era which lasted from about 1964 to, I guess, the early 1990s.
Well, other than a time out for some serious Nostalgia for the Mud during the Woodstock era.
But what happens next? After mentioning sad-looking New Hampshire kids listening to rap music while wearing baggy jeans dangling around their kneecaps, Steyn remarks on the current state of that particular genre of popular music:
Steyn: There is an absence of human feeling in these songs. It’s not just that they’re explicit. When you talk to social conservatives, they get upset because there are all these bad words in there. It’s beyond that, actually: it’s not just that there’s this word, or that word, but it’s the absence of human feeling.
Nordlinger: Of melody, of harmony, of the fundamental elements of music, except for rhythm.
Steyn: Well, you say, “fundamental.” The “fundamental things apply, as time goes by,” as Dooley Wilson sang in Casablanca. I used to think that in the end, everybody aspired to the condition of romantic love, as expressed in “As Time Goes By,” or “The Way You Look Tonight,” or “The Very Thought of You.” And I’m a bit more concerned these days that in fact, the fundamental things are not going to apply, as time goes by. And 14, 15, 16 year old girls, when they’re listening to Kesha, and listening to – there’s a song I was listening to called “Sex Room” – “Sex Room.”
Nordlinger: I can only imagine.
Steyn: You can guess what it’s about. And actually, it’s very difficult! In New York, or California, it’s murder trying to get a zoning permit to put a sex room into your house these days. So it’s also a big government issue, too. It’s a regulation issue!
Charen: I’m sure they’ll be subsidized, soon.
Steyn: And was thinking, what is that like, when that’s the song you dance to, at your first [party]? And I’m not sure that the fundamental things will apply as time goes by.
Perhaps the passage from Tom Wolfe’s Back to Blood I quoted last week explains the current state of pop culture reasonably well, when Dr. Norman Lewis, the book’s celebrity “sex therapist” and his assistant Magdalena ride in Lewis’s cigarette boat to Miami’s Columbus Day Regatta, whose polite-sounding Ralph Lauren-esque name belies the intense sex-and-drugs-and-the successor forms-of-rock & roll on display for all participants to see.
After witnessing a particularly lurid orgiastic moment, Magdalena decides she’s had enough and calls it a night:
“Norman, if you want me,” she said in a tense, clipped voice, “I’ll be in the boat, trying to get some sleep.”
“Sleep?” said Norman in the voice that said, “How can you even think of such a thing?” Nevertheless, he was at last focusing upon her. He spoke sternly. “Now, listen to me. Tonight is an obligatory all-nighter. All night is what this experience is all about! If you keep your eyes open, you will witness things you never thought possible. You will have a picture of mankind with all the rules removed. You will see Man’s behavior at the level of bonobos and baboons. And that’s where Man is headed! You will see the future out here in the middle of nowhere! You will have an extraordinary preview of the looming un-human, thoroughly animal, fate of Man! Believe me, treating porn addicts is not a narrow psychiatric specialty. It’s essential to any society’s bulwark against degeneracy and self-destruction. And to me, it’s not enough to gather data by listening to patients describe their lives. These people are weak and not very analytical. Otherwise they wouldn’t let these things happen to themselves. We have to see with our own eyes. And that’s why I’m willing to stay up all night—to get to know these wretched souls from the inside out.”
Jesu Cristo… this was the thickest wall of theory she had ever heard Norman concoct! An impenetrable fort!… and an inimitable pulling the rug out from under any critic.
She gave up. What use was it to argue with him? There was nothing to be done about it.
Well, what can be done about it? At Big Hollywood, Kurt Schlichter writes, “Ignore Lena Dunham’s ‘Girls’ at Your Own Peril, Conservatives” — it’s yet another cultural reset masquerading as a TV show brought to you by the Time-Warner-CNN-HBO media empire:
Completing the “rub the conservatives the wrong way” trifecta is the fact that the liberal press loves the show and fawns over Dunham with such slobbering devotion you’d think she was Obama himself. So, why should conservatives want any part of this?
Great question.
The answer, if the fact that the show can be pretty amusing isn’t reason enough for you, is that conservatives need to be a part of big cultural events if they want to be a part of culture at large. But that begs the questions of why we conservatives would even want to be part of the culture at large. It’s a cesspool. And there’s an answer for that too – so we can participate in changing it.
Look, if you were as surprised as I was that Mitt Romney lost in November, then you were likely also making the mistake of staying within your comfort zone, within a world purely of the friendly media. It’s comfortable within the conservative media – it speaks to us and it doesn’t insult us. It’s nice. It’s also, like every other human endeavor, subject to developing into a closed loop echo chamber. We all need to figuratively follow the example of Breitbart News’ Ben Shapiro and figuratively face down the figurative Piers Morgans in our lives and figuratively kick their butts.
You can watch nothing but ABC Family (assuming that’s still a thing – is it still a thing?) and you may never again see anything that will offend or annoy or bother you. But by not participating, you miss the larger discussions that pop cultural events outside your safety sphere spawn. You cede the culture to the liberals, and we’ve seen how that’s played out.
And then what happens? Well, look to England, the nation that brought you both the Beatles and Jimmy Saville, for a glimpse of our own pathetic future. It won’t be pretty.
Ed, you always write some of the best articles here, but I must bring up a couple points:
1. While there has certainly been a cultural decline, I would warn against painting too rosy a picture of the past. We look back now with incredulity but, for example, the very term “rock and roll” means sex. Classics like Casablanca, the film that made “As Time Goes By” a standard, featured some strong sexual overtones for its time. Likewise, in regard to Casablanca, this is the same period that had people freaking out over the use of “damn” in Gone With The Wind and violence in The Outlaw. The objectification of sex, violence, and language has always been an ongoing battle – one that has gotten progressively worse over the years. Mind you, I love old music and old movies, but I would never mistake romance as the active ingredient of the greatest movies and music of the 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s.
Some have argued that Romney’s loss was a wake-up call that politics was downhill of culture, but I would argue that our culture is a reflection of our society. When it comes to dating the origin of that downfall, I suppose its anybody’s guess, though I’d argue for, well, various aspects of the Enlightenment. (I say this on the basis that morality comes from religion and many VIPs in the Enlightenment and its aftershock were key figures in watering down religion. After all, one of the primary Christian beliefs that suffered was the concept of original sin, which required personal restraint, shifting into a belief of innate human goodness where the objective was not to focus on one’s own family, but to improve society as a whole to a blissful utopia free of inhibition.)
2. While I’m sure you might find that estimation absurd, let me ask this: How does one affect cultural change? I ask this a lot and I get a lot of flak for it, but if we were to refer to culture as music, television, and film, these are aspects of American culture that are deeply rooted and not easily changed. You think environmentalists had a hard time convincing people to get rid of their cars, try getting people to not watch TV for a week! TV programs are maintained on the basis of viewership, much like music and films, right? While those who tune out of these are accused of burying their heads in the sand, they are the ones making some effect.
What else could there be done? Complain about existing programming? That never works and only serves to make enemies. Create a separate conservative culture? That would require major investing that, frankly, is never going to happen. Every once in a while we get good conservative programming (TV, music, film, what have you), but they are few and far between. Still, it is worth noting that the signs are there that the American people are not as happy. The music industry no longer campaigns their artists on the basis of albums, television execs are fighting option companies like Netflix, and the film industry is grabbing onto 3d films largely to drive up ticket prices to make a profit from otherwise poor box-office results. RedLetterMedia makes a good point on this, noting that the recent trend of remake overload is largely due to vain attempts to lure an increasingly apathetic audience to the theater.
I agree that Shapiro held his own well, but does anyone honestly believe that Shapiro changed anybody’s mind as a result of that debate? Going onto Morgan’s show was no more likely to affect opinion than Nixon slamming Kennedy in the presidential debate (or Romney slamming Obama in their debate, for that matter). If there is going to be any sort of change it will have to happen at the most basic level: the family. Trouble is, we have become a nation that no longer respects the concept of a families. But, if more and more Americans took better stock of their own families, rather than worry about others, would this act of self-restraint not hurt media profits, forcing them to shift their direction? Is that not the essence of capitalism? If you want more, buy it, if not, leave it alone.
Just a thought.
The latest trend seems to be “Coarse n’ Catchy” tunes — basically music that actually has a melody you can get into, but at the same time throws in a gratuitous f-bomb or graphic sex reference or two, just to show the kids that while the melody may sound like something 40-or-so years old, the performer is still ‘edgy’.
Cee Lo Green pretty much has made a career the past two-plus years off this strategy, and while it works for him now, long term my guess is he’s going to be stuck singing the G-rated version of the song more often than not, since the yutes of today listening to him probably won’t want their kids singing along to the original version a few years from now.
I got rid of my television. What does that make me?
LOL – I haven’t gone that far, but I have ditched cable and simply buy seasons of things that interest me. Honestly, I find reading the classics or (religious fundamentalist alert!) studying the Bible to be a more enjoyable use of my limited free time.
I never expected to become an old fuddy-duddy so quickly – I’m only 35! But unlike a lot of my generation, I married at 20 and became a parent at 24, so I guess I’m ahead of the curve. As the mother of 4 daughters, any of my “see how the other side lives” activities these days are about monitoring their media choices.