Election 2020

[Eric the Green]

(08-16-2020, 02:33 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-16-2020, 02:05 PM)RadianMay Wrote: I agree with you that civic education is severely lacking. Everywhere I go, it does seem to me that this country is a cultural vacuum, with people equating hedonistic entertainment with culture and vacuous expression with art. I too fall prey to this mindless drivel, losing hours of a day to reading and watching these things when I could be appreciating more intellectually stimulating media.

I think all through time there is a complaint that the younger people are seeking hedonistic art, unlike the supposedly intellectually superior elders.  I tend to see it as taste.  The elders will always tut tut the young.

The young are just growing up in an uglier world.  They see the ugliness.  Their art reflects that this ugliness makes the world go round.  I would like to respect the old arts of the awakening.  People like Bob Dylan and the Beatles had a real message in their time, at least when they were not proclaiming that she loves you, yeh, yah, yah.  Today?  It is as if the young were celebrating the ugliness.  I don’t expect that this reduces their cynicism any.

But I enjoyed the yeah yeah yeahs too. It was strong music. The most significant "message" of music is always in the music. Our cerebral and often heartless and insensitive culture neglects this fact. Today's "mindless drivel" doesn't generally measure up to the best of The Beatles' "mindless drivel," because it is less musical. Cynically celebrating ugliness indeed. That is a generalization of course, as there was some rather unmusical mindless drivel put out in their time as well, as there is in all modern commercial times. And no doubt some contemporary commercial mindless drivel is pretty good.

But the proliferation of garage bands and psychedelic pop arts of their time was a virtual renaissance, just because there was so MUCH of this wonderful (even if often mindless -- message-less) drivel, and sometimes it came with mindful messages and poetry as well. Bob Dylan was judged worthy of a Nobel Prize. Whatever prizes today's rap artists get is undeserved, IMNSHO. Mostly because of the way it's delivered.