tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post3585869947061695821..comments2023-05-27T01:53:21.676-04:00Comments on Diane L. Major: Not-TrekUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post-19145279774099127182016-08-20T12:14:47.692-04:002016-08-20T12:14:47.692-04:00Thank YOU, Jeff!
I could get off the whole humani...Thank YOU, Jeff!<br /><br />I could get off the whole humanity-philosophy thing and say there's consolation in this: the things we used to find interesting are not actually becoming any less interesting. So maybe we've got that going for us?DLMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08768285199864217885noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post-18249821976958202552016-08-20T02:21:18.876-04:002016-08-20T02:21:18.876-04:00Oh, I totally agree that there's art everywher...Oh, I totally agree that there's art everywhere. I recently discovered Zuni animal carving and Cherokee oral storytelling, and I keep a box in the basement for junk I plan to make sculpture out of. I sculpt things out of felt, I have a page of original comic-book art hanging on my office wall...I like lots of things that few people would consider high art or high culture, and I regularly make the case for their significance to the skeptical. Don't even get me started about my favorite ELO album...<br /><br />But I guess I worry that increasingly, kids don't even know that this old, difficult, wonderful stuff exists—that going to museums and slowing the heck down and just contemplating something complex (a poem, a painting, a piece of classical music) is a Thing. Now that gaming and SF and fantasy have gone mainstream, I'm concerned that the truly weird kids who would have sought refuge in them in the past now have no special place to go. I don't need high culture to dominate the world; I just want people to know it's there if and when they're ready for it.<br /><br />Thanks for such a sensible and generous response! I'm going to chew on it over the weekend...Jeffhttp://www.quidplura.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post-50575240745603451572016-08-19T08:44:27.482-04:002016-08-19T08:44:27.482-04:00But we're also the rather wonderful, horribly ...But we're also the rather wonderful, horribly stressed-out people I met last week in the Atlanta airport; up against the inexplicable, frustrated, tired, confounded at every point, and still being lovely to each other.<br /><br />We're all in this together. That may be the main reason to recall, for all the wide swath of kids who seem consumed by a morass of stupid, stupid pop culture, there's one finding something in it that inspires them to create. There's another one finding something in it to question. There are ten thinking they know better fashion, or food, or music, who are stifled by current trends and will create new ones.<br /><br />There are a crapton of nits who'll vote for Trump, too. Just as there have been a crapton of kings and peasants and merchants, through history, who didn't really *try* with life, or thought they couldn't, or shouldn't, or it never even occurred to them that life was or could be anything but what it was.<br /><br />But life has changed. And life has stayed the same. Just like we have.DLMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08768285199864217885noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post-60476761815083285482016-08-19T08:44:17.870-04:002016-08-19T08:44:17.870-04:00Hee - well, you're clearly aware I have a thin...Hee - well, you're clearly aware I have a thing about trying not to become the wistful, fist-shakey old person. It's a generational rite and right, to look at "kids today" and bewail their foolishness, but there IS, too, plenty to be said for the saturation of technology and the way that muscles proportions around.<br /><br />But I think it ends up coming down to definitions. In addition to having a thing about my old-lady-ness, I also have a thing about imagining I know much of anything - and yet, I try to know as much as I can. So I partake of the world in its many forms - in RuPaul's Drag Race, and in reading excellent books. In Trek and in PBS.<br /><br />The thing is, there are plenty of people who find anything RuPaul does to be a joke, or offensive, or silly, or simply bewildering. Yet I find the art there; am fascinated not merely by the present and future of female impersonation, but also its past, which is rich. Likewise, there are plenty of people who think there is nothing more to Trek fandom than a pack of living-at-home-with-their-parents fatties who don't have the first clue how to behave in a social setting.<br /><br />Hmm, and that last one is an example of the despairing "young people today" kind of thing that has worried folks since the beginning of the television age - or the computer age. And *that* fear has gone on for a couple generations now, but humanity remains what humanity is and always has been.<br /><br />You have a wide set of reference points, but I have a narrow one: my nieces. They *have* iDevices, and use them - but they also spend a great deal of time outside, or doing things with their brains, or unexpectedly coming up with The Best Fart Joke Ever, or just loving those they keep in their lives, and doting on a tiny, tiny, tiny little dog. They grew up without a TV in the house, sure, but even now that they carry YouTube in the palms of their hands (and, indeed, both parents have televisions, and even *cable*), there's no quashing a curious mind.<br /><br />Amongst those kids surrounding you and your teacher, there will always be curious minds.<br /><br />A third of my 'things' is the whole notion about The Dirty, Stupid Past. There's a reason that's a tag on my blog. An awful lot of people BELIEVE in "the dark ages" or think that a different educational system or the unenlightened repression of women/races/slaves means humanity itself was actually stupider in the past than it is now: which I would argue with the greatest vehemence. We live, after all, in an age where plenty of educated people might well hand us a President Trump, hairdo and all. And anyone who thinks "slavery" is (a) over, or (b) was an institution seen only in the Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, involving only African people, is wildly ignorant.<br /><br />So, I don't think you're being a wistful, fist-shakey old man, but I do think that humanity has ALWAYS been absolutely idiotic - and innovative - and horrible - and loving - and hilarious. Even the looming specter of Trump is damned funny, even as it's terrifying.<br /><br />We have tools to destroy ourselves greater than we have in the past, but the reason I can sleep at night is that WE, what we are and what we want and what we see and what we refuse to see, are constant.<br /><br />We are a wretched lot.DLMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08768285199864217885noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post-30889368031298445332016-08-19T00:10:04.778-04:002016-08-19T00:10:04.778-04:00I have a theory about this stuff, and since you an...I have a theory about this stuff, and since you and I are roughly the same age, I'd be curious for your thoughts.<br /><br />As recently as when we were growing up, and certainly for our parents' generation, popular culture was downstream from the rest of the culture. By the time we, as adolescents, got truly immersed in popular culture, we'd already been heavily influenced by other institutions—churches, synagogues, schools, community groups, grandparents who lived through the Depression and fought in wars, a more limited but smarter, stodgier media—so popular culture just became one of many competing influences in our lives, and it waxed and waned over time.<br /><br />Now, popular culture is so omnipresent, especially early in kids' lives, that the rest of our institutions and influences are now downstream from <i>it.</i> Their earliest and primary worldview is formed by movies, television, phone apps, and games, and there's so much of it that sometimes they can even ride right over the rapids of older and sometimes deeper culture. (The result is a more egalitarian culture where entertainment and art are concerned, but one that may end up to have serious losers, because a mind filled with nothing but Pokemon and Kardashians doesn't lead to a decent job.)<br /><br />This is the sense I get from living with a high school teacher, who spends every day fighting the larger, stupider culture, and from watching my nieces and nephews and friends' children. Does it ring true, or am I being a wistful, fist-shakey old man?Jeffhttp://www.quidplura.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post-42254398391259846822016-08-17T07:47:52.232-04:002016-08-17T07:47:52.232-04:00Thank you, Jeff. I actually hesitated to cite 9/11...Thank you, Jeff. I actually hesitated to cite 9/11, because it feels like there has been no shortage of blowey-up entertainment in the years since, but: yes. Collateral damage is just *inappropriate* anymore. Heedless CGI death doesn't look neato.DLMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08768285199864217885noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post-18440185896741489362016-08-16T23:42:15.398-04:002016-08-16T23:42:15.398-04:00I haven't seen the new Star Trek movie (I'...I haven't seen the new Star Trek movie (I'm not a fan of the reboots; maybe I'll catch this on cable next summer), but I appreciate this post. After September 11, after seeing city blocks crumble, after so many of my friends and family narrowly escaped but lost countless relatives, co-workers, and friends, I realized I was irreversibly <i>done</i> with cartoon carnage. As people crawl ever deeper into their fandoms and increasingly don't seek alternate moral instruction elsewhere in the culture, I have to wonder how this stuff affects the way younger people view the news, their neighbors, and the world at large.Jeffhttp://www.quidplura.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post-23349305231028365342016-08-16T08:43:41.396-04:002016-08-16T08:43:41.396-04:00Hi, Lennon! I've been a pretty big fan of the ...Hi, Lennon! I've been a pretty big fan of the whole Marvel-verse, it's well done and I do love Clarg Gregg. :) Even Jessica Jones, so different and placed so far down the economic ladder, still follows the rules. And is intriguing and well-written. Man of Steel - I dunno, was that even written? I can't recall witnessing anything like a "character" on the screen, mopey muscleboy notwithstanding. It was an ugly film and seemed to contain nothing. Poorly staged setpieces just don't do it.<br /><br />Being "of a certain age", Trek is pretty much part of my DNA. When we were kids, if we switched on the TV, options being limited, you were going to watch TOS at some point, right? When they came back with TNG by 1987, I was ready to become a fan - and I did, though looking back, TNG's smugness and the constant tendency to rape Deanna Troi just do not work for me anymore. (I seriously want a t-shirt or a bumper sticker that says, "Can we please stop raping Deanna?") But even TNG drew the line at actual cruelty, at completely pointless violence.<br /><br />DC's mindless destruction and violence not only left a bad taste in my mouth, it was DULL. Ugh, such an achingly boring movie, Man of Steel. I never even bothered with BvS, and probably will not. Life's too short.DLMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08768285199864217885noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3033598682489350651.post-3688657525570705432016-08-15T20:49:15.484-04:002016-08-15T20:49:15.484-04:00Haha, a fellow geek! :) I haven't watched th...Haha, a fellow geek! :) I haven't watched the StarTrek movie(s) but I'm a huge fan of the Marvel ones. DC... not so much, although I'm excited about the Suicide Squad, mostly to see Harley Quinn. I love me a good crazy character! I might have to peek at this Star Trek one tho just to see what you're mentioning. Lennon Farishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03570629350169504234noreply@blogger.com