Kultursmog
Thursday September 21, 2006
In a small e-mail group I'm involved in, we started talking last night about the new Sony kids movie "Open Season." One of our number is a film critic, and got an advance preview. She said the thing was so...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Sometimes, heading for the hills sounds pretty good. Then I remember: there are no hills in southwest Florida.>
Things could be worse. For example, those puerile cretins from "Jackass" could come out with another movie twice as repulsive, corrosive and assaultive of human dignity as the first -- one millions of impressionable young people would line up to soak in multiple times.
Oh, wait.
http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/jackassnumbertwo.html
Kultursmog? More like Kulturtod>
Kultursmog is a sound concept. I enjoy watching football, as does my 14-year-old son, but we have trouble watching it on television due to the interspersed advertisements for the network s amoral reality shows, immoral sit-coms and despicable dramas. And when we listen on the radio we have to put up with the enhancement drug ads at most breaks. And I have to go through the Sunday comics with a Sharpie before turning them over to my 11-year-old. Giving up football would be my equivalent to heading to the hills, and I might have to do so.>
This ties in with an earlier point of yours, Rod; the social conservatives have lost the Culture Wars, so they vote Republican because that's the best offer they have...take it or leave it. But winning any number of elections won't get the smutty advice columns off the funny pages. Nor will it bring back children's cinema without fart jokes. It's over...>
like the whole culture lives under fluorescent light
What a great line.>
[rhetorical] Has it occured to anyone that culture is something that should be determined using social processes, and not litigation?[/rh] Yeah, that's another way to complain about attempts to "legislate morality", but I'm quite willing to stipulate the problems with that and focus on the controls we do have, but don't use.
Get together with like-minded people, and send a petition to [fill-in-the-blank]. A letter to the editor, signed by a couple dozen or more parents, could easily get that Dear Abby cra... uh, stuff moved off the comics page. The Philadelphia Inquirer moved it ages ago, though I don't know if it was from any pressure. The Inquy comics pages are very family-friendly.
The internet is a great equalizer. Some patience and concentration could net you hundreds or even thousands of like-minded people, and with a couple of well-placed nudges could get significant media coverage, at least enough to put TV and radio sports broadcasts on notice that pre-teens don't really want to buy Viagra. Just remember, those ads pay the salaries of the producers of the show. Sometimes, they just get the demographics wrong... or at least you'll find out that they really don't care. That makes any sort of boycott that much more satisfying, if not much more effective.]]> 2006-09-22T11:52:08-05:00 bmj bjanaszek@gmail.com http://anklebiter.net/log 209.195.134.186
I often cringe when I hear some Christians talk about engagement, but there's something to it. We need to be in the world, doing things the right way.>
That too, Franklin. The fact is, the law's a teacher in cultural matters, too. If you try to change the culture without changing the law, you're doomed to failure.>
I know pretty much how you feel, Rod, although I'm not yet a parent. I've argued long and hard for engaging the culture, but nowadays there are days -- heck, sometimes there are whole weeks and months -- when I'd much rather just climb on that ark myself.>
"But we can't withdraw, we have to engage the culture!" an Evangelical friend said to me today.
The Catholic church has been beating to the same drum over the last 40 years in "engaging the modern world". The sad thing is that only the strongest, obstinate and wisest people are able to take this on. The vast majority of people just end up being absorbed in to it.
For the sake of our children, I wish more families would withdraw and focus on building our own communities.>
Tom,
I prefer to see it as a process similar to the evolution of language. Usage often contradicts the rules of usage, just as culture can and will contradict the existing laws. Eventually, the rules/laws catch up to the usage/culture, because that's the way the people want it.
I am cognizant of the implied consensus in culture in my premise, and that in many areas that consensus just doesn't exist. I consider that to be the strength of the process. Energy comes from conflict. If we were complacent and happy, we'd also be stagnant and boring. YMMV, of course.>
Elderly prude that I am, may I suggest that terms like "dry-humping" and "freakin'" don't really help?>
"The Catholic church has been beating to the same drum over the last 40 years in "engaging the modern world". The sad thing is that only the strongest, obstinate and wisest people are able to take this on. The vast majority of people just end up being absorbed in to it." - Lorenz
This is so, so true! Of course, we all think we're exceptions to the rule. I was just thinking this today when the guy on conservative talk radio was talking about how great "Grey's Anatomy" is - hello! We can't keep consuming this stuff and think we're good conservatives because we vote republican!
Last night I was watching a g rated documentary on desert glass in Egypt w/my 2 sons and a commercial came on for a medication. One of the listed side effects was "reduced semen production". Like the "erection lasting more than 4 hours" wasn't enough. I'm no prude, but it's just an ongoing coarsening of our lives.>
I hear ya, Rebecca. I was watching ABC's World News the other day, and there was a promo for the season opener of "Grey's Anatomy." Very quick commercial. The quote they had from the episode was "Oops, I lost my panties."
There's a reason why we have the TV off in our house most of the time.
My kid Matthew was reading a Popular Science magazine a couple of weeks ago, and asked me, "Dad, what's erectile dysfunction?" It hadn't occurred to me that Viagra ads would be in Popular Science, but that just shows how stupid I am.>
http://www.reason.com/links/links092206.shtml
Here is an interview by Nick Gillespie with the editor of Wired about The Long Tail theory. You can read it if you want, or not, but its a good example of why I think allot of this paranoia is over pretty small peanuts.>
I was feeling a bit overloaded with extracurricular activities when my Pastor asked me to come back and teach CCD again this year. I was prepared to tell him no when he said "We are living in a pagan country, and sometimes the only time these kids hear about God and morality is the 1.5 hours a week that we have them in class. If you want to help them learn the truth, this is the place."
Can we overcome all of the filth these kids are subjected to? I don't know, but we have to start somewhere.>
Is "pagan" automatically bad?>
Mr. Dreher:
"My kid Matthew was reading a Popular Science magazine a couple of weeks ago, and asked me, "Dad, what's erectile dysfunction?" It hadn't occurred to me that Viagra ads would be in Popular Science, but that just shows how stupid I am."
Of course, but it's not the only thing that does so.>
Michael,
It depends on who you ask.>
Franklin,
That article you linked to bothers me. Pagans are allowed to express themselves as much as Christians, Jews, or anyone else. Freedom of religion has to apply to minority religions or it's no freedom at all. The pagans in the article dress flamboyantly but that's not what this thread is about.
I'm Orthodox now, but for a long time the only religious people I knew were neo-pagans so I'm sensitive towards the hostility they face. I guess that article hit a nerve.>
Tony,
You'd not have seen that article if I hadn't been directly affiliated with the sponsoring organization of the event under question in the article. The point of the event is to educate the public concerning the realities of paganism; the citizens who complained in the council meeting are precisely the point -- they expressed the lies that their upbringing and/or religious indoctrination prompted them to express. Just on that basis, the event in that city was a rousing success; you have now documented evidence of the intolerance and its roots.>
Thanks for the clarification, Franklin. It seems there are two senses of "paganism" here. There's the conscious paganism which is depicted in the article you posted, and the oblivious paganism that Western culture is sinking into as it floats away from the moorings of its Christian heritage. IMO it's the latter, often indulged by professing Christians, that leads to the ubiquity of the Jerry Springer school of debasement-as-celebrity, which is definitely part of Rod's Kultursmog.>
Tony,
Thanks for clarifying your position. It leads me to ask:
How does "oblivious paganism" fit in with the spiritual and philosophical systems of thought as represented by myself and others who self-apply the label of "pagan"? Isn't this just a perjorative throwaway that implies the "conscious paganism" you cite?
I'm not assuming bad intentions in your usage. I am suggesting some semantic discipline be attempted. I will hasten to add that I can also be accused, at times, of lack of semantic discipline, so don't think I'm looking for any moral high ground with my criticism. :)>
Franklin,
(I've been away from computers for a few days, not ignoring you)
How does "oblivious paganism" fit in with the spiritual and philosophical systems of thought as represented by myself and others who self-apply the label of "pagan"?
I don't think it does. Neither of these "paganisms" looks very much like, say, Roman religion of the first century AD.
In your case, it's a sincere effort to reproduce "that old time religion" based on what are really very sketchy outlines of what it looked like. (Obviously a vast oversimplification but the best I can do in 10 minutes or less.)
In the case of the cultural sludge, I use the word "pagan" as convenient shorthand for a slipping back into the worship of things that aren't really gods or Gods, but which play that role in people's lives, almost always unconsciously. I most certainly do not consider myself exempt from this phenomenon.>
Okay, I guess I have more to add. When a church official says "we live in a pagan society" I suspect we'd agree he's not claiming that American society is dominated by those following Wicca or otheer neo-pagan faiths...rather, my interpretation of such a comment involves something like my second definition above.>
Tony,
Interesting analysis, and one that will occupy my thoughts for a while (this is a Good Thing).
Just to clarify (not knowing the full extent of your familiarity with modern paganisms), your "vast" oversimplification is really a good start, in that it informs the bulk of the paganisms at least at the core (for solitaries like myself, who have no "indigenous" tradition from which to draw) as well as in the main (such as the reconstructionists, from Romano-Hellenists and Egyptianists, to more focused ones like Celtic and Norse). Just so you know, I happen to be outside even that mainstream, though I do have a strong affinity for portions of it (Celtic, mostly).
Those who are most serious about it are most sensitive to the paltry hard evidence of the past traditions, especially Celtic. There are plenty of open eyes about whether it is fitting to claim any kind of accuracy, let alone direct descent.>
Ah, one more thing for me as well.
What you see as "slippage" I, and many of my siblings-in-faith, see as "slipping" the bonds of dogma, freeing our minds and hearts to explore the spirit world without what many of us consider arbitrary restrictions. :)>
What you see as "slippage" I, and many of my siblings-in-faith, see as "slipping" the bonds of dogma, freeing our minds and hearts to explore the spirit world without what many of us consider arbitrary restrictions.
Franklin, I think that's the most succinct summary of what the "culture wars" are all about I've ever heard! Blessed be, my friend...we disagree on some basic things but that shouldn't make us enemies. (And I mean "we" in a larger sense, not just the two of us.)>
I'm glad that Noah didn't decide to stick around and engage the culture when the rain got heavy, and instead climbed aboard his ark
That story always cracks me up; it shows your god to be totally insane. He makes man, man behaves to spec, this makes your god go genocide crazy and he kills everyone save one family (that I assume incested our population back up? Well it worked for Eve and Cain) and then promises never to do it again. Until he does.
What s also funny is every generation you have grumpy old men yelling from their lawn about those damn kids and their damn rock and roll. I though Elvis and his grinding was the end? Or was it the Beatles? Or Alice Cooper? Or Iron Maiden? Or mini skirts? Or 20 Minute Workout? Or Andrew Dice Clay? Or Marilyn Manson? Or gay marriage? Or Harry Potter? Or On the Road? Or blah blah blah, if it s new version of an old thing your panties will bunch right up.
I have to admit your world-weary deep sigh of What can you do? is very refreshing; leave us in our pop culture muck your angry sky god will give us what for after we re dead. Maybe he ll let you sit on his giant shoulder as we re cast into the lake of fire and you can watch yelling Told ya so!!! >
Darnit, Tony, you've blown my cover. Here I was trying to convince M_David that I don't believe in this "culture war" nonsense... oh, well. ;)
Seriously, it takes two to tango, but only one side to insist on its way (or the highway) to make for conflict. We (general, and I'm just as guilty in some areas) forget that culture is a process, not a state, and it will stagnate and die if it rejects all attempts at modification and change.
Fight not to keep all things the same. Fight to keep the things that have long-reaching and long-term value, and embrace the rest as a part of life... or at least avoid grinding your teeth done to nubbins. ;)>
My question is, what happens when the child is too old for magic-marker blacking-out and cutting out the "naughty" articles? Sooner or later, kids are going to see the uncensored comics page and the Viagra ads. Sooner or later they are indeed going to find out what an erection is. The question is, which approach is going to be more likely to produce the result the parents want?>
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