The Sky is Falling!

J and I were watching Dork TV C-Span over the weekend, and there was discussion on the media and the Internet that featured Andrew Keen, the author of the book called The Cult of the Amateur:  How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture. 

Keen is no fan of cultural effects that blogs, My Space, You Tube, and other sites that allow individuals to freely post their thoughts, images, and music for all the world to see.  According to Keen, the “Web 2.0” (i.e., Social networking though the Internet) has the effect of “flattening” our culture by elevating mediocre expressions of culture to heights greater than they should be.  It’s the classic struggle between “good” culture produced by elites and “bad” culture produced by the great unwashed masses. If you’ve read Plato, Nietzsche, or just skim Keen’s book, you know that cultural expressions that reflect all that is “Good” “Noble” and True” elevates the entire culture toward “The Good.”  And when you have the opposite happening, you get away from the ideals that supposedly make your culture great.

The problem with his view is that in the U.S. we don’t have one culture.  Ours is a lovely mess of styles (derived from many culture mores) that has produced wonderful things like jazz, and absolute crap like Paris Hilton.  Since I don’t have access to Keen’s books, DVDS, iPod, or what Internet sites he bookmarks, I’m not sure what, to him, are examples of “good culture.” But if he’s saying elites are the saviors of our culture, he’s not really paying attention to what elites are producing for cultural consumption.

For every Hitchcock film playing on TV, there are four channels of home shopping, 6 to 7 so-called “reality shows,” 3 channels of “Shout TV” that passes for news, a bunch of lame sitcoms, sports, and the never-ending celeb gossip shows.  All of these programming decisions are made in part by elites so they can make money.  Although Keen knows that the profit motive is the real motivator in most elite cultural production, he’s kind of in the clouds when he makes statments like this:  “The purpose of our media and culture industries–beyond the obvious need to make money and entertain people–is to discover, nurture, and reward elite talent” (Full article HERE). 

Maybe I’m missing the point here.  Maybe Keen is really throwing darts at elites for failing to live up to their purpose because they are discovering, nuturing, and rewarding less-than-stellar talent while great bands, filmmakers, and actors are overlooked.  But where are these unknown great artists expressing their creativity?  You got it…probably on the Internet.

–PK

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5 thoughts on “The Sky is Falling!

  1. I take great pride in my “unwashed-ness.”

    There are so many truly talented people out there, the media existing before Web 2.0 just didn’t have enough room for them all.

  2. I thought he had some good points to make, but he seemed like a stuck up prig who thinks only the elite should be producing art or media in any of its forms. I don’t subscribe to that idea in any way.

  3. Hey, Paris is a product of the elite. That is not saying much about the present day elite’s taste in what is uplifting. Personally, unless there is some notariety or money attached, today’s elite couldn’t care less about what is good.

  4. And for years they have said that changing from books to tv led to a cultural crash. But, have you looked in a bookstore lately? What is the percentage of great literature or even good books to bodice rippers and bad science fiction and hack mysteries? In non-fiction, how much science and history and philosophy to how much self-help and UFO and crop circle nonsense? Have you looked at the magazine and newpaper racks? The fact is that classics are few and far between in any medium, and they always have been. Probably we had ancestors who complained about the quality of the cave paintings being produced in their day.

    And how many of what are classics today were not considered that when they were first produced? The Wizard of Oz, anyone? How many great artists starved because the elite was buying work by lesser hacks?

    When you have the cultural products abailable to the people at large, like when most people can read or when plays become movies, then more people are exposed to some level of culture than before. That the bus driver doesn’t read Proust or listen to Brahms doesn’t hurt anyone.

    The point of modern media is that each incarnation becomes open to more and more people, both as producers and audience. Good.

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