To my mind, a core message here is that the real enemy is politics. Not one political system versus another but politics as a whole, as a culture, as a universal viewpoint from which there is no escape.
I like him. To take one little point, he's right about the Japanese and Mt. Fuji. There's a nice line in Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North when he says that it was somehow strangely uplifting when fog at a famous viewing spot meant that he passed by on his travels without seeing Fujiyama in the distance.
Overall, the video gives a good explanation of why so much contemporary culture is dreary and formulaic. I'm currently reading Shakespeare's The Tempest, and gave up on the modern introductory essay when it started banging on about colonialism and slaves in Shakespeare's time. The play itself, of course, is magical.
But, but, 'magic' in the sense he is talking about it, has always been a big part of politics, -see Churchill, Atlee, Baldwin, Lloyd George, Thatcher. And sometimes it becomes malevolent like Hitler's Nazism, all those rallies and Strausian inspired tableaux.
And when I was a child, (excuse my hyperthymesia), circa 1960, I could already sense the encroachment of American Disney influence on my older, British cultural inheritance - The Hobbit;The Wind in the Willows; classical music and art.
It's just one kind of peoples' cultural expression attempting to 'colonize' another's (see what I did there?),culture. And the diversity zealots are so so precious about cultural appropriation yeah.
Sam - I recently read Hamlet but fortunately it was an old copy with no modern introduction. Contemporary culture is dreary and formulaic and that ought to be a weakness but as yet it doesn't appear to be.
Tammly - I'm not sure if as a child I could sense the encroachment of American Disney because I liked some American films and TV shows. I don't think we ever paid enough attention to the strengths of our own culture and how to preserve them.
3 comments:
I like him. To take one little point, he's right about the Japanese and Mt. Fuji. There's a nice line in Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North when he says that it was somehow strangely uplifting when fog at a famous viewing spot meant that he passed by on his travels without seeing Fujiyama in the distance.
Overall, the video gives a good explanation of why so much contemporary culture is dreary and formulaic. I'm currently reading Shakespeare's The Tempest, and gave up on the modern introductory essay when it started banging on about colonialism and slaves in Shakespeare's time. The play itself, of course, is magical.
But, but, 'magic' in the sense he is talking about it, has always been a big part of politics, -see Churchill, Atlee, Baldwin, Lloyd George, Thatcher. And sometimes it becomes malevolent like Hitler's Nazism, all those rallies and Strausian inspired tableaux.
And when I was a child, (excuse my hyperthymesia), circa 1960, I could already sense the encroachment of American Disney influence on my older, British cultural inheritance - The Hobbit;The Wind in the Willows; classical music and art.
It's just one kind of peoples' cultural expression attempting to 'colonize' another's (see what I did there?),culture. And the diversity zealots are so so precious about cultural appropriation yeah.
Sam - I recently read Hamlet but fortunately it was an old copy with no modern introduction. Contemporary culture is dreary and formulaic and that ought to be a weakness but as yet it doesn't appear to be.
Tammly - I'm not sure if as a child I could sense the encroachment of American Disney because I liked some American films and TV shows. I don't think we ever paid enough attention to the strengths of our own culture and how to preserve them.
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