William Deresiewicz has a fine Tablet piece on how the arts and modern artistic culture became so boring. It isn't even necessary to agree with the whole piece in order to savour the general thrust of it.
We’re All Bored of Culture
Anglo-Calvinist moralism has turned the American arts into something strenuously polite and deadly dull
I'm bored; you’re bored; we’re all bored. By our books and movies and television shows, the endless blandness of the Netflix queue, by our music and theater and art. Culture now is strenuously cautious, nervously polite, earnestly worthy, ploddingly obvious, and above all, dismally predictable. It never dares to stray beyond the four corners of the already known. Robert Hughes spoke of the shock of the new, his phrase for modernism in the arts. Now there’s nothing that is shocking, and nothing that is new: irresponsible, dangerous; singular, original; the child of one weird, interesting brain. Decent we have, sometimes even good: well-made, professional, passing the time. But wild, indelible, commanding us without appeal to change our lives? I don’t think we even remember what that feels like.
The article is well worth reading in full. For example this paragraph on how our tastes are reflected back at us. We know it, but sometimes in the clamour of the public arena we may forget how subtly significant this is.
The point is not that corporations have degraded popular taste. It is the opposite. The culture industry, like the junk food industry, has gotten very good at satisfying it, at reflecting back our taste to us. And with the internet, the feedback loops have gotten ever more efficient. Art is boring now, in other words, because we are boring. Art is woke because we are woke. Art is bland and unimaginative because we have landed ourselves in the lamentable position of getting exactly what we want.
6 comments:
Then read, listen to, look at, old stuff. Your Shakespeare and Austen, Rembrandt and Turner, Mozart and Beethoven are still available.
Ditto P G Wodehouse and Kingsley Amis. Heavens, your Jelly and Bix and Satch and Sid are more easily available than when I was a lad.
dearieme - that's what I do. I read very little written after WW2 apart from nonfiction. Kindle reviews of books by what were obscure authors suggest there is much more interest in older work, but how much more is difficult to judge. Amazon will know.
Thanks for that. Quite an uplifting read. It reminded me that I have indeed got lazy. Intellectually, anyway. I am trying to make the time to read more, but I thought that retirement would mean a lot more reading.
One thing I will take away from that essay is the concept of:
“the therapeutic institution,” that glob of bureaucracies—“a loose confederation of museums, universities, bureaus, foundations, publications, and endowments”—that had placed itself in charge of culture, taming art by telling us that it was “good for us”: “enriching,” redemptive, conducing both to civic virtue and to spiritual health.
I think it is growing ever larger, and has spread out from art. Health, climate, lifestyle: everyone is menacing me with their concern for my well-being.
I have this theory, which is my own, that in this world of instant communication there is now only room for one of 'the best' at at time. So, one best female pop vocalist, one best boy band, one best football team, one best actor, and so on.
This is partly due to commercial pressures, as outlined in William Deresiewicz article above, but partly because we like to know which is 'the best' because then we don't have to worry about it.
It's not helped by the explosion in 'media studies' - "a brigade of explainers, promoters, and organizational functionaries stepped forth" to help us with our artistic sensibilities. Now you might hope that so many explainers with so many opinions might destabilise our being driven towards conformity - but I rather fancy that *this* is an opportunity for AI critics to seize. "This film has been recommended by CHATGP" or some such.
An interesting article and a good, thought-provoking read - thanks! - though I feel the title lets it down somewhat: I suspect the hand of an editor, since the body of the text uses the infinitely preferable preposition ‘bored by’.
Sam - "everyone is menacing me with their concern for my well-being." Except GPs oddly enough, although it would be no surprise if they gradually shift their attention from illness to well-being. Illness is such a pain.
DJ - I wonder if there is anyone who doesn't give a wry smile whenever 'media studies' is mentioned. Not that there isn't much to study, but somehow it seems to reflect the modern world where too many people want to be wordsmiths of one kind or another.
Macheath - I agree, the title looks like the work of an editor who should have known better. I almost left it out of the blog post.
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