(no subject)
Two posts from me in one day? Craziness.
Found this on a meta filter thread talking about Mr. Rogers. I think everyone could benefit from reading it. Especially the part about "cool".
I don't think people realize how much of themselves they have to give to to conform to other people's expectations of them.
You know, it's quite a strange thing. The single most common adjective applied to Mister Rogers in this and other thread is the word 'creepy'?
I think I know why he strikes people as creepy. It's because his isn't at all 'cool'. There is no cynicism, no irony, no condescension in him at all. He is not simply unhip, he is ahip. And this is what people calling him creepy are picking up on.
We are conditioned to traffic in cool. You have to look cool, not look nice or distinguished or presentable, but cool. But it's all so generic. Everyone seems to have the same new haircut that no one 5 years ago had. We all have the same cynical politics.
Something about the counterculture from the 60's is still with us but it has been co-opted into a form of synchronized periodic obsolescence and mockery of that which came before. There is something fundamentally anti-intellectual about this, but I can't quite articulate it. There some element of arrogance there. Like everyone is perpetually 18.
Cool is America's code, and I really do think this is an American problem, because cool is propagated mainly though mass media, and there is no greater media saturated culture on earth than America's. Will I look cool wearing this? Will I sound cool saying this, or reading this or doing this. We're committing mass murder in other parts of the world because somebody figured out how to make violence cool and tough-talk politics cool, and then they combined the too. Swagger is cool. Cowboys and fighter jets and JDAMs and war porn are cool. So that's what we have. We are the Kingdom of Whatever.
Of course he hated ad-libbing on camera, because ad-libbing on camera is inexcusably lazy. It's what you do so you don't have to write or rehearse. Actors and comedians and musicians improvise as a way of living within a moment that is in some way artificial. A method actor may improvise because he is trying to become the character, but he isn't the character to begin with. A Jazz musician improvises because while the structure and the changes are the same, and the audience is familiar with them, the particular moment of performance is not, and that has it's own emotional context.
Mister Rogers was the same guy, so why improvise? The show wasn't about his character, it was about the kids, os you have to work out ahead of time how best to communicate with the child viewers. Everything was planned.
He talks slowly not because kids are dumb but because as studies have shown, children's brains are considerably more active than adults', and they need time to return to the original thought communicated to them after branching off in multitudinous directions.
The puppets? Puppets are good because they are considerably smaller than the human actors around them, and thus kids perceive them as safe. They look like toys. Contrast this with a giant seven foot all yellow bird, and ask yourself which inspired more nightmares.
The show is glacially paced and had the same structure with the same things happening in the same order because children respond to structure and routine is a source of comfort, particularly in children whose lives were anything but predictable.
Maybe that's what cool is - withdrawing from the context of one's life into an artificial one, in which the cool perceives itself to be somehow outside of reality, looking in and commenting on it. But this isn't insight, it's not reflecting on the world. It's standing at the edge of the world sniping into it.
Mister Rogers isn't creepy. CSI with is gruesome bloody corpses every Thursday at promptly 9:14 EST is creepy. Thirty million people looking at that and snaking on chips while they watch is creepy.
Listening to some rapper sing about his genitals and sexual conquests is creepy. Approach crowds of people and talk to them about the aroused state of your genitals, and watch how quickly you end up in a squad car. But somehow it's ok on TV because...why exactly?
Watching a war unfold on television in near real time is beyond creepy. It is obscene. You watch people screaming over their dead loved ones, and then you turn it off and go have dinner, or go to bed? No empathy, no revulsion. What the hell kind of civilization is this?
You know, I watched some 9-11 footage on youtube the other day (because I'm a masochist, apparently), and it occured to me that in the 6 years since it happened, I've never once heard anyone say "I'm sorry for those people who are so consumed by hate for people they've never met and places they've never been. What can we do to lift that burden from them?"
Because that isn't cool. That's being a pussy (or a fag if you are on FreeRepublic). There's no posture to be struck there, no pose. It's something that has to be done in earnest, and that's what's been lacking in the American culture.
Think about the Pope, entering the cell to confront his assassin. He forgave him, we all know that. But can you imagine the conversation? Can you imagine either someone being so perceptive that they can reach into a perfect stranger and expose their soul, or someone whose personality is so shallow that their emotions or ideologies are so shallow that any attempt to probe their depth displaces them entirely?
Mr. Rogers may have been the last earnest man.
Pastabagel: to add on to what you've written, which is in my view, completely correct, I will offer that there's a component of willful insensitivity, a sort of anti-emotionality to the anti-intellectualism, wherein people in this country are loathe to share openness and the acknowledgment of the beauty of community and of sharing itself. We are obsessed with our individuality to the point that being told we are just as lovable as everyone else strikes us as an affront to our privacy, and comes off as intrusive or creepy.
Many practicing people of various religions will disagree, and insist that they focus a lot of their energy on creating spaces of understanding or forgiveness, but the fact that this has not succeeded on the level of the cultural conscience has very much to do with the fact that this man, Mr Rogers, found a wonderful medium and a well-suited audience: mass media and young sensitive minds. Even those who were too media savvy to be entertained by the show took away a sense of difference from this man, I daresay.
In short, I think Dr. Phil is in now way a suitable replacement, that control over our emotions and psyches is great, but improvements to our mass sociology are far, far more difficult, and desperately needed. In that battle, MR. Rogers was not only an earnest man but a heroic one, to me. Honesty, effort and vulnerability are way underrated. Call me cheesy, but as a nice secular humanist he's a total icon to me.
I am reminded of one of my favorite aphorisms: The hardest thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing.
Pastabagel: in sum, "What's so funny 'bout peace, love, and understanding?"
And another factor in what happened: We're gun-shy and suspicious of sincerity. We want our interactions all manufactured and scripted and clean and we generally just don't want to get involved. We see sincerity as a particularly slimy cover for forthcoming abuse &/or manipulation, and collectively we do not often show or admit to weakness, fear or vulnerability and we don't deal well with it when others do. And this why we find Mr. Rogers creepy now.
Sincerity and concern: this is something people fake when they want something from you. So somewhere underneath we wonder what it is that Mr. Rogers really wants.
Weakness and vulnerability: Mr. Rogers' show was built on acknowledging children's fears, their vulnerabilities, and discussing them. And well...now we expect him to be trying to take advantage somehow.
Why or how did that happen? Marketing and advertising, manufactured panic on the nightly news, the Reaganite backlash against the 60s, what? I know I'm terrible about it, myself. There's a lot bouncing around for me mentally with this but I'm not up to developing it at all.
Found this on a meta filter thread talking about Mr. Rogers. I think everyone could benefit from reading it. Especially the part about "cool".
I don't think people realize how much of themselves they have to give to to conform to other people's expectations of them.
You know, it's quite a strange thing. The single most common adjective applied to Mister Rogers in this and other thread is the word 'creepy'?
I think I know why he strikes people as creepy. It's because his isn't at all 'cool'. There is no cynicism, no irony, no condescension in him at all. He is not simply unhip, he is ahip. And this is what people calling him creepy are picking up on.
We are conditioned to traffic in cool. You have to look cool, not look nice or distinguished or presentable, but cool. But it's all so generic. Everyone seems to have the same new haircut that no one 5 years ago had. We all have the same cynical politics.
Something about the counterculture from the 60's is still with us but it has been co-opted into a form of synchronized periodic obsolescence and mockery of that which came before. There is something fundamentally anti-intellectual about this, but I can't quite articulate it. There some element of arrogance there. Like everyone is perpetually 18.
Cool is America's code, and I really do think this is an American problem, because cool is propagated mainly though mass media, and there is no greater media saturated culture on earth than America's. Will I look cool wearing this? Will I sound cool saying this, or reading this or doing this. We're committing mass murder in other parts of the world because somebody figured out how to make violence cool and tough-talk politics cool, and then they combined the too. Swagger is cool. Cowboys and fighter jets and JDAMs and war porn are cool. So that's what we have. We are the Kingdom of Whatever.
Of course he hated ad-libbing on camera, because ad-libbing on camera is inexcusably lazy. It's what you do so you don't have to write or rehearse. Actors and comedians and musicians improvise as a way of living within a moment that is in some way artificial. A method actor may improvise because he is trying to become the character, but he isn't the character to begin with. A Jazz musician improvises because while the structure and the changes are the same, and the audience is familiar with them, the particular moment of performance is not, and that has it's own emotional context.
Mister Rogers was the same guy, so why improvise? The show wasn't about his character, it was about the kids, os you have to work out ahead of time how best to communicate with the child viewers. Everything was planned.
He talks slowly not because kids are dumb but because as studies have shown, children's brains are considerably more active than adults', and they need time to return to the original thought communicated to them after branching off in multitudinous directions.
The puppets? Puppets are good because they are considerably smaller than the human actors around them, and thus kids perceive them as safe. They look like toys. Contrast this with a giant seven foot all yellow bird, and ask yourself which inspired more nightmares.
The show is glacially paced and had the same structure with the same things happening in the same order because children respond to structure and routine is a source of comfort, particularly in children whose lives were anything but predictable.
Maybe that's what cool is - withdrawing from the context of one's life into an artificial one, in which the cool perceives itself to be somehow outside of reality, looking in and commenting on it. But this isn't insight, it's not reflecting on the world. It's standing at the edge of the world sniping into it.
Mister Rogers isn't creepy. CSI with is gruesome bloody corpses every Thursday at promptly 9:14 EST is creepy. Thirty million people looking at that and snaking on chips while they watch is creepy.
Listening to some rapper sing about his genitals and sexual conquests is creepy. Approach crowds of people and talk to them about the aroused state of your genitals, and watch how quickly you end up in a squad car. But somehow it's ok on TV because...why exactly?
Watching a war unfold on television in near real time is beyond creepy. It is obscene. You watch people screaming over their dead loved ones, and then you turn it off and go have dinner, or go to bed? No empathy, no revulsion. What the hell kind of civilization is this?
You know, I watched some 9-11 footage on youtube the other day (because I'm a masochist, apparently), and it occured to me that in the 6 years since it happened, I've never once heard anyone say "I'm sorry for those people who are so consumed by hate for people they've never met and places they've never been. What can we do to lift that burden from them?"
Because that isn't cool. That's being a pussy (or a fag if you are on FreeRepublic). There's no posture to be struck there, no pose. It's something that has to be done in earnest, and that's what's been lacking in the American culture.
Think about the Pope, entering the cell to confront his assassin. He forgave him, we all know that. But can you imagine the conversation? Can you imagine either someone being so perceptive that they can reach into a perfect stranger and expose their soul, or someone whose personality is so shallow that their emotions or ideologies are so shallow that any attempt to probe their depth displaces them entirely?
Mr. Rogers may have been the last earnest man.
Pastabagel: to add on to what you've written, which is in my view, completely correct, I will offer that there's a component of willful insensitivity, a sort of anti-emotionality to the anti-intellectualism, wherein people in this country are loathe to share openness and the acknowledgment of the beauty of community and of sharing itself. We are obsessed with our individuality to the point that being told we are just as lovable as everyone else strikes us as an affront to our privacy, and comes off as intrusive or creepy.
Many practicing people of various religions will disagree, and insist that they focus a lot of their energy on creating spaces of understanding or forgiveness, but the fact that this has not succeeded on the level of the cultural conscience has very much to do with the fact that this man, Mr Rogers, found a wonderful medium and a well-suited audience: mass media and young sensitive minds. Even those who were too media savvy to be entertained by the show took away a sense of difference from this man, I daresay.
In short, I think Dr. Phil is in now way a suitable replacement, that control over our emotions and psyches is great, but improvements to our mass sociology are far, far more difficult, and desperately needed. In that battle, MR. Rogers was not only an earnest man but a heroic one, to me. Honesty, effort and vulnerability are way underrated. Call me cheesy, but as a nice secular humanist he's a total icon to me.
I am reminded of one of my favorite aphorisms: The hardest thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing.
Pastabagel: in sum, "What's so funny 'bout peace, love, and understanding?"
And another factor in what happened: We're gun-shy and suspicious of sincerity. We want our interactions all manufactured and scripted and clean and we generally just don't want to get involved. We see sincerity as a particularly slimy cover for forthcoming abuse &/or manipulation, and collectively we do not often show or admit to weakness, fear or vulnerability and we don't deal well with it when others do. And this why we find Mr. Rogers creepy now.
Sincerity and concern: this is something people fake when they want something from you. So somewhere underneath we wonder what it is that Mr. Rogers really wants.
Weakness and vulnerability: Mr. Rogers' show was built on acknowledging children's fears, their vulnerabilities, and discussing them. And well...now we expect him to be trying to take advantage somehow.
Why or how did that happen? Marketing and advertising, manufactured panic on the nightly news, the Reaganite backlash against the 60s, what? I know I'm terrible about it, myself. There's a lot bouncing around for me mentally with this but I'm not up to developing it at all.