uh huh
I know this is a couple of years old now, but this excerpt of a pan of Chuck Klosterman's book pretty much sums up how I feel about the...um culture of today...lately (I don't want to say "the world" because there are much larger problems with the world than Chuck Klosterman.):
"Though he claims the entire spectrum of contemporary culture-from mainstream trash to the cult margins-his aim is really to gut the avant-garde and make it safe for himself and his readers. He’s leading the gentrification of alternative culture to its most destructive stage yet, which is why he namedrops Lou Reed, Kim Deal, Guided By Voices, David Lynch, Sid and Nancy and other hallowed figures of the avant-garde-and dumps them for excessive homages to Billy Joel, GNR and Saved by the Bell. He’s aware of the avant-garde, he knows their names, but in the end, as a Populist Middle-American, as the Jimmy Stewart of college radio, he rejects it in favor of mainstream crap on the guise that his posture is both kewl and ironic, in a supposedly uncool, authentic, hick sort of way."
Not that I think any of the artists mentioned in the Lou Reed/Kim Deal (in fact, the Pixies can suck my balls) vein are particularly avant-garde, but it kind of sums up that horrible bad irony that seems to be slapped on every commercial and entertainment magazine show in the past few years.
Sometimes I think the whole Gen X thing in the 90's shamed people into not liking stuff like Billy Joel, when they secretly loved him, so they held him at some sort of ironic distance, so they could still listen to his songs while appearing cool. So the real irony is that they in fact love him while pretending not to love him.
Then, other times, I wonder why I waste my time thinking about this crap when I'll be dead in ten years (no really...have you looked around lately?)
"Though he claims the entire spectrum of contemporary culture-from mainstream trash to the cult margins-his aim is really to gut the avant-garde and make it safe for himself and his readers. He’s leading the gentrification of alternative culture to its most destructive stage yet, which is why he namedrops Lou Reed, Kim Deal, Guided By Voices, David Lynch, Sid and Nancy and other hallowed figures of the avant-garde-and dumps them for excessive homages to Billy Joel, GNR and Saved by the Bell. He’s aware of the avant-garde, he knows their names, but in the end, as a Populist Middle-American, as the Jimmy Stewart of college radio, he rejects it in favor of mainstream crap on the guise that his posture is both kewl and ironic, in a supposedly uncool, authentic, hick sort of way."
Not that I think any of the artists mentioned in the Lou Reed/Kim Deal (in fact, the Pixies can suck my balls) vein are particularly avant-garde, but it kind of sums up that horrible bad irony that seems to be slapped on every commercial and entertainment magazine show in the past few years.
Sometimes I think the whole Gen X thing in the 90's shamed people into not liking stuff like Billy Joel, when they secretly loved him, so they held him at some sort of ironic distance, so they could still listen to his songs while appearing cool. So the real irony is that they in fact love him while pretending not to love him.
Then, other times, I wonder why I waste my time thinking about this crap when I'll be dead in ten years (no really...have you looked around lately?)