Morning Ed: Life & Society {2017.08.03.Th}

Saul Degraw says:

LS1: One of the things you will notice in a lot of foreign countries is that their variants of popular culture are a lot more eclectic than ours. They have their own native cultures and stars, TV shows and movies. They have American pop culture (which is truly our greatest soft power influence and which the world largely still loves.*) But they also have a lot more culture borrowed from other countries as well. My girlfriend is Chinese from Singapore but she and her friends also know a lot of Korean pop culture, Japanese pop culture, and European pop culture. A lot of that stuff either never makes it to the United States or we just need to make our own versions like the Office.

You can see this in Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. The characters seem to have a wide-ranging stuff they read, watch, and listen to. In one scene, a guitar player goes from Classical to the Beatles to Bossa Nova. The narrator reads classic American novelists, his dormmates like to read contemporary French fiction like Boris Vian. Whether this is true or a idealized version of the 1960s chic for being high-culture is hard to say. But there is a lot of insularity in American culture except for specific examples (anime) or if you live in a large metro area with good arthouse cinemas.

That being said, something I’ve notice about our cohort is a strong attempt to redefine adulthood. I’ve seen more than one person my age declare that being an adult is about fiscal responsibility (holding down a job, paying those bills) and nothing else. My generation seems to scoff at the notion that there is such a thing as cultural vegetables and maybe putting the stuff you liked as a kid down.

LS5: I agree with your basic sentence but I think it is a lot more complicated than the article suggests (though the article is true). I’ve declared my seemingly genetically inherited love of clothing here more times than I can count. There are plenty of people from my socio-economic class of college-educated professionals who don’t give a rat’s ass about clothing. Part of the whole techie status thing is to be the opposite of the New York Wall Street guy who wears expensive suits, shirts, and shoes and just wear hoodies and t-shirts and sneakers (though this is changing somewhat but I doubt you will see techies embrace Brioni suits anytime soon.) A few years ago there was an essay written by an African-American woman who wrote how her mom was criticized by strangers for “wasting” money on nice-looking clothing; the woman disagreed and said that the clothing helped her single mom navigate the system and gain respect from middle class and above admins including social workers, education officials, etc.

I think we make too many assumptions that only rich people buy expensive clothing. It might be true enough though.

I don’t know what the solution is. A lot of expensive fashion/clothing does nothing to me but there is also a lot that I think is visually interesting and unique. Maybe it is a bit dandyish but I don’t think of a world where everyone just wears t-shirts and jeans as being more equal and free and less judgey. I think of it as
a world that is more aesthetically boring.Report