I finished the book "Everything Bad Is Good For You" by Steven Johnson on the plane yesterday.
The thesis of the book is this. Mass Culture (large C) is in incline, not decline. Cultural critics argue that it's decline because television, videogames and movies have become more violent and filled with sex and other blah blah blah (and they have). What this book argues is that it's actually in incline because complexity has increased and thus the work a person must do to enjoy entertainment has increased. It has even begun to make us smarter, a fact which goes unnoticed because of the Flynn Effect. Basically the shift has taken place because of three things.
The first is not only that culture is more complex by following more and longer storylines but the complexity is encased in the relationships between things. It's not just that you have to solve the mystery of what the things placed into a show or videogame are a la Chekov's gun but also how they relate to one another. You have to parse what information is important to the ultimate resolution and what is not. Specifically you have to do this in (and are trained to do this by) videogames but it applies to more passive forms of culture. Producers are now "allowed" to leave more ambiguity in their programming and require the audience make narrative leaps of filling in and making assumptions which they wouldn't have to in the past.
Because all of our media is now storeable and repeatable and you can see something later which will explain something earlier instead of only vice versa. In 1970, one of the Big Three television networks aired something once and then it was gone, a movie ran once in the theater and it was gone, etc. But with the advent of VCRs and the expansion of cable (and with it, the comensurate thirst for programming to fill their shelves and schedule), media has to hold up to and can require repeat viewings. This encourages the creators to embed clues and in-jokes into the programming which you only see or get upon repeat or obsessive viewings. We've moved away from a lowest-common-denominator you had to get the first time thru to a most-repeatable ethos where you will want to watch it over and over.
A contributing factor to that is we now have a greater community to discuss our ideas via the Internet. It's now a "lean forward" culture as Steve Jobs calls it where we the viewers experience rewards for digesting close readings. Where as the likelyhood of finding someone who had even seen Star Trek in the mid-70s was low, now there are massive web message boards devoted to Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica and Survivor and so on down the line. You aren't encouraged to sit back and zone out. You tune in and join up.
An example they cite is the in-joke of Art Vandalay on Seinfeld. You wouldn't need to know Art Vandalay is a name George uses to lie in awkward social situations to enjoy the episode itself you're watching. It's just a name which could be interchangeable with anything else you could make up on the spot. But for someone who has obsessively and repeatedly watched the show, it's a nod to George's long-arcing laziness. It adds depth to his character to know he's so often a liar that he's has created a character he can lean back on when he's forced to lie. If you haven't been following Seinfeld since day one (or The Simpsons or The Wire or college basketball) there's this massive online community you can tap into right there on the Internet.
I found the book fascinating. It held a couple of keys for me which tailed back incidentally to earlier things I'd been thinking of a la a television show's later explains earlier structure.
The first was that television producers create shows like Lost specifically to obscure and leave out plot points BECAUSE that's the way people want them. To me it seemed like lazy, drawn-out storytelling (and perhaps it is) but they're doing it that way to respond to their audience. So where I might watch Lost and think "This is dumb. He's obviously dead and in a limbo-like state." other people will watch Lost and think "I think he's dead and in a limbo-like state. What are the clues which confirm that?" The Lost audience wants drawn-out storytelling they can watch closely and analyze and interface with other people about over the Internet and in-person. I won't "get" what they think is great about it not because I'm skeptical but because I'm not skeptical enough. I look at it, think "That's answer." and move on. Lost fans see it and get sucked in.
The other key was what I did just there. I didn't use the tools of defining what something is and how it interrelates to other things on a popular television show or in a videogame. I used those tools to define something and how it interrelates to other things in my life. And I'm trying to get better at those things because Life is a one-pass event like a 1970s television show. Johnson brings up the idea of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence near the end of the book in regards to how media is put together in this version of the mass culture. They try to get it right the first time because people are going to watch it over and over if it rewards them for doing so.
A couple of months back I went to brunch with some friends and we were discussing religion. I told them how my morality is based upon having to explain your actions later. I don't always get them right which is why I'm a big proponent of grace. But I'd like to think I could go back and explain my reasoning and emotional state which lead to me doing what I did and didn't do.
I'm trying to get better at the skills "Everthing Bad Is Good For You" defines not to analyze media but because Life is a one-pass event like a 1970s television show. I worry about getting Life right because it too is storeable and figuratively repeatable. I want to make the right choice the first time around because that's the one which will remain in people's memories. If I know better what the right choice is, I'm more likely to make it and to be remembered as making it.
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