"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture." This from Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death from 1985 is extraordinarliy prescient. We 'are' being deprived of information and reduced to dull passivity in a sea of boring irrelevance. I see it in the students I teach and I see, feel is a better word, it in myself. Agency slowly draining away. Scrolling for the next self-righteous dopamine hit. But the world is still out there waiting for us in all its craziness and wonder.
All you have to do is watch the epic scene from the 1976 film Network where Ned Beatty’s character explains how the world really works. This film was 50 years ahead of its time.
“There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.”
More prescient every day. When I want to close my ears to the incessant clang all around us, I immediately think of "We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ "
Thanks to Ted and the communities here for reminding me that there is more.
I actually wrote an article on this very speech. This speech was profound in telling us the reality of the world and the more we know this, the more we can see how corporations push culture — instead of the other way around.
Thanks to whoever wrote this, I have this speech and the “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore” monologue from this film living in my head rent free now.
As usual, terrific if chilling insight, Ted. Maybe the coming change you talk about is the tipping point for the realization that digital life isn't real. It's all a bunch of zeros and ones. One long con. Same with cryptocurrency. It's all a bunch of zeros and ones, too. A financial con. Ultimately it doesn't not matter what happens on TikTok or Instagram or whatever. It's not real, and it cannot bring meaning or wholeness to our lives. Only we can do that, with help from each other. I utterly refuse to be flattened for a nanosecond.
I feel like a great deal of our present-day hang-wringing over "Whatever shall we do about culture?" misses the big overriding truth of the problem. And that is the reflexive wedding of creative culture with commerce. Reading this article, many of its comments, and lots of other writing online, it is apparent that many can't even visualize a culture that is not validated by dollars and sales and reach and audience size. Such a seemingly unbreakable pairing will guarantee the creative morass we find ourselves in won't resolve.
Right now, the success or failure of the majority of even the most radical "resistance" art is still measured in a significant degree by its financial success. And as long as that is true, art will only continue to change colors, and won't ever be truly revolutionary like it needs to be.
I wish people would start imagining art and creativity completely separated from money. A great artist not interested in making a living at it is potentially far more revolutionary than someone whose creative audacity is still something to be sold.
"But artists work hard. Don't they deserve to be compensated for that work?" NO, THEY DON'T. The amount of work and training and effort that goes into a thing has no guaranteed relationship to what they should be compensated for it.
"Would you care to buy a pineapple?"
"That pineapple is 50 dollars!!!???"
"Well, that pineapple took me a really long time to make, and I'm the world's foremost pineapple expert, and deserve to be compensated for all the skill and craft that went into it."
"I'm going to buy this 5 dollar pineapple instead."
... and the 5 dollar pineapple industry thrives.
OR
"Here's a free pineapple for you."
"What's wrong with it? Why is it free?"
"Because I don't make pineapples for money. I drive a bus."
"This is the most delicious pineapple I've ever tasted!"
"Thanks. I've been perfecting my pineapples for decades. It's my passion."
"You should sell these!"
"Nah, I drive a bus."
... and the 5 dollar pineapple industry quakes.
As long as art is tied to money, things will only get worse in our digital connected world. The revolution will come from the genius composers, artists, writers, who have day jobs and aren't wasting energy on pounding the pavement for a check for their art.
Maybe much of the art you describe is already here but we don’t see it online? I totally agree with you here and I cannot believe no orchestra is performing the classical works of Frank Zappa.
To be fair to the orchestras, a LOT of Zappa is quite difficult to perform. His notation is usually extremely specific and needs different skills (of degree or quality) than are needed to perform Beethoven, Brahms, or even John Williams (as many orchestras now do).
A few years ago i talked about this with one of my music profs, a cellist specializing in new music and a composer himself, who performed in a local orchestral premiere. Despite his pedigree and *having those specialized skills*,, he found the music challenging and said the orchestra as a whole STRUGGLED. And he's a huge fan of Zappa!
In your example, I am not sure one excellent human being growing bomb-ass pineapples for fun is going to threaten the massive 5 dollar pineapple industry, at least not directly. In my experience, he might provide people locally with a taste of what actual pineapples are like. The people who have tried his produce might sigh wistfully as they purchase more 5 dollar pineapples, because one man is never going to meet more than a fraction of the pineapple demand. He might inspire a handful of people to grow their own pineapples, but it can take 18 months - 3 years to grow one from seed. I predict a fair few of the people who embark on that journey might decide 5 dollar pineapples are not SO bad a year or two in.
I guess what I'm saying is, time is valuable. Economic incentives are powerful. If we want nice things, it makes sense to find ways to compensate experts for their work. That being said, I'm weary of the push to make every hobby a side hustle. Some things are just fun to do and not profitable, and that's okay. You can make wildly elaborate and beautiful things if you're focused on fun and not profit/optimization. I think part of the issue is that there's been a push to "optimize" our lives, and this has leaked into how we view our leisure activities.
The optimization is tied to survival in the U.S. as America has become the worst western country to be poor in but the best to be rich. Big tech has flattened the great talent of artists and monetized it to death. There’s tons of great bands not making any money but making billions for Spotify. The elite are benefiting and squeezing every bit of value from artists making art for art’s sake bc they control “the gallery”. That being said they have also flattened the culture into thinking that content is art and creating it is something that younger folks should aspire to and can support them. That’s all a ruse they are just supporting and enriching the technocracy beyond any value that has ever existed. If all the “content” creators went on a simple strike it would be interesting to see how powerful they could be and how quickly they could tank these platforms so new ones not set up to squeeze every last dollar from them could thrive.
I quilt. There is no way anyone will pay what a handmade quilt is worth when they can get a Chinese-made one for less than fabric costs me. Of course, when the quilt wears out after 3 washings they can redo their bedroom while my quilt will last 50 years. I give my quilts away to family or for charity raffles.
That is the problem with crafted items. They last which means you aren’t buying new every couple of months or years. Who wants a dining room table that will last a couple of generations when you can redesign your dining room every 5 years when the poorly designed and manufactured stuff fails. Put crap kitchen cabinets in your kitchen so in 15 years they are ready for the trash and the kitchen can be ‘updated.’ That is our responsibility to keep the capitalist economy running.
You point out some significant flaws in my metaphor, for sure. Should have thought through that before using pineapples as my example. :-)
We live in a weirdly connected culture, where the ceiling for any individual's reach is far, far higher than at any time in history. How many people in Europe even knew who Mozart was in his lifetime? Do we ever talk today about how criminally obscure Mozart was? Why, probably less than 1% of the population had ever heard of him much less knew any of his music. He was extremely successful in his tiny circle of influence, and that style of music was such that it had to be written down, so we still have it. But consider the voluminous works of Andreas Gundersen, a musical genius on the level of Mozart who was celebrated in his lifetime. But owing to the kind of music he did, it wasn't written down, so it didn't travel, and is now lost to us. OK, so I made him up, but my point is there have been thousands of Andreas Gundersens - geniuses who lived in a world ruled by distances.
Today, the distances no longer rule us, but sheer quantity does. The Gundersens of today languish in obscurity because they can't rise above the din. And who can? Those with financial resources to do so. Companies who have a financial incentive to expose them to large audiences. Money buys reach, and reach is not the same thing as quality.
I'm an artist, I make music. I'm lucky and grateful I have a day job that is pretty intertwined with that.
Your pineapple metaphor has been something for me to think about and still is, but the whole thing feels out of touch since I'm aware of so many kinds of artists and how they go about the "pursue artist career vs work a 9-5"
Brownsville Ka (RIP) is one to check out
He was a full-time firefighter and put out his own records (sold his own CDs & vinyl) up until last year
He didn't depend on his craft to make a living, he didn't tour or do shows, just put out great records
Otem Rellik is another monster, really talented guy
He's a rapper/musician and makes his own synth instruments
When I first found him on yt, he was doing web dev full time
Now making synth instruments is his business
There are thousands of artists out here doing things their own way
Cats like that are why the underground hasn't gone anywhere, at least for me
Oh yeah, there are 1.2 gazillion of us out there. The trick is getting the culture to recognize that the future of art lies not in reach, money or audience size, but in the collective power of we 1.2 gazillions. Wishful thinking I know.
I have three albums released, and am running a monthly snail mail club. And I pay the bills with a tech job in which effort-per-dollar is much more favorable, but effort-per-satisfaction far less.
The arts and money have long been intertwined. In old Japan, they had a saying, "If you have three strings, you'll eat." There has been plenty of art for art's sake, but ever since the first story teller or musician performed and got paid with a meal, art has been part of commerce.
That’s true, but today it seems that everything has aspirations for a far wider audience than in past eras, which has resulted in a far higher percentage of works whose worth is exclusively measured in dollars earned. The proportion of artists who feel totally fulfilled in their art by only reaching a small community of people is much lower now. Everyone wants to “make it”, and equates that with riches.
Honestly, I think most folks in the visual and performing arts would like to be able to have a liveable income that's stable. It's why most have day gigs.
It's almost impossible for people to become famous, and from people I know + my own life, being self-supporting via one's art is a bit like the lyrics of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." But being self-supporting is not at all the same thing as stardom. I think most of us would be more than happy just to do what we love *and* put food on the table.
I totally agree. But I think too many of us feel less-than-fulfilled at that because we've all been trained to think you're only truly "successful" if you've been heard by (and hopefully paid by) a large number of people. Like I said earlier, Mozart's *per capita* exposure in his lifetime is dwarfed by thousands today.
Someone who lived a hundred years ago and wrote songs adored by their entire community of 400 in rural Missouri was likely to feel hugely successful, because they weren't realistically connected any wider than that. Today someone who reaches 400 people is more likely to feel like an impossibly tiny small fry because they are looking at the unmet potential of the total population, made to seem so achievable via the web.
Conversely, audiences also have availability to exponentially-larger collections of art, so the bar is raised too high for so many. To that community in Missouri, that guy's music was the best they'd ever heard because they weren't exposed to much else. But maybe by the standards of the world he wasn't all that great. So we are now holding ourselves up to the standards of the world.
The thing is, I've known people who deliberately chose to stay "small" and local per their music. One person i knew was a jazz guitarist who was pretty incredible, but he and his wife (also a musician) didn't want to pay the price demanded of them, per becoming more visible.
I can also cite two examples from DC, where i used to live. The 1st is Shirley Horn, who became internationally famous late in life. I'm glad she took those opportunities, especially b/c she chose to stay out of the limelight for several decades (family + other commitments) and never planned a comeback. It happened anyway.
The late Buck Hill (tenor sax, also from DC) was a USPS employee who turned down a gig offered to him by Lionel Hampton. He didn't want to live on the road, partly b/c he had a family. So after he retired, he was on the scene for many years. It was his choice, and he was content with it. He wasn't famous per se, but he had lots of great gigs, recording dates, etc. He was highly thought of by his peers.
And in experimental "pop" music, there's Kate Bush. After touring for her 1st album, she quit doing live shows, although she did a very limited run in London, 11 years ago now. I wouldn't be surprised if she never does another live gig. It's her choice, due to family, working at home, greatly disliking the industry, etc. Yes, she's world-famous, but I'm willing to bet that a very local career would have suited her. (She was 17 when she recorded her 1st album.) Music videos + albums are her way of getting her work out there.
Some people want fame. I think most would be far happier playing for small but appreciative audiences. The few talented people who make it are *so* outnumbered by a host of gifted musicians who play in "obscurity."
Yeah, I'm another example I think. The hedge that needs to be scaled though is for the public at large to start disentangling themselves from the whole concept of reach equaling quality. I do think that will eventually happen, but not for a long long time.
"Such a seemingly unbreakable pairing will guarantee the creative morass we find ourselves in won't resolve."
Maybe, maybe not. In a world of boring, there can be just as much a profit motive in becoming interesting. As Ted says, corporate follows culture. If the culture begins demanding distinctiveness, corporate will ultimately follow it.
Yup. One platform not mentioned was Etsy, which is no longer about artisans offering beautiful hand-crafted works of art. Etsy is forcing those kind of people off of its platform, and it's "don't let the door hit you on the way out" as Etsy makes its profit-based preference for mass-produced commoditized drek clear to anyone with the slightest of artistic bones in their body.
I cannot agree, from my POV anyway, because a great deal of this is related to where one goes and what one does.
Even on apps like TikTok, there's a surprising amount of creativity coming from young users. A visual artist friend of mine (in her 60s, like me) finds it incredibly *refreshing.* She sees work and ideas by a lot of young artists, musicians, etc. b/c she seeks it out. It's really *not* hard to find these things, but it does take some patience.
One big example of creative use: livestreamed cooking shows. Made by people from all around the world. Interested in Moroccan, South Indian or Malaysian cuisine? TikTok's got it... and the people who make these shows pass on their recipes to their audience. I feel energized by things of this kind, b/c it's individuals creating and connecting with others. A lot of RL friendships are formed that way.
Instagram is similar in. re. the visual arts, photography, etc. I mean, there are reading groups (reading good books, not trash) on FB, Insta, and even on TikTok.
At the same time, there's a flowering of book websites (not Substack, etc. blogs - websites) that shows no signs of slowing. Try lithub and go from there, with some searches. I regret to say that as far as I'm aware, music doesn't seem to be making similar gains, but since pretty much everything I listen to (and play, as an instrumentalist) is very "niche." Other kinds of niche music + more popular genres are still in the game, with people creating their own spaces.
The biggest thing about sll of this: people have to search for it, seek it out. It's not going to be served up to any of us on a plate. And alternative search engines, like Duck Duck Go (no tracking) will turn up results that Google won't, or at least, they're way back on p. 11
or 21 of search results.
We have a society that is made up of many different subgroups that often intersect and sometimes overlap. We have many subcultures within "the culture." I feel that - as ever - looking to Big Media for creativity is a huge mistake. So yes, there *is* a flattening there. But venture away from those places, and you might find far more than you imagined could exist on the internet at this time.
I see many of the same problems that Ted sees. They're very urgent. The thing is, they're not the whole megillah.
Even YouTube now has legally-uploaded live concerts and incredible archives of programs devoted to music. If you like Brazilian music, I'd suggest looking up Biscoito Fino's channel (independent label based in Rio; some really gifted musicians are on their roster) and Ensaio. Ensaio is a music show that's been around since the late 60s-early 70s. It's made on a black box stage and is like being at a private gig. There's some schlock, but very little. They've uploaded so many broadcasts that at this point, I could watch 2 of the shows back to back every night, and never get caught up with the pace of their uploads.
There's so much cultural richness available via the internet. ISTM that many of the people who are making the most of it are from non-Western countries (like Niger, Iraq, Iran, Mali, etc.) - but there's also a whole mess of great stuff in English and Spanish and Native American languages and in Hawaiian... you just have to look for it.
May the algorithms be ever in your favor. ;-) (Joking, but not really.)
* Note: can't see to edit, but b/c music I'm looking for is very "niche," and i only speak English, I'm likely not coming acrosd much of the good material that's available. It's still surprising to see what's actually out there, and it gives a very different view of the world than even the best mainstrea media can or will ever do. Not long after YouTube really took off, I found videos by an Iranian girl who had video'd some of her practice routine on a drum that was *only* played by men until maybe 20 years ago. That's definitely not true now! And yes, in Iran. And now, I'm learning to play that instrument and can take lessons. The drum was bought via the internet. The lessons: on the internet. I can't even begin to tell just how amazing that is. It's so hard to find teachers here in the US. Now, that's not an obstacle.
Your attitude matters. There’s value in experiencing cultures beyond our own, but choosing to create in a smaller language can feel isolating. Work often goes unread, and even those who should engage deeply, like editors, can be superficial.
A book club can nurture a real sense of connection, but some exist online without real membership. A new magazine might advocate for the return to print culture, yet post on social media daily. There’s an overwhelming abundance of everything out there, but is there really a community?
A lot of the time things stagnate on the internet, but that also happens out here, f2f. Many things just wither away, while some thrive - however improbable that might be.
I think we need to try, knowing things *might* fall apart, but with the hope that they might just work. But that takes time, effort, patience, as do things in the f2f world.
Useful reminder that it ain’t all bad, thank you! I guess the snag is “you just have to look for it” and when people are being daily swamped by industrial quantities of irrelevant, superficial entertainment and AI slop, it’s hard for them to free the headspace to do that. Worse, they lose the desire to do so. Our cultural libido is dying…
But I also posted (below) about practical things that can be done (like getting into the "settings" menus of many sites and apps). Tweaking privacy settings and preferences can do a *lot* to help people block out the junk.
My FB feed rarely shows me anything that I don't want to see, some ads excepted. I don't see the things that Ted wrote about. It's b/c of keeping my page private, limiting friends, finding groups that are interesting ( books, music, visual arts, sciences) and avoiding pages and people that either post junk or are red hat wearers.
So no, i don't see bad AI "art," et. But a bit of effort is required to achieve that, as with most everything else in life, no? The more one searches for truly good content, the more the algorithms will start to be tailored to one's tastes. It takes awhile, but using the "block" option really works.
I am not afraid of billionnaires, you can see their megalomaniac tendencies pretty clearly, and they may even do some good, even if by mistake. I am more afraid of the blood-thirsty millionnaires that want to become billionnaires. And even more scary the ordinary people that want to become millionnaires. Hitler was not scary per se - the amount of people willing to collaborate and enthusiastically contribute was. And that tells you something about human nature, I guess.
Jazz college suffers the same evil triplets of uniformity, standardization and predictability (and it's VERY profitable - for the colleges, at $360,000 for a 4 year degree). When I tell the youngin's that I don't transcribe (fill in name of one or two targets that everybody uses) and try to regurgitate this stuff on the bandstand and instead try to come up with my own stuff, they say oh, you're no so and so. They're right, I'm not, and neither are they. I'm me, which is good enough (and right and proper in the grand scheme of things).
In sculpture, which is inherently not 'flattened', we distinguish between 'relief' and 'in the round'. The former involves 3 dimensional carving of a surface (like a flat panel or a vase) while the latter is the truly 3D form viewable from all sides. We may need to push back on 'the flattening' with a relief revolution and a rounding revolution.
Working in sculpture is a good model for what is needed. It requires real material and skill, is typically produced in limited editions if it is not outright unique, and even editioned pieces tend to have minor variation due to human production methods.
Sculpture takes up space. It exists in relation to our bodies. It fosters empathy. It can't be swiped... It can't be AI generated whole cloth.
If we want to tune ourselves back in to real relationships with real culture, learning to properly *see* sculpture or even better, *make* it, is a great exercise.
People need to avoid the dopamine fix through self-discipline. And for those with no discipline, there are pharmaceuticals. Can't stop overeating? There's GLP-1. Can't stop smoking? There's vaping and the patch. Can't stop taking drugs? Narcan nasal spray is your friend.
So the "indie" we need is IndiePharma! A dopamine inhibitor to set us free from BigEverything! I'd suggest orange-flavored chewables in the shape of Joey Ramone.
From the viewpoint of a digital designer, I'd argue that the real problem is NON-standardization on the web. Before everything had to be online, I was using the STANDARDIZED resources of Windows to make some truly individual and interactive educational programs. I knew that everything I formed would work the same way on any computer running Windows. After the courseware had to move online, I was hedged in more strongly each year by different operating systems, different browsers, constant Github updates to each browser. I had to abandon most of my interactive material and restrict myself to the few things that could reliably run on most browsers despite constant updates.
More generally, creativity and learning require STABILITY. Learning is experimentation. If you can't rely on the world to respond to your trial and error in a consistent way, you can't experiment properly. In a Github world with new restrictions and laws and "epidemics" and wars and job losses happening every day, there's no way to judge whether your altered strategy works better or worse, because EVERYTHING may be overturned at any moment.
This reminds me of Leonard Bernstein‘s comments about the role of metaphor being at the heart of music and poetry: Repetition, as the most basic structural principle of art, gets subjected to variation and transformation, thus kickstarting the metaphorical process of thought, „midway between the unintelligible and the commonplace“ (Aristotle). Metaphors teach us to think in alternatives, to break free from our acquired taste and engage actively with what‘s ahead of us – whatever that may be: a piece of art, an impression of our senses, a person even.
The flattened systems of our time actively work against this process. What‘s the result? Pure, mindless repetition, that can only run its course for so long. Which is why we see these systems fail in such different fields almost simultaneously.
Worshipping God! Making a family! ( I recognize that for many people, this isn't possible. ) Books! Music! Art! Movies! ( For these four, my suggestion is that you consider patronizing next to nothing produced after the 1970s. ) Crafts! Trying to figure out a musical instrument! Trying to write something! Or draw something! Or play or sing something! Solving puzzles! Cooking! Trying to be what a neighbor should be!
Here we are, online, trying to figure out how to subvert onlineness.
I increasingly reject the sameness and empty calories of Netflix and Prime content for old (pre 21st century) movies that I never got round to seeing back in the day, or which I haven’t seen for many years. Amazing to be reminded of how much creativity and humanity used to be brilliantly shoehorned into 90 or 120 minutes ofcelluloid, rather than diluted and spread across eight or 16 mindnumbing hours of a box set series….
I've thought for years that the young, who supposedly were so visually literate they had seizures if forced to watch black and white film, were, if that were the case, more likely to be visually illiterate. Anyone with an eye relishes what movies were able to do with the lighting and the cinematography of that era, straitjacketed as they also were with budget restrictions. I'm particularly a fan of Nicholas Musaraca’s work on the Val Lewton films. ( If you're not familiar with Lewton's low budget classics for RKO, you have a great treat in store. There is a podcast which we mortals do not deserve and which is available by streaming. I can never remember whether it's called The Hidden History of Hollywood or The Secret History of Hollywood, but if you Google the odd name, Attaboy Clarence, you'll find it. They're such maniacs for detail and style their Lewton project runs something like twelve hours. )
Lewton was a producer and writer who was limited to budgets of $200,000. RKO hired him to help them avert the bankruptcy which their cowardly treatment of Orson Welles was bringing upon them. Though he never directed, Lewton was able in some uncanny way to communicate early on what he had in mind to his writers and directors with such acuity that he deserves to be regarded as an auteur. RKO would present him with a lurid title such as Cat People or The Leopard Man and he'd let his crew of young people loose. They'd come back two months later with a classic.
To me, Preston Sturges was his analogue. They were exactly contemporaneous, and though their topics and styles could hardly have been more different, each man worked comfortably within the studio system. Their movies are a delight to this day because they were forced to rely on imagination.
Even Welles, The Boy King, had had to work scrappily and on the sly. Just out of sight of many of his Kane shots were crates and boxes. The Kane sets were often RKO backrooms frequently used for storage.
Consider Jean Arthur. Have we got anybody who can begin to equal what Jean Arthur could provide? And she was never really a major star. When in the early 1970s she ran afoul of some idiotic local statute in North Carolina which had to do with her efforts to protect animals, they sent the cops to arrest her. As she was being led away, she shouted, “You wouldn't be doing this to me if I were Katharine Hepburn!”
Amen. Jesus is as counterculture as it gets… Maybe that’s why Gen Z has completely flipped the trend around as the generation that is open to him. All evidenced by the recent mass revivals were seeing on college campuses and Gather25 which is leveraging technology to have a 25 hour connection across all seven continents. I’m trying not to make this some stereotypical Christian platitude… rather a comment in earnest. Jesus was and is the OG of counterculture. If we’re to really look at what his new covenant was all about, it has everything to do with what we’re talking about that’s missing and in full rejection of everything that we’re seeing.
I feel everything you describe here, but you have such a powerful way of putting your finger on it exactly. I continue to appreciate you so much. Keep up the good work. You can count on me as a member of the underground or the resistance or whatever you wanna call it. I’m with you.
Ted... I appreciate your perspective. Let me add to it. Humanity has made a god out of science and it/we deeply unbalanced emotionally/psychically, stuck in childish or adolescent behaviors. There is a great undoing that is in process. Classical science is being challenged at its core by what Quantum physics is revealing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FUFewGHLLg This man is one of the most credible voices for this. All for the transition/shift/awakening (whatever you choose to call it) that is necessary and inevitable. Buckle up.
And, it is incumbent on us who can, to become attuned to the new/old hidden reality, and embrace the change, not resist it. Begin thinking and acting in this new/ancient Reality way.
"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture." This from Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death from 1985 is extraordinarliy prescient. We 'are' being deprived of information and reduced to dull passivity in a sea of boring irrelevance. I see it in the students I teach and I see, feel is a better word, it in myself. Agency slowly draining away. Scrolling for the next self-righteous dopamine hit. But the world is still out there waiting for us in all its craziness and wonder.
All you have to do is watch the epic scene from the 1976 film Network where Ned Beatty’s character explains how the world really works. This film was 50 years ahead of its time.
“There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.”
More prescient every day. When I want to close my ears to the incessant clang all around us, I immediately think of "We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ "
Thanks to Ted and the communities here for reminding me that there is more.
I actually wrote an article on this very speech. This speech was profound in telling us the reality of the world and the more we know this, the more we can see how corporations push culture — instead of the other way around.
Once we can see this, then we can change the culture: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/dismantling-the-system-by-destroying
Thanks for reminding me of that movie...need to rewatch it.
Thanks to whoever wrote this, I have this speech and the “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore” monologue from this film living in my head rent free now.
As usual, terrific if chilling insight, Ted. Maybe the coming change you talk about is the tipping point for the realization that digital life isn't real. It's all a bunch of zeros and ones. One long con. Same with cryptocurrency. It's all a bunch of zeros and ones, too. A financial con. Ultimately it doesn't not matter what happens on TikTok or Instagram or whatever. It's not real, and it cannot bring meaning or wholeness to our lives. Only we can do that, with help from each other. I utterly refuse to be flattened for a nanosecond.
I completely agree with your comment. It’s an imaginary world that’s only important because we give it importance.
I feel like a great deal of our present-day hang-wringing over "Whatever shall we do about culture?" misses the big overriding truth of the problem. And that is the reflexive wedding of creative culture with commerce. Reading this article, many of its comments, and lots of other writing online, it is apparent that many can't even visualize a culture that is not validated by dollars and sales and reach and audience size. Such a seemingly unbreakable pairing will guarantee the creative morass we find ourselves in won't resolve.
Right now, the success or failure of the majority of even the most radical "resistance" art is still measured in a significant degree by its financial success. And as long as that is true, art will only continue to change colors, and won't ever be truly revolutionary like it needs to be.
I wish people would start imagining art and creativity completely separated from money. A great artist not interested in making a living at it is potentially far more revolutionary than someone whose creative audacity is still something to be sold.
"But artists work hard. Don't they deserve to be compensated for that work?" NO, THEY DON'T. The amount of work and training and effort that goes into a thing has no guaranteed relationship to what they should be compensated for it.
"Would you care to buy a pineapple?"
"That pineapple is 50 dollars!!!???"
"Well, that pineapple took me a really long time to make, and I'm the world's foremost pineapple expert, and deserve to be compensated for all the skill and craft that went into it."
"I'm going to buy this 5 dollar pineapple instead."
... and the 5 dollar pineapple industry thrives.
OR
"Here's a free pineapple for you."
"What's wrong with it? Why is it free?"
"Because I don't make pineapples for money. I drive a bus."
"This is the most delicious pineapple I've ever tasted!"
"Thanks. I've been perfecting my pineapples for decades. It's my passion."
"You should sell these!"
"Nah, I drive a bus."
... and the 5 dollar pineapple industry quakes.
As long as art is tied to money, things will only get worse in our digital connected world. The revolution will come from the genius composers, artists, writers, who have day jobs and aren't wasting energy on pounding the pavement for a check for their art.
Maybe much of the art you describe is already here but we don’t see it online? I totally agree with you here and I cannot believe no orchestra is performing the classical works of Frank Zappa.
To be fair to the orchestras, a LOT of Zappa is quite difficult to perform. His notation is usually extremely specific and needs different skills (of degree or quality) than are needed to perform Beethoven, Brahms, or even John Williams (as many orchestras now do).
Thanks for that! I didn’t know.
A few years ago i talked about this with one of my music profs, a cellist specializing in new music and a composer himself, who performed in a local orchestral premiere. Despite his pedigree and *having those specialized skills*,, he found the music challenging and said the orchestra as a whole STRUGGLED. And he's a huge fan of Zappa!
In your example, I am not sure one excellent human being growing bomb-ass pineapples for fun is going to threaten the massive 5 dollar pineapple industry, at least not directly. In my experience, he might provide people locally with a taste of what actual pineapples are like. The people who have tried his produce might sigh wistfully as they purchase more 5 dollar pineapples, because one man is never going to meet more than a fraction of the pineapple demand. He might inspire a handful of people to grow their own pineapples, but it can take 18 months - 3 years to grow one from seed. I predict a fair few of the people who embark on that journey might decide 5 dollar pineapples are not SO bad a year or two in.
I guess what I'm saying is, time is valuable. Economic incentives are powerful. If we want nice things, it makes sense to find ways to compensate experts for their work. That being said, I'm weary of the push to make every hobby a side hustle. Some things are just fun to do and not profitable, and that's okay. You can make wildly elaborate and beautiful things if you're focused on fun and not profit/optimization. I think part of the issue is that there's been a push to "optimize" our lives, and this has leaked into how we view our leisure activities.
The optimization is tied to survival in the U.S. as America has become the worst western country to be poor in but the best to be rich. Big tech has flattened the great talent of artists and monetized it to death. There’s tons of great bands not making any money but making billions for Spotify. The elite are benefiting and squeezing every bit of value from artists making art for art’s sake bc they control “the gallery”. That being said they have also flattened the culture into thinking that content is art and creating it is something that younger folks should aspire to and can support them. That’s all a ruse they are just supporting and enriching the technocracy beyond any value that has ever existed. If all the “content” creators went on a simple strike it would be interesting to see how powerful they could be and how quickly they could tank these platforms so new ones not set up to squeeze every last dollar from them could thrive.
I quilt. There is no way anyone will pay what a handmade quilt is worth when they can get a Chinese-made one for less than fabric costs me. Of course, when the quilt wears out after 3 washings they can redo their bedroom while my quilt will last 50 years. I give my quilts away to family or for charity raffles.
That is the problem with crafted items. They last which means you aren’t buying new every couple of months or years. Who wants a dining room table that will last a couple of generations when you can redesign your dining room every 5 years when the poorly designed and manufactured stuff fails. Put crap kitchen cabinets in your kitchen so in 15 years they are ready for the trash and the kitchen can be ‘updated.’ That is our responsibility to keep the capitalist economy running.
You point out some significant flaws in my metaphor, for sure. Should have thought through that before using pineapples as my example. :-)
We live in a weirdly connected culture, where the ceiling for any individual's reach is far, far higher than at any time in history. How many people in Europe even knew who Mozart was in his lifetime? Do we ever talk today about how criminally obscure Mozart was? Why, probably less than 1% of the population had ever heard of him much less knew any of his music. He was extremely successful in his tiny circle of influence, and that style of music was such that it had to be written down, so we still have it. But consider the voluminous works of Andreas Gundersen, a musical genius on the level of Mozart who was celebrated in his lifetime. But owing to the kind of music he did, it wasn't written down, so it didn't travel, and is now lost to us. OK, so I made him up, but my point is there have been thousands of Andreas Gundersens - geniuses who lived in a world ruled by distances.
Today, the distances no longer rule us, but sheer quantity does. The Gundersens of today languish in obscurity because they can't rise above the din. And who can? Those with financial resources to do so. Companies who have a financial incentive to expose them to large audiences. Money buys reach, and reach is not the same thing as quality.
I'm an artist, I make music. I'm lucky and grateful I have a day job that is pretty intertwined with that.
Your pineapple metaphor has been something for me to think about and still is, but the whole thing feels out of touch since I'm aware of so many kinds of artists and how they go about the "pursue artist career vs work a 9-5"
Brownsville Ka (RIP) is one to check out
He was a full-time firefighter and put out his own records (sold his own CDs & vinyl) up until last year
He didn't depend on his craft to make a living, he didn't tour or do shows, just put out great records
Otem Rellik is another monster, really talented guy
He's a rapper/musician and makes his own synth instruments
When I first found him on yt, he was doing web dev full time
Now making synth instruments is his business
There are thousands of artists out here doing things their own way
Cats like that are why the underground hasn't gone anywhere, at least for me
Oh yeah, there are 1.2 gazillion of us out there. The trick is getting the culture to recognize that the future of art lies not in reach, money or audience size, but in the collective power of we 1.2 gazillions. Wishful thinking I know.
I have three albums released, and am running a monthly snail mail club. And I pay the bills with a tech job in which effort-per-dollar is much more favorable, but effort-per-satisfaction far less.
The arts and money have long been intertwined. In old Japan, they had a saying, "If you have three strings, you'll eat." There has been plenty of art for art's sake, but ever since the first story teller or musician performed and got paid with a meal, art has been part of commerce.
That’s true, but today it seems that everything has aspirations for a far wider audience than in past eras, which has resulted in a far higher percentage of works whose worth is exclusively measured in dollars earned. The proportion of artists who feel totally fulfilled in their art by only reaching a small community of people is much lower now. Everyone wants to “make it”, and equates that with riches.
Honestly, I think most folks in the visual and performing arts would like to be able to have a liveable income that's stable. It's why most have day gigs.
It's almost impossible for people to become famous, and from people I know + my own life, being self-supporting via one's art is a bit like the lyrics of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." But being self-supporting is not at all the same thing as stardom. I think most of us would be more than happy just to do what we love *and* put food on the table.
I totally agree. But I think too many of us feel less-than-fulfilled at that because we've all been trained to think you're only truly "successful" if you've been heard by (and hopefully paid by) a large number of people. Like I said earlier, Mozart's *per capita* exposure in his lifetime is dwarfed by thousands today.
Someone who lived a hundred years ago and wrote songs adored by their entire community of 400 in rural Missouri was likely to feel hugely successful, because they weren't realistically connected any wider than that. Today someone who reaches 400 people is more likely to feel like an impossibly tiny small fry because they are looking at the unmet potential of the total population, made to seem so achievable via the web.
Conversely, audiences also have availability to exponentially-larger collections of art, so the bar is raised too high for so many. To that community in Missouri, that guy's music was the best they'd ever heard because they weren't exposed to much else. But maybe by the standards of the world he wasn't all that great. So we are now holding ourselves up to the standards of the world.
The thing is, I've known people who deliberately chose to stay "small" and local per their music. One person i knew was a jazz guitarist who was pretty incredible, but he and his wife (also a musician) didn't want to pay the price demanded of them, per becoming more visible.
I can also cite two examples from DC, where i used to live. The 1st is Shirley Horn, who became internationally famous late in life. I'm glad she took those opportunities, especially b/c she chose to stay out of the limelight for several decades (family + other commitments) and never planned a comeback. It happened anyway.
The late Buck Hill (tenor sax, also from DC) was a USPS employee who turned down a gig offered to him by Lionel Hampton. He didn't want to live on the road, partly b/c he had a family. So after he retired, he was on the scene for many years. It was his choice, and he was content with it. He wasn't famous per se, but he had lots of great gigs, recording dates, etc. He was highly thought of by his peers.
And in experimental "pop" music, there's Kate Bush. After touring for her 1st album, she quit doing live shows, although she did a very limited run in London, 11 years ago now. I wouldn't be surprised if she never does another live gig. It's her choice, due to family, working at home, greatly disliking the industry, etc. Yes, she's world-famous, but I'm willing to bet that a very local career would have suited her. (She was 17 when she recorded her 1st album.) Music videos + albums are her way of getting her work out there.
Some people want fame. I think most would be far happier playing for small but appreciative audiences. The few talented people who make it are *so* outnumbered by a host of gifted musicians who play in "obscurity."
Yeah, I'm another example I think. The hedge that needs to be scaled though is for the public at large to start disentangling themselves from the whole concept of reach equaling quality. I do think that will eventually happen, but not for a long long time.
<cough> Taylor Swift…
"Such a seemingly unbreakable pairing will guarantee the creative morass we find ourselves in won't resolve."
Maybe, maybe not. In a world of boring, there can be just as much a profit motive in becoming interesting. As Ted says, corporate follows culture. If the culture begins demanding distinctiveness, corporate will ultimately follow it.
In fact, Ted has a 2022 column which highlights an example of just that: the almost-miraculous resurrection of Barnes and Noble. https://www.honest-broker.com/p/what-can-we-learn-from-barnes-and
Exactly this.
Yup. One platform not mentioned was Etsy, which is no longer about artisans offering beautiful hand-crafted works of art. Etsy is forcing those kind of people off of its platform, and it's "don't let the door hit you on the way out" as Etsy makes its profit-based preference for mass-produced commoditized drek clear to anyone with the slightest of artistic bones in their body.
Can a "replacement" Web emerge from all this?
"The world has been flattened."
I cannot agree, from my POV anyway, because a great deal of this is related to where one goes and what one does.
Even on apps like TikTok, there's a surprising amount of creativity coming from young users. A visual artist friend of mine (in her 60s, like me) finds it incredibly *refreshing.* She sees work and ideas by a lot of young artists, musicians, etc. b/c she seeks it out. It's really *not* hard to find these things, but it does take some patience.
One big example of creative use: livestreamed cooking shows. Made by people from all around the world. Interested in Moroccan, South Indian or Malaysian cuisine? TikTok's got it... and the people who make these shows pass on their recipes to their audience. I feel energized by things of this kind, b/c it's individuals creating and connecting with others. A lot of RL friendships are formed that way.
Instagram is similar in. re. the visual arts, photography, etc. I mean, there are reading groups (reading good books, not trash) on FB, Insta, and even on TikTok.
At the same time, there's a flowering of book websites (not Substack, etc. blogs - websites) that shows no signs of slowing. Try lithub and go from there, with some searches. I regret to say that as far as I'm aware, music doesn't seem to be making similar gains, but since pretty much everything I listen to (and play, as an instrumentalist) is very "niche." Other kinds of niche music + more popular genres are still in the game, with people creating their own spaces.
The biggest thing about sll of this: people have to search for it, seek it out. It's not going to be served up to any of us on a plate. And alternative search engines, like Duck Duck Go (no tracking) will turn up results that Google won't, or at least, they're way back on p. 11
or 21 of search results.
We have a society that is made up of many different subgroups that often intersect and sometimes overlap. We have many subcultures within "the culture." I feel that - as ever - looking to Big Media for creativity is a huge mistake. So yes, there *is* a flattening there. But venture away from those places, and you might find far more than you imagined could exist on the internet at this time.
I see many of the same problems that Ted sees. They're very urgent. The thing is, they're not the whole megillah.
Even YouTube now has legally-uploaded live concerts and incredible archives of programs devoted to music. If you like Brazilian music, I'd suggest looking up Biscoito Fino's channel (independent label based in Rio; some really gifted musicians are on their roster) and Ensaio. Ensaio is a music show that's been around since the late 60s-early 70s. It's made on a black box stage and is like being at a private gig. There's some schlock, but very little. They've uploaded so many broadcasts that at this point, I could watch 2 of the shows back to back every night, and never get caught up with the pace of their uploads.
There's so much cultural richness available via the internet. ISTM that many of the people who are making the most of it are from non-Western countries (like Niger, Iraq, Iran, Mali, etc.) - but there's also a whole mess of great stuff in English and Spanish and Native American languages and in Hawaiian... you just have to look for it.
May the algorithms be ever in your favor. ;-) (Joking, but not really.)
* Note: can't see to edit, but b/c music I'm looking for is very "niche," and i only speak English, I'm likely not coming acrosd much of the good material that's available. It's still surprising to see what's actually out there, and it gives a very different view of the world than even the best mainstrea media can or will ever do. Not long after YouTube really took off, I found videos by an Iranian girl who had video'd some of her practice routine on a drum that was *only* played by men until maybe 20 years ago. That's definitely not true now! And yes, in Iran. And now, I'm learning to play that instrument and can take lessons. The drum was bought via the internet. The lessons: on the internet. I can't even begin to tell just how amazing that is. It's so hard to find teachers here in the US. Now, that's not an obstacle.
Your attitude matters. There’s value in experiencing cultures beyond our own, but choosing to create in a smaller language can feel isolating. Work often goes unread, and even those who should engage deeply, like editors, can be superficial.
A book club can nurture a real sense of connection, but some exist online without real membership. A new magazine might advocate for the return to print culture, yet post on social media daily. There’s an overwhelming abundance of everything out there, but is there really a community?
A lot of the time things stagnate on the internet, but that also happens out here, f2f. Many things just wither away, while some thrive - however improbable that might be.
I think we need to try, knowing things *might* fall apart, but with the hope that they might just work. But that takes time, effort, patience, as do things in the f2f world.
Useful reminder that it ain’t all bad, thank you! I guess the snag is “you just have to look for it” and when people are being daily swamped by industrial quantities of irrelevant, superficial entertainment and AI slop, it’s hard for them to free the headspace to do that. Worse, they lose the desire to do so. Our cultural libido is dying…
But I also posted (below) about practical things that can be done (like getting into the "settings" menus of many sites and apps). Tweaking privacy settings and preferences can do a *lot* to help people block out the junk.
My FB feed rarely shows me anything that I don't want to see, some ads excepted. I don't see the things that Ted wrote about. It's b/c of keeping my page private, limiting friends, finding groups that are interesting ( books, music, visual arts, sciences) and avoiding pages and people that either post junk or are red hat wearers.
So no, i don't see bad AI "art," et. But a bit of effort is required to achieve that, as with most everything else in life, no? The more one searches for truly good content, the more the algorithms will start to be tailored to one's tastes. It takes awhile, but using the "block" option really works.
I am not afraid of billionnaires, you can see their megalomaniac tendencies pretty clearly, and they may even do some good, even if by mistake. I am more afraid of the blood-thirsty millionnaires that want to become billionnaires. And even more scary the ordinary people that want to become millionnaires. Hitler was not scary per se - the amount of people willing to collaborate and enthusiastically contribute was. And that tells you something about human nature, I guess.
Jazz college suffers the same evil triplets of uniformity, standardization and predictability (and it's VERY profitable - for the colleges, at $360,000 for a 4 year degree). When I tell the youngin's that I don't transcribe (fill in name of one or two targets that everybody uses) and try to regurgitate this stuff on the bandstand and instead try to come up with my own stuff, they say oh, you're no so and so. They're right, I'm not, and neither are they. I'm me, which is good enough (and right and proper in the grand scheme of things).
In sculpture, which is inherently not 'flattened', we distinguish between 'relief' and 'in the round'. The former involves 3 dimensional carving of a surface (like a flat panel or a vase) while the latter is the truly 3D form viewable from all sides. We may need to push back on 'the flattening' with a relief revolution and a rounding revolution.
Working in sculpture is a good model for what is needed. It requires real material and skill, is typically produced in limited editions if it is not outright unique, and even editioned pieces tend to have minor variation due to human production methods.
Sculpture takes up space. It exists in relation to our bodies. It fosters empathy. It can't be swiped... It can't be AI generated whole cloth.
If we want to tune ourselves back in to real relationships with real culture, learning to properly *see* sculpture or even better, *make* it, is a great exercise.
People need to avoid the dopamine fix through self-discipline. And for those with no discipline, there are pharmaceuticals. Can't stop overeating? There's GLP-1. Can't stop smoking? There's vaping and the patch. Can't stop taking drugs? Narcan nasal spray is your friend.
So the "indie" we need is IndiePharma! A dopamine inhibitor to set us free from BigEverything! I'd suggest orange-flavored chewables in the shape of Joey Ramone.
From the viewpoint of a digital designer, I'd argue that the real problem is NON-standardization on the web. Before everything had to be online, I was using the STANDARDIZED resources of Windows to make some truly individual and interactive educational programs. I knew that everything I formed would work the same way on any computer running Windows. After the courseware had to move online, I was hedged in more strongly each year by different operating systems, different browsers, constant Github updates to each browser. I had to abandon most of my interactive material and restrict myself to the few things that could reliably run on most browsers despite constant updates.
More generally, creativity and learning require STABILITY. Learning is experimentation. If you can't rely on the world to respond to your trial and error in a consistent way, you can't experiment properly. In a Github world with new restrictions and laws and "epidemics" and wars and job losses happening every day, there's no way to judge whether your altered strategy works better or worse, because EVERYTHING may be overturned at any moment.
Yes. I can see what you mean, and why.
I wish things weren't so chaotic.
This reminds me of Leonard Bernstein‘s comments about the role of metaphor being at the heart of music and poetry: Repetition, as the most basic structural principle of art, gets subjected to variation and transformation, thus kickstarting the metaphorical process of thought, „midway between the unintelligible and the commonplace“ (Aristotle). Metaphors teach us to think in alternatives, to break free from our acquired taste and engage actively with what‘s ahead of us – whatever that may be: a piece of art, an impression of our senses, a person even.
The flattened systems of our time actively work against this process. What‘s the result? Pure, mindless repetition, that can only run its course for so long. Which is why we see these systems fail in such different fields almost simultaneously.
"But there’s another culture that has only recently emerged from hiding. Or you might call it a counterculture or an underground movement.
In an earlier day, it was just called the Resistance. That’s still a good name, by the way.
It’s easy to miss, because it doesn’t have a trillion dollars of investment capital at its disposal.
But it does have the allegiance of the people—more so with each passing month."
And where might one FIND this counterculture or underground movement? I would love to escape all this "sameness"!
My favorite non-billionaire non-dopamine experience is the local farmers’s market. Chickens and homegrown goodies are a good antidote to the internet.
Worshipping God! Making a family! ( I recognize that for many people, this isn't possible. ) Books! Music! Art! Movies! ( For these four, my suggestion is that you consider patronizing next to nothing produced after the 1970s. ) Crafts! Trying to figure out a musical instrument! Trying to write something! Or draw something! Or play or sing something! Solving puzzles! Cooking! Trying to be what a neighbor should be!
Here we are, online, trying to figure out how to subvert onlineness.
I increasingly reject the sameness and empty calories of Netflix and Prime content for old (pre 21st century) movies that I never got round to seeing back in the day, or which I haven’t seen for many years. Amazing to be reminded of how much creativity and humanity used to be brilliantly shoehorned into 90 or 120 minutes ofcelluloid, rather than diluted and spread across eight or 16 mindnumbing hours of a box set series….
I've thought for years that the young, who supposedly were so visually literate they had seizures if forced to watch black and white film, were, if that were the case, more likely to be visually illiterate. Anyone with an eye relishes what movies were able to do with the lighting and the cinematography of that era, straitjacketed as they also were with budget restrictions. I'm particularly a fan of Nicholas Musaraca’s work on the Val Lewton films. ( If you're not familiar with Lewton's low budget classics for RKO, you have a great treat in store. There is a podcast which we mortals do not deserve and which is available by streaming. I can never remember whether it's called The Hidden History of Hollywood or The Secret History of Hollywood, but if you Google the odd name, Attaboy Clarence, you'll find it. They're such maniacs for detail and style their Lewton project runs something like twelve hours. )
Lewton was a producer and writer who was limited to budgets of $200,000. RKO hired him to help them avert the bankruptcy which their cowardly treatment of Orson Welles was bringing upon them. Though he never directed, Lewton was able in some uncanny way to communicate early on what he had in mind to his writers and directors with such acuity that he deserves to be regarded as an auteur. RKO would present him with a lurid title such as Cat People or The Leopard Man and he'd let his crew of young people loose. They'd come back two months later with a classic.
To me, Preston Sturges was his analogue. They were exactly contemporaneous, and though their topics and styles could hardly have been more different, each man worked comfortably within the studio system. Their movies are a delight to this day because they were forced to rely on imagination.
Even Welles, The Boy King, had had to work scrappily and on the sly. Just out of sight of many of his Kane shots were crates and boxes. The Kane sets were often RKO backrooms frequently used for storage.
Consider Jean Arthur. Have we got anybody who can begin to equal what Jean Arthur could provide? And she was never really a major star. When in the early 1970s she ran afoul of some idiotic local statute in North Carolina which had to do with her efforts to protect animals, they sent the cops to arrest her. As she was being led away, she shouted, “You wouldn't be doing this to me if I were Katharine Hepburn!”
Amen. Jesus is as counterculture as it gets… Maybe that’s why Gen Z has completely flipped the trend around as the generation that is open to him. All evidenced by the recent mass revivals were seeing on college campuses and Gather25 which is leveraging technology to have a 25 hour connection across all seven continents. I’m trying not to make this some stereotypical Christian platitude… rather a comment in earnest. Jesus was and is the OG of counterculture. If we’re to really look at what his new covenant was all about, it has everything to do with what we’re talking about that’s missing and in full rejection of everything that we’re seeing.
Romans 12:2
The revolution is coming. It's inevitable.
I feel everything you describe here, but you have such a powerful way of putting your finger on it exactly. I continue to appreciate you so much. Keep up the good work. You can count on me as a member of the underground or the resistance or whatever you wanna call it. I’m with you.
Ted... I appreciate your perspective. Let me add to it. Humanity has made a god out of science and it/we deeply unbalanced emotionally/psychically, stuck in childish or adolescent behaviors. There is a great undoing that is in process. Classical science is being challenged at its core by what Quantum physics is revealing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FUFewGHLLg This man is one of the most credible voices for this. All for the transition/shift/awakening (whatever you choose to call it) that is necessary and inevitable. Buckle up.
And, it is incumbent on us who can, to become attuned to the new/old hidden reality, and embrace the change, not resist it. Begin thinking and acting in this new/ancient Reality way.