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Post by jdredd on Feb 16, 2015 1:20:27 GMT -5
I started this thread a year ago with my wonder that SNL is still on the air, and now it's celebrating it's 40th anniversary. It's an interesting juxtaposition with the 40th anniversary of the end of the American invasion of Vietnam. Not that I can discern any meaning from it.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2015 10:46:06 GMT -5
I started this thread a year ago with my wonder that SNL is still on the air, and now it's celebrating it's 40th anniversary. It's an interesting juxtaposition with the 40th anniversary of the end of the American invasion of Vietnam. Not that I can discern any meaning from it. I hope they do more of Ambiguously Gay Duo! That cartoon shorts makes me laugh!
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Post by jdredd on Feb 22, 2015 23:41:46 GMT -5
On the night of the Oscars, I'm wondering where the dividing line is between culture and money. Is there one?
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Post by jdredd on Mar 6, 2015 14:47:18 GMT -5
It just occurred to me that this thread and the thread "The Ultimate Hedonism: The Age of the Consumer" could be about the same thing. It seems possible that a culture based on consumerism could become stagnant over time. Then again, one person's perception of a stagnant culture could be another person's comfort zone. Are there alternatives to consumer culture? As I have said before, Christians embraced consumer culture many years ago. Is that Islam's problem, finding consumer culture hard to embrace? China seemed to have no problem with it.
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Post by jdredd on Mar 6, 2015 14:59:42 GMT -5
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_culture_theoryConsumer culture theory is the study of consumption choices and behaviours from a social and cultural point of view, as opposed to an economic or psychological one. It does not offer a grand unifying theory but "refers to a family of theoretical perspectives that address the dynamic relationships between consumer actions, the marketplace, and cultural meanings".[1] Reflective of a post-modernist society, it views cultural meanings as being numerous and fragmented[2] and hence view culture as an amalgamation of different groups and shared meanings, rather than an homogenous construct (such as the American culture). Consumer culture is viewed as "social arrangement in which the relations between lived culture and social resources, between meaningful ways of life and the symbolic and material resources on which they depend, are mediated through markets"[3] and consumers as part of an interconnected system of commercially produced products and images which they use to construct their identity and orient their relationships with others.[4] As always, someone else has covered this ground long before I stumbled onto it.
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Post by jdredd on Mar 9, 2015 21:47:43 GMT -5
www.cnn.com/2015/03/09/entertainment/feat-obit-sam-simon-simpsons-thr/index.html "Sam Simon, the nine-time Emmy Award-winning comedy writer and producer who helped develop "The Simpsons," made millions after leaving the show in 1993 and then donated his riches to charity, has died, his foundation announced on Facebook. He was 59. Simon was diagnosed in February 2013 with terminal colon cancer. Yet through it all, he tried to remain upbeat and keep his sense of humor." "A cartoonist and Stanford graduate, Simon developed "The Simpsons" with Matt Groening (who came up with the characters based on his family) and producer James L. Brooks. All three had worked on "The Tracey Ullman Show," where Bart Simpson and his family got their start as animated sketches shown before and after commercials. "The Simpsons," centering on TV's "first fully self-aware dysfunctional family," as Simon put it, debuted on Fox on December 17, 1989, and is now the longest-running primetime series in American history." Yes, it does seem like "The Simpsons" is going on forever. I stopped watching after the first few seasons. How can people look at the same stuff year after year? I guess the same way some Boomers still listen to "Classic Rock" with its Stones and Rush and AC/DC for decades on end. So "the Simpsons" has been on long enough for its writers to start dying off. But if I had had the chance, I would have asked Sam the same question I would ask Matt: How does it feel to have made Rupert Murdoch hundreds of millions of dollars? Not that I actually think they would give a damn. "Selling out" is an obsolete concept. But maybe that had something to do with Sam giving away his money.
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Post by jdredd on Mar 15, 2015 4:53:12 GMT -5
As a retired senior citizen with of course nothing better to do, I was cruising the interwebs to see what Chloe Sevigny was up to, and I realized how many people are making a living off our so-called culture. So who am I to question the state of it? Modern culture may suck, but like Capitalism, we haven't found anything better. Yet.
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Post by jdredd on Mar 27, 2015 2:08:55 GMT -5
www.10news.com/entertainment/mick-and-the-boys-to-launch-summer-tour-in-san-diego"SAN DIEGO - Mick and the Boys are coming to San Diego to kick off the summer. The Rolling Stones will open their 2015 North American tour at Petco Park on Sunday, May 24, sources said Thursday. An announcement of the Memorial Day Weekend show, and other dates in the tour, is scheduled for March 19. According to sources, tickets will go on sale to the public on Monday, March 30. There will be a presale for American Express cardholders beginning Thursday, March 26 at 10 a.m. The band returns to Petco Park almost 10 years after performing the first concert at the stadium on Nov. 11, 2005." Yes, those Brit fossils are back for still another tour. Why? Who goes to see them?
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Post by jdredd on Mar 27, 2015 14:55:29 GMT -5
If culture and politics are closely related as some claim, then what are we to think about the possibility of Clinton vs. Bush in 2016? How stagnant is that?
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Post by jdredd on Mar 27, 2015 22:10:09 GMT -5
People are always looking for the Next Big Thing. I don't know about you, but it seems to me I've been waiting for the Next Big Thing since about 1968.
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Post by jdredd on Apr 3, 2015 1:53:59 GMT -5
Some people claim we are having a battle in the so-called "Culture War" sparked by Indiana's passage of a "Religious Freedom" law. I don't know who's winning it, my question is: are they fighting over a corpse?
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Post by jdredd on Apr 3, 2015 13:29:03 GMT -5
Subjectively speaking, seems to me that the source of new culture in the last several decades has been the gay community, and of course the black community (source of both jazz and rock). But now, gay culture has been mainstreamed, and the black culture has gotten into a hip-hop rut. Country and Western culture is popular in large parts of the country, but it is a culture that is backwards looking, immersed in nostalgia for earlier times. I'm not that familiar with Asian culture, so perhaps that is dynamic, thought it seems like China is simply aping Western consumerism, not to mention the growth of Christianity (yawn) there. Latin America is also becoming more Anglo-Saxon with the decline of the Catholic rch and the growth of noxious Evangelical mega-rches. Nothing new has come out of Europe in a long time. Or so it seems to me.
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Post by jdredd on Apr 17, 2015 22:54:09 GMT -5
This week on the cover of TV Guide: "How Jesus is Saving Prime Time". Well, since I almost never watch network TV, I wouldn't know, but I guess the show "A.D." is getting good ratings. I'm more of a "Game of Thrones" guy.
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Post by jdredd on Apr 23, 2015 15:26:55 GMT -5
www.nationalreview.com/article/417332/cultural-conservatives-have-barely-begun-fight-david-french "An atmosphere of gloom and despair pervades some cultural-conservative circles, and, at first glance, it’s easy to understand why. There’s no question that hysterical public assaults on Christians or others who dissent from leftist sexual orthodoxy are increasing in volume and frequency. It seems as if every day there’s a new story of an attempt to silence, intimidate, or publicly shame social conservatives." "All of this is true. All of this is daunting. And none of it is cause for cultural retreat. Yet that is exactly what one of America’s more influential cultural conservatives is proposing. Rod Dreher, formerly at National Review and now at The American Conservative, advocates what he calls the “Benedict Option” in the face of the cultural onslaught: What I call the Benedict Option is this: a limited, strategic withdrawal of Christians from the mainstream of American popular culture, for the sake of shoring up our understanding of what the rch is, and what we must do to be the rch. We must do this because the strongly anti-Christian nature of contemporary popular culture occludes the meaning of the Gospel, and hides from us the kinds of habits and practices we need to engage in to be truly faithful to what we have been given." "The grassroots of social conservatism are not just strong but increasing in strength. The cultural Left has lost one high-profile cultural clash after another. From the Chick-fil-A “boycott,” to Hobby Lobby’s legal and cultural triumph, to the recent windfall and triumphant reopening of Memories Pizza, when the cultural Right actually bothers to mobilize, the cultural Left tends to lose. And while pop culture produces prodigious quantities of leftist propaganda, the surprising box office of God’s Not Dead, the overwhelming success of American Sniper, celebrating the life of a Christian warrior, and the consistent ratings for Bible-themed television demonstrate that there remains a large-scale appetite for works of art that advance, whether by intention or by effect, a substantially more conservative point of view." I've said before that while "Cultural Stagnation" and the "Culture War" are not the same thing, they do overlap in some ways. If there is a "Left Culture" and an opposing "Right Culture", I believe they both may be stagnating. It seems obvious to me culture in Europe has been stagnant for decades, where at least in the USA the cultures are still at "war", even if it is perhaps war of the zombies. On the other hand, the rise of far-right political parties in Europe may be heralding some cultural shift.
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Post by jdredd on May 3, 2015 22:27:23 GMT -5
Watching the endless home buying/home remodeling shows on TV makes me wonder. Is our Consumer Culture making Americans, and perhaps the world, shallower than it's ever been? And it's this shallowness which makes our culture appear to be stagnating? Is it the obvious shallowness of the West which turns off Islamic radicals? I don't know.
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