>There is no way to cock your snoot at
>contemporary US popular culture without coming across like William Bennett,
>Hilton Kramer or just some tiresome boomer old fart. But again, I think
>schlock has gotten much schlockier in the last few decades, and I think
>US-led turbocharged global capitalism is the reason for this degeneration.
Okay, let's see some evidence of this degeneration of popular culture- on why Bonanza is such an improvement on the Practice, why fifties horror flicks are so much better Scream or The Others, why Bewitched was so much better than Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
I don't see it. Popular music is in a definite downturn right now, but the early to mid-80s were not bad compared to almost any period except the late 60s/early 70s.
I saw a very good film last night, TAPE, made with digital video for small coin, part of a new wave of films that should warm the hearts of the greatest worshipers of "auteur" theory by letting any directors vision be put on film for pennies compared to the past.
There are more avenues of distribution of such films, from theatres to the Sundance channel, than there ever were in the past. And many such films are getting audience numbers that are quite impressive. For all the homogenization of global capitalism, there has also been a flowering of diversity, both in source of content and in distribution, that makes me yearn not at all for the days of the studio hegemony in Hollywood and the Big Three networks in television.
So where is the loss from a few decades ago?
Nathan Newman