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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| "This tells us something -- I just wish I knew what." |
| 2007-10-03 |
| Gregg Easterbrook, "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" In world news, there's a harmonic convergence of golden anniversaries in progress. The upcoming 50th anniversary of Sputnik joins the 50th anniversaries of the Edsel, "West Side Story" and the publication of "Doctor Zhivago." As the Sputnik anniversary arrives, bear in mind what a bucket of bolts the first artificial satellite was -- little more than a radio transmitter, it looked like something a 16-year-old made in metal shop for a school play. America's Explorer I, which followed Sputnik I into orbit a few months later, was also a bucket of bolts. Although even with its rudimentary instruments and vacuum tubes -- remember, humanity landed on the moon before the invention of the pocket calculator -- Explorer I discovered the Van Allen belts. And of course the Edsel was a bucket of bolts, an odd snoot being the least of its problems. Although the great technical achievement of 1957 -- the artificial satellite -- and the main consumer-industrial product of that year -- the Edsel -- seem crude in retrospect, great artistic achievements of that same year, such as "West Side Story" and "Doctor Zhivago," seem magnificent in retrospect. You have to know the history of Broadway musicals to understand what an original and significant work Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story" was, although you need not know that history to appreciate the music, lyrics and dialogue. "Doctor Zhivago" numbers among the greatest books ever written, and that's even if you can't grasp how much better the poetry sounds in Russian, as Russian speakers assure us. Boris Pasternak summed up all his experiences in the dashed hopes of the Russian Revolution in the tragic story of a poet who loses his muse-love. Pasternak then declined the Nobel Prize for literature because, being a critic of the Kremlin, he knew he would never be allowed back into the Soviet Union if he went to Sweden to accept the prize. And, like Zhivago, he died too soon, passing away just two years after the book was published. "Doctor Zhivago" became an international bestseller -- When was the last time the top-selling book of the year was great literature? -- and was made into one of the last really good Hollywood movies, three hours long and actually faithful to the book! . . . Now think what has happened in technical and artistic trends in the 50 years since 1957. Scientific endeavors have made fantastic strides in quality, complexity and significance. Consumer product quality has increased dramatically -- new cars are packed with features unknown in 1957 yet are far safer and more reliable, and the cell phone in your pocket and the computer you're reading this on, to say nothing of the Internet it's transmitted over, would have been viewed as supernatural by the engineers who built Explorer I. At the same time, the quality of art has plummeted. There hasn't been a musical of artistic merit to open on Broadway in many moons -- right now, it's all vapid dreck. (In fact, I think the show "Vapid Dreck," based on a remake of a remake, opens at the Brooks Atkinson soon.) And although good books are still written, what truly great novel has been produced in the past decade or two? Fifty years ago, technical stuff was buckets of bolts and art was splendid; now, the technical stuff is splendid and the art is in poor repair. This tells us something -- I just wish I knew what. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #3 also Leave it to Beaver premiered the week that Sputnik was launched |
| Posted by: mhw 2007-10-03 17:55 |
| #2 The big picture is that the masses got involved in both. When it comes to the arts the arts were suddenly geared for the taste of the masses to ensure higher grosses, etc. This naturally means many critics will be unhappy even while the box office grosses went through the roof (see Star Wars). This is the same thing that has happened with food and beer (see McDonalds, Budweiser) and technology (Windows). You will still have select works of art that put the critics into spasms of glee (see Woody Allen, and Apple's iPhone) but the bulk of the stuff is geared for the masses. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2007-10-03 16:29 |
| #1 Art and literature has been divided much like music, between real artists and musicians, and "performers". The art, literature and music industry pays the big bucks to performers, yet sees the real talent as minimum-wage bums. The first cracks in the dam are appearing with the Internet, however, where talent is starting to get out to the public without being stymied by the conglomerates. This at least gives them a start, before what they create transcends the Internet. Artists, especially, who embrace technology, are creating works beyond traditional mediums that challenge the senses and imagination. Whereas at the start of the 20th Century, artists prowled insane asylums looking for surreality, as imagined by the mentally ill, some today are again looking to perception and the mind itself for ideas. Call it "phenomenological art", using illusion and scientific phenomenon to create works that captivate the mind. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-10-03 14:37 |