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I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it.
All of the ephemera that is far too trivial to be bothered with elsewhere on this site or, depending on your point of view, a meta-commentary on it. This ephemera includes, but is not limited to art, music and literature. Most of the content here will be discussed in terms that are as abstract as possible, reality being a singularly overrated concept.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Our modern individualistic, atomised age seems especially good at producing moments of conformity outside of the normal sense of collectivism that one might expect to produce it. The death of Diana is perhaps a rather good example of this, but a certain manufactured licence (i.e. Red Nose Day) that is now established an annual event:"What is so depressing is the coerced laughter, and the prospect of hour upon hour of it - an oddly flat form of mass-produced, non-stop whinnying... Red Nose Day is but a symptom of what has become a sort of tyranny - a world where no birthday card can be sent unless it is witlessly vulgar... If you don't join in the laughter, you are told: "It's only a joke - go on, have a laugh."
With laughter, as with junk food or binge drinking, there no longer seems to be any sense that holding back once in a while might increase your enjoyment. There is no sense of restraint: we are moving into the age of the all-day giggle. "What lies at the heart of the hollow laugh is the pretence that everything is fantastic and very cheery when in fact it is absolutely awful - rather like Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman," he says. "And at the moment, so many people are pretending to be happy."
Whether traditional codes were based on restraint (repression as a model of civilisation), post-traditional codes seem based on entirely the reverse; the demonstration of emotion even where none is truly felt.Labels: Culture, Individuality
posted by Richard 8:29 pm
