There’s an article in the Ottawa Citizen today about the death of mass culture. I beg to differ on Mr. Denley’s viewpoint.
What happened to mass culture? It seems to have died without anyone even noticing. You will no doubt remember when there were songs, television shows, movies and books that most everyone had heard of. These shared cultural reference points helped us communicate by doing things like citing an incident from Seinfeld to illustrate a point. Or Shakespeare, if you are more cultured.
Well, that’s disappearing fast and we’re all the poorer for it. I blame changes in technology, the stunning lack of talent of so many of today’s “artists” and cultural industries that have forgotten how to connect with customers.
So, we’re becoming more individualistic. Why are we ‘poorer’ for it?
And while he blames technology for it, I praise technology for allowing me to express my opinions, read more than the daily (edited) news sources and connect with people. It’s not necessarily a good thing thing to have everyone watch/read/do the same things – that’s called being sheep. Our society is not going to fall apart because we can’t sit down and re-hash our favourite movie together? We end up bringing new things to the table with different viewpoints. Believe it or not, we can connect and communicate in other ways. And even if it’s a smaller crowd, technology is allowing us to reach over borders to connect with like-minded people, forming many ‘micro’ cultures.
But I do agree on some points… there is a lack of ‘good TV’ out there. I’ll post another one soon about my disgust with the ‘reality’ phenomenon – which to me, has formed quite the mass culture;)
Enjoy your Sunday:)
