cybercharro

Pop culture comes in different grades. There is the purest pop culture, lowbrow pop, which requires no work from the observer. Enjoying the painting of the dogs playing pokers is immediate; no need for an MFA to enjoy this beauty.

Then there is a middlebrow pop. At this level you still can get the point of the work quickly, but you need some background information to fully enjoy it. Pieces at this level have references to other works of pop culture. The Red Hot Chilli Pepper's 1988 album cover of naked men walking on a street makes a point right away, yet it only makes total sense if you know the cover of the Beatles' Abby Road album.

Highbrow pop is not immediate. It is pop in its techniques and origin, but the observer needs to be trained to enjoy these works. The comic strip Zippy the Pinhead is an example; many people do not understand it.
Its intentions are those of high art, but it still looks too crass to fully belong to that category.

Of course there is a continuum from pure pop to high pop, but this classification can be useful for further discussions.

The Wonderful Word of Disney was terrible while I was growing up. For some reason, they would barely ever play any cartoons. Instead, they had many live action movies and kiss-ass documentaries. They would never show cartoons. Never.

I assume that they were saving them for good. Ass!@#$%^.

Most of the documentaries were on how Walt Disney was a wonderful guy. He dreamt; he fought; he succeeded. Wasn’t he wonderful when he created Mickey Mouse? Wasn’t he daring when he made the first full-feature animated film? There were many interviews with fat, bald guys saying how --guess what? — wonderful Walt was.

The best thing about the documentaries was that one could see a few seconds of cartoons. The worse thing about the documentaries was that one could only see a few seconds of cartoons. To this day I have never seen all of Steamboat Willie, Ass!@#$%^.

The live action movies were the worst. There were, by far, two categories: bear movies and horse movies. The bear movies were for boys; the horse movies were for girls. Disney executives believed that having a bear would excite you if you were a boy; having a horse, thrilled you if you were a girl. The bear and horse were such powerful magnets, that Disney never bother working hard on the plot or character development; they had a bear and a horse, right?

My mother, aunts, and uncles would rhapsodize about how wonderful Disney cartoons were. Every week I prayed to God that Disney would show those cartoons. Such is the faith of children that I did this for years. It never happened. Ass!@#$%^.

Arnold Shwarzenegger, in “Pumping Iron,” psyches out his opponents by asking them if they are nervous and critiquing their workouts. This occurs throughout the entire film. He even tells a story about how he intentionally gave poor training to a German bodybuilder.

Ken Waller also psyches out a competitor by hiding his T-shirt. This is all the wrong he does in the movie.

Arnold is loved; Ken is hated. Arnold bothers others with a smile in his face; Ken is portrayed with an evil grin. A smile made the difference!

Arnold is just too likable.

I watched “Pumping Iron.” I loved the documentary, but I do not get the sport. To me, they all look very muscular; so muscular that I cannot tell one body from another. The narrator said that the judges look for symmetry, bulk, and pose. To me, they all looked symmetric and bulky. They all seemed to do the same poses.

The poses are the most intriguing. They would bend their arms, and the crowed went wild. The competitors would talk on and on about their poses. I could not see what was going on.

I guess if I ever try bodybuilding, I would understand. Since I will never do it, bodybuilding competitions will remain a mysterious rite for the rest of my life.

Late Boomers and early Xers were going to show their parents how to educate children. They got educational toys. They got flash cards. They got violin lessons, soccer practice, and art enrichment. They went to the board school to demand more homework. They thought it was an excellent idea that a preschooler should do community service before they get promoted to kindergarten. Most of their children have had a structured life.

And these are great children. Most of them are respectful, dutiful, and civically oriented.

They are more conservative than Xers and Boomers, even the children of liberal parents. This is the result of their upbringing. They love their parents, their community, and their country. They may parrot back liberal sentiments, but by doing that they are honoring their parents.

What kind of negative traits will they have? I do not know. I am eager to see.

Early Boomers never gave up on their idealism, but they did raise their children with many cynical views. The Boomers’ intention was to be like biblical prophets, who cried against the sins of the people to bring them back to the righteous path.

Unfortunately, their children did not know this. When their parents and teachers told them that politicians were crooks and businessmen greedy, they absorbed that as reality.

Boomers are horrified by the cynics they helped to raise. A typical conversation goes like this:

Boomer: Can you believe how much Cheney has enriched Halliburton? What? This doesn’t outrage you?

Xer: Why should it? He is crook politician helping greedy businessmen. That is what politicians and businessmen do. Gosh, I wish I had stock in Halliburton!

Mid to Late Boomers vowed that they would not have children like that.

The parents of the Boomers, WWII and the generation that followed, could not contained their anger at their children when they started to grow their hair long, burn their draft cards, and smoke dope. Their children protested and criticized every thing that the parents believed in.

These parents learned to hate youth; which at that time meant their children, but to this day they still resent young people. These parents could not understand how could they have raised such a bunch of un-American crowd.

The way they did it was by raising them with total faith for the American traditions of liberty, equality, and justice. After WWII, these parents put much of their hope for a better world in their children.

The result was a group of confident, optimistic, and idealistic children.

The children grew up to discover that the United States was not all pure and noble. Their parents, after living in the Depression and WWII, understood that this is reality, but their children would not stand for the ugliness of the world. The world had to change to fit their idealized America of 1950s TV and Hollywood. And the change had to be drastic and immediate.

The Boomers were also a group of cocky, self-aggrandizing, and self-righteous children. These negative traits are the payoff for having confident, optimistic, and idealistic men and women.

Saluton, Amikoj! Mi lernas esperanton. Kaj mi mangxas kukon. Mi malamas lakton. Mi magxas kukon kaj trinkas akvon. Mi havas unu knabinon, Isabella. Kaj Sxi amas kukon kaj malamas lakton.

Pop culture is junk. Why? Because the market for it is the great masses of trashy people. The worse thing about acknowledging this truth is that I have to admit that I love pop culture. Ergo, I am trash.

But so are you, self-righteous windbag!

So is the National Review, which while talking about how they revere classical education, they can't publish enough articles on pop culture. They show them as evidence that the world is worse today than it was in the past; however, they seem to be very current on what is hot on Hollywood. Hmmm.


That is like claiming that one abhors homosexuality sooo much, that you have to subscribe to Gay magazines, watch Queer As Folk, go to Gay Pride Parades, and visit the bathhouses in San Francisco; for the purpose of documenting their unnatural behavior, of course.

Gee! What I happy coincidence! There is a man who does this! Check Peter LaBarbara’s site Self-Hating Closet Case?

But I drifted from the original point. Let me recap and sign off:

YOU ARE TRASH TOO.