Two more years and the first decade of the New Millennium will wrap up, and I’m curious to know: Will anything last? It’s an odd question certainly considering the ease with which information-and just about anything else-can be digitized and saved on a computer. But my query refers to cultural permanence; in a century, what will the future world look back on in wonder and awe?
It’s the paradox of the Information Age; anything can be preserved, yet will any of it achieve cultural immortality? When I try to reflect on the last seven years, some events of obvious import rush back (Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 Tsunami, the 2003 blackout of most of the Northeast), but they are joined by an onslaught of pointlessness: Cheney’s hunting incident, Obama Girl, a list of every winner of American Idol, and, of course, that relentless chimera of pop culture-Britnaris Lohan.
I suffer the mental equivalent of white noise. There seems to be no order to America’s cultural happenings; pop culture possesses the same leverage as hard news. In retrospect, you’d think Janet Jackson’s nipple destroyed New Orleans or anthrax was produced by the makers of Botox.
There is no filter between this decade’s Pet Rock and Watergate. Everything’s a fad, and everything’s worthy of news coverage be it on a national level or independently online.
Too much has happened, yet nothing has happened. This is the Stuff Decade. Why? Because lots of stuff happened-or has it?
Partly due to technological innovation and the nature of current news coverage, the dark side of the Information Age rears its ugly head. Freedom of access to information is a great thing, but not when it’s thrust upon you at all hours of the day. If you think about it, is there anywhere left on Earth one can travel without encountering a radio or television?
In the United States, it seems as if information is created, ingested, and forgotten nonstop. Frankly, it’s not the fault of the culture for wanting to discard information rapidly; generally, most of it is useless, yet we’re inundated with it regardless of its merit.
On the average cable news program, a celebrity’s stint in rehab gets the same (or greater) screen time than the eradication of the Amazon rainforest. Over Winter Break, coverage of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination was flanked by Britney Spears losing her mind and locking herself in her home.
This bizarre form of reporting subtly implies an equality of information: an upheaval in Pakistani politics equals a deranged pop star with little vocal talent. In addition, coverage of news events is sporadic and ever-changing. Even major events like the housing crisis of Hurricane Katrina victims waiting months for second-rate FEMA trailers are usually covered for a few days and never heard of again, until another news story about how the FEMA trailer crisis is not being covered enough.
Consider the vast numbers of websites or online videos featuring people trying to hawk their talents: singing, writing, acting, or just acting like fools. Among that motley group of would-be cultural landmarks only a thimbleful are meaningful in the ocean of cultural waste.
The mass utilization of the Web fosters a democratization of culture, wherein everyone may engage or develop the cultural landscape. However, this also leads to a dissemination of culture where individual preferences create cultural niches where minority opinions may thrive.
Nowadays, society is not informed by the homogeneous, cultural brain of affluent WASPs.
The frivolity of culture is not relegated to the realms of news and information, but the arts as well. This decade exerted tremendous influence upon music, film, and literature. There are immense freedoms of form, style, and distribution, as well as a level of invisibility. Since there are few works who translate into mass popularity, it’s difficult for the arts to thrive on a mass level.
The music and film have been suffering declines in sales, yet are experiencing a renaissance of sorts with the rise of independent labels and production. A young musician or director can whip up a Myspace page or upload a short film on Youtube in minutes, yet this ease-once again-problematizes the separation of the figurative wheat from the chaff.
Literature, too, is in much the same situation with mainstream America’s literary tastes being defined by Oprah Winfrey, Harry Potter, and The Da Vinci Code.
The fracturing of culture is not inherently bad; it’s simply a new phenomenon. And, I’m deeply curious as to how this decade will be historicized. Will J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown be studied alongside Jane Austen and Charles Dickens? Will a fractured culture cause a fractured history?
Or, perhaps, the postmodernization of culture will grant new order rather than chaos as meaning and importance will be decided by individuals in the ultimate incarnation of freedom of choice.