Cultural infantilism. Escapism as abdication

[Ray Zdybrow]

I don't read literature just because I can identify with the situation. Quite the reverse, I read a lot of horror or sci-fi or fantasy or whatever because it gives me new perspectives or ideas or just because it takes me, safely, into a new realm of experience.

There seems to be a trend amongst the under 30's, to want to see yourself in the media you consume - and that if you're not there on the screen or the page it's minimising your existence, in some way. I don't fully understand that.

I agree with you to an extent, but if you NEVER see someone like you in the books that you read, and there's NEVER any representation of your point of view, you just might get a bit fed up... or start writing it yourself!

 

[psikeyhackr]

In the '40s hard sci fi was considered infantile.

How could anyone tell what was hard sci fi from the covers of 1940s magazines?

 

[JunkMonkey]

How could anyone tell what was hard sci fi from the covers of 1940s magazines?

Was there any other kind of SF in the 40s?

 

[psikeyhackr]

Was there any other kind of SF in the 40s?

Of course, some people call Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom stories science fiction.
Read some of the stuff in Project Gutenberg from the 1940s.

 

[Mon0Zer0]

Watching Werner Herzog on Laurence Krauss' podcast and he talks about the dumbing down of culture. Ignore the somewhat clickbaity title:

"The time of great [film] reviewers [is gone]. But this culture has disappeared and has been replaced... by celebrity news. And it has shifted to the internet. And I remember the good old days... the 1970's... on prime time television you had Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer discussing and debating over the shape of the modern American novel. Prime Time!" - Herzog, 29:00 minutes into video.

Coincidentally, I watched this exact programme by chance a few weeks ago, and, well... let's just say the actual debate between Mailer and Vidal is more of a childish slanging match; less about the shape of the modern American novel and more about personal emnities. It's Jerry Springer for New Yorker readers.

Some of the verbal jabs are quite amusing. I would take this over Jerry or Oprah anyday.

 

[Mon0Zer0]

I agree with you to an extent, but if you NEVER see someone like you in the books that you read, and there's NEVER any representation of your point of view, you just might get a bit fed up... or start writing it yourself!

Writing it yourself is a good thing! More perspectives in literature is also a good thing. Fully support.

It's good if literature articulates something you feel you can relate to, but relating only to yourself smacks of narcissism. As a reader though, I'd prefer it if it wasn't me in a space suit blasting space vampires because I know what I look like first thing in the morning.

Reading is about vicarious experience, we're holidaying in other people's heads and broadening horizons.

 

[Toby Frost]

I've got quite used to people who look and sound like me in Hollywood films - usually playing idiots, cowards and villains!

It's an odd one, because outside the extremely broad lines of being male and having Western-sounding names, I never saw much of myself in the heroes of novels when I was growing up, and didn't expect so. Characters were usually square-jawed action man types or techy scientists. The characters I did tend to sympathise with were usually eccentric batchelor-types, some of whom were what I've heard people call "coded gay".

Back on topic, I find it difficult to know how much things like science documentaries have been dumbed-down. Back in the old days, it was considered perfectly acceptable to have one academic effectively give a lecture aimed at other academics, like the AJP Taylor talks. Now, the technology is better, so presentation is more slick, and it's accepted that the audience won't be another expert but just an interested and intelligent layman. I suppose it varies as to how intelligent that person is taken to be.

Actually, anyone wanting to hear intelligent discussion could do worse than to check out Radio 4's "In Our Time" and "A History of the World in 100 Objects", both of which are pretty good.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Back on topic, I find it difficult to know how much things like science documentaries have been dumbed-down. Back in the old days, it was considered perfectly acceptable to have one academic effectively give a lecture aimed at other academics, like the AJP Taylor talks. Now, the technology is better, so presentation is more slick, and it's accepted that the audience won't be another expert but just an interested and intelligent layman. I suppose it varies as to how intelligent that person is taken to be.

Not sure AJP was giving a lecture to other academics. I'm sure he knew he was talking to an (interested) lay audience. Straight to camera, letting his words tell the story, letting his arguments shape the narrative. It was simple, straightforward and to the point.

These days our interested and intelligent layman has to be shown 'standing on the actual spot' where XY or Z happened - followed by three of four beauty shots of our interested and intelligent layman looking at the very spot, maybe touching the very spot reverentially before while his or her voice over tells us that, important as this very spot was, somewhere else something interesting was going on that would have an important impact on XY or Z. Cut to our interested and intelligent layman standing outside an unimpressive building somewhere else (possibly on the other side of the world) "it was within these walls that..." And so on. The audience spends more time looking at the scenery - or looking at the interested and intelligent layman looking at the scenery (there will always be one shot of the IILL doing the Luke Skywalker Star Wars Sunset Shot) than absorbing - or even hearing - anything interesting.

A while back I watched a BBC thing about Tesla, during the course of which a whole film crew went to New York to film The Actual Spot where Tesla lived his final days. The uninteresting building he lived in was now a hotel. The Actual Room that Nicolas Tesla spent his declining years in was a hotel bedroom. It looked like any other hotel bedroom I've ever seen. We got to see the uninteresting hotel bedroom from several angles. God knows how much licence payers money was spent obtaining this riveting footage. Tesla, we were told, liked to talk to pigeons and vice versa. So, just in case the audience didn't know what pigeons looked like - or maybe to reassure the audience that New York pigeons looked exactly the same as 'normal' pigeons and they didn't talk - we got a montage of pigeons. New York pigeons. Possibly the very pigeons that were descended from the very pigeons that Tesla may have talked to. Maybe they interviewed one of the pigeons later in the program or got a World Renowned expert on Pigeons (Establish experts expertise by having expert take big book from shelf shot here) tell us that New york pigeons have very little to say about Tesla. I have no idea if they did because I switched the thing off before I kicked the screen in.

Just go trawl the Archives of the Royal Institute Christmas Lectures and compare things like Sagan's tour of the Solar System

The planets – The history of Mars (1977)

Carl Sagan explores how humans have studied the red planet.

www.rigb.org

with the Clown Show, Special Guest gimmick-driven drivel they serve up these days.
Secrets and lies | The Royal Institution: Science Lives Here My kids don't even watch them any more.