Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson

Stephen Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You first published in 2005 is a non fiction discussion on popular culture.

Steven Johnson has a degree in semiotics and literature and you can kind of tell. This book has the subtitle “How popular culture is making us smarter”. That’s plenty provocative enough, so with that you expect him to plead his case well. And he does.

Johnson takes on the task of discussing mass culture as something other than a trivial past time with no inherent merit. It’s kind of a mouthful to go at, but he does it with verve and humour and a good deal of theoretical structure hiding behind the blithe smile of the text.

It’s actually a relief to find that someone is willing to discuss mass culture as something other than a guilty pleasure we all indulge in, but won’t talk about in the clear light of day. What he goes after is proving that the current expressions of mass culture have definitely become more sophisticated and challenging in later years.

When talking about computer games he point out that the most popular games are not the shoot ‘em up games that get all the attention, but the slow and painstakingly complicated ones like SimCity and Age of Empires. He pleads a good case for the delayed gratification these games offer, the things you so rarely hear discussed, like how many hours you sometimes have to spend on a relatively sedate task in order to achieve some minor goal and the frustration that goes with that.

When discussing television he compares the series Dallas to 24 or the Sopranos, making good arguments for how the complexity of the story line has something to do with the taste of the viewers. There’s also a mention of the extremely fast paced and incredibly complicated series The West Wing, a series that actually doesn’t explain anything to the viewer, and more than that, makes it really necessary for the viewer to be active rather than passive.

He also discusses things like how the show The Apprentice or Survivor requires skills like social intelligence rather than the trivia knowledge you need to keep pace in random game shows.

Why is all this relevant? Well, there’s something to it, alright.

“So this is the landscape of the Sleeper Curve. Games that force us to probe and telescope. Television shows that require the mind to fill in the blanks, or exercise its emotional intelligence. Software that makes us sit forward, not lean back. But if the long-term trend in pop culture is toward increased complexity, is there any evidence our brains are reflecting that change?” (Johnson, p. 136).

I am a child of the postmodern, or what Bauman has chosen to term “liquid modernity” so of course this approach is going to appeal to me. Johnson offer the opinion that you have to ask a different set of questions to the popular culture than has been done in the past. I’m all for it. By all means, look at the statistics and see how the levels of complexity offered in computer games challenge the players ability to vast amounts of information at a glance and what that means in terms of intelligence and information assimilation.

There’s always been a sort of canonical war between high and low culture, but there’s always been considerable crossbreeding between the two as well, and this book argues the point that the sheer complexity of some popular culture is a symptom of something or other. That, in an of itself, is enough to make this a work worth reading.

And besides… it’s fun.

Mule

Generation X by Douglas Coupland

Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland was first published in 1991.

According to Thomas Reed Whissen’s Classic Cult Fiction no one can set out to write a cult book on purpose, at least not in the same way as you can write a western or a whodunit; cult has to do with reader reaction rather than genre.

But if there ever was a generic cult book Douglas Coupland’s Generation X is a strong contender for the title. It has it all. Already the word “generation” in the title gives away the subculture, spokesman-ambition. And the “X” – symbol of the unknown – catches the spirit of alienation, essential to culthood, perfectly. As if this is not enough, Coupland offers the reader a trip via identification with the narrator, Andy, to the Shangri-la of all cult books: ego-reinforcement and spiritual rebirth. It serves up Mcjob-cynicisms and spiritual sustenance in the same helping and it is all very masculine, white, alienated and intelligent. A counter-culture assault aimed at the kneecaps of mainstream America, Andy thrashes contemporary yuppie culture verbally, while his friend, Dag, who is more physically resolute and subversive, vandalises expensive cars. In between these moments of revolt Andy, Dag and Claire share stories with each other and experience some kind of nostalgic hope.

Do I sound hostile?

I am not, really. It may be that the writing is according to prescription, but I buy it all the same.

The three friends are confused, disoriented. To be more precise, they are lost in the desert of Palm Springs and their disorientation is metaphorical rather than geographical. They are not roaming the desert: they are meditating in it. Very little happens. They relax by the swimming pool, earn their living from unqualified jobs, refuse to take responsibility of their lives, and do their best to keep boredom at bay by going into an ironic self-chosen exile where they can tell stories and anecdotes, decamerone-style, about themselves. But it is not the plague that is being exorcised here, or even the atomic threat (evoked again and again in the book), but rather a sick society that threatens to infect them with a fatal attraction for conventional middle (or should I say middling) class life.

But it is easier to take the rat out of the rat race than to take the rat race out of the rat. Andy, Dag and Claire have chosen their lot as castaways of society. Yet at the same time they want to be part of it. Actually, they want to have the best of both worlds: the adventure of the republic of Bohemia and the security of the kingdom of Boredom. But they cannot, and they are frustrated. This is not as bad as it seems, however: their frustration leads to a delicious sensation of weltschmerz – enjoyable since the pain is able to make up for the lack of meaning and can make them feel somewhat alive.

In real life the options are not that big either. In practice many young people are forced to become castaways, X-ers, outsiders, whatever one wants to call them – they have no choice. The price to pay for a middle class situation in terms of workload and stress increases day by day. Hence, one of the mottoes of Generation X is “reinvent the middle classes”.

Statistics available at the back of the book point to the fact that the polarisation between the rich and the rest (in the US and the rest of the west) is increasing. Rich or poor – soon there will be nothing in between. Given this social context it is small wonder that Andy & CO feel neurotic and alienated.

But to be alienated is not entirely bad. If you are an outsider, you are somebody; you have an identity, since identity to a large extent is a question of defining oneself against a norm. Women, blacks, children, the old and handicapped, the underprivileged are all defined against such norm or “ideal”. But what do you do if you are defined as the norm? Young, white men are per definition without identity – at least if they are well behaved. In my opinion cult books show that these “men without qualities” are special too, and different, albeit neurotic…This explains too the high status cult books enjoy despite their often counter-cultural messages.

When maladjusted young, white man reads about another maladjusted young white man a very special chemical process is started. Boy meets boy = True. Whissen uses words like idealisation, alienation, suffering, ego-reinforcement, behaviour-modification and vulnerability to define this truly platonic love.

Andy is a higher being, despite his alienation. He is supreme because of his intelligence, his radical attitude and, not least, because of his suffering. Identification with Andy leads to a situation where the reader’s ego is stroked and petted. You feel almost as intelligent, radical and brave as he. Yet identification can never be complete and this is of course unsatisfactory. Hence, the ideal cult reader modifies his (it is usually a he) behaviour in order to emulate the idolized and idealized Andy.

Whissen claims that this kind of reading process both depends on the reader’s vulnerability and enhances it. You have to be vulnerable to be receptive to cult books. The problem is that this openness also makes the cult reader an easy prey for ideologies hazardous for one’s mental health. A reader cum disciple is susceptible to simplified solutions and does not take real responsibility for his actions.

I don’t know.

I don’t think it is an ideal to be a superman reader – texts ricocheting from one’s impenetrable breast, texts scrutinized with X-ray vision. Words must be allowed to stab you in the heart, to flash in your eyes, to turn you on – at least for a blissful moment. Anyway, neither Andy, nor any other cult hero I know of would model their lives on a book. If I want to be as smart as X-friend Andy I too have to  realise that I must take the responsibility for my own vulnerable life.

Mule

White Noise by Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1985) is a comedy about death, if you can believe that sort of thing. The main character who gives voice to the action is a college professor by the name Jack Gladney who has made a name for himself in the academic world in the very unusual field of Hitler studies. Jack has a few failed marriages behind him, and four children: Heinrich, Denise, Steffie and Wilder. His current wife Babette is described as suffering from some vague medical condition, that puts you in mind of Alzheimer’s.

In the beginning of the novel the whole family has to evacuate their house due to an “airborne toxic event”, a non descript cloud of foulness that suddenly takes everyone out of their humdrum routine existence and turns the citizens into refugees in their own country, an experience that is described as surreal, harrowing and kind of funny.

Once the toxic event is under control and people return to their homes, Jack begins to worry more about Babette and he manages to find out that she is taking an experimental drug called Dylar. Much of the action of the second part of the novel rests on this drug, what it is supposed to cure and what Babette has had to do to be accepted in the study that provides the drug. I’m not going to give it away here, but let’s just say it has some far reaching and absurd ramifications.

This is one of those novel’s that have gained the dubious soubriquet post-modern fiction. And if you have read any Paul Auster you know what that means. A meandering tale, vague and a bit pointless, like life itself, that isn’t afraid of the lacunae and leaving you hanging without answers. At the same time it is sharp in its observation of detail. It is rich in witty dialogue and has lots of mad ideas. The structure is more a triptych than a straight forwards novel with beginning, middle and end. It is not a morality tale.

Sometimes with postmodern fiction it is easier defining what it is not… But it is enjoyable, witty, dark and has a deep underpinning of humanism in its true sense. DeLillo pokes fun at consumerism, false intellectualism and the family unit. Several of Jack’s ex-wives have worked in intelligence, making a career of lies and deceit. DeLillo makes fun of conspiracy theories and he makes fun of fear.

But at the same time he is caustic and observant when it comes to human behaviour. Like some other postmodern authors you get the sense that in observing the minutiae, the tiniest details of human behaviour, we stand a better chance of making sense of things than if we try to look at the bigger picture. “Il n’y a pas de hors texte” as Derrida put it. There is nothing outside the text. Stop trying to act like this is reality… Or something like that.

Here’s a little sample of the dry humour:

“I’d like to lose interest in myself, I told Murray. ‘Is there any chance of that happening?’

None. Better men have tried.” (DeLillo, p. 152)

That pretty much says it all as far as postmodernism and the subject of the self goes.

I enjoy DeLillo in that somewhat disjointed way you enjoy postmodern fiction. Trying to explain what it is about and why you like it is always a little tricky because it has to do with a general reshuffling of categories. But if you don’t mind not getting all the answers and find the mind set appealing this is one of the good ones.

Mule.