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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22658 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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Declaring one's own aesthetic preferences to be moral precepts was supposed to be a conservative failing, not one of old-school commies.

Not dressing like shit.

"Proper business attire" wasn't handed down from the Gods, it didn't even become that until the earliest 20th century.

Varied and challenging artistic tastes.

C.S. Lewis answered that one:

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

Valorization of ordinary lives and work.

Should be expected from a communist. His error here is he's taking "crypto bros or hustle bros or WallStreetBets types" as the mode. No, these people have always been with us. They're flashy but not the norm. Some of them hit it big, most of them fail. The idea of "going to college, getting a good job, working hard, and slowly building wealth for retirement." has rarely been more valorized.

Resistance to celebrity obsession.

Two words: Elvis Presley. Nothing's changed much here recently.

The prohibition against selling out.

There was this idea of “selling out” in the 1990s

1990s? Certainly it goes back at least to the 1960s. And as with the "crypto bros", most everyone DID sell out, usually sooner rather than later. Most of those who didn't had nothing to sell. Note the complaint here is rather in conflict with the complaint about insufficient valorization of ordinary lives and work.

Declaring one's own aesthetic preferences to be moral precepts was supposed to be a conservative failing, not one of old-school commies.

Hahaha

The history of authoritarian communism gives lie to that claim.

Two words: Elvis Presley. Nothing's changed much here recently.

If you look at videos of Elvis performing in his prime, I think most of the people going hysterical and literally fainting were teenage girls. I think that's largely Freddie's point: that certain behaviour which is acceptable in teenagers is very unbecoming in adults who ought to know better. Which includes many Swifties. I absolutely think the phenomenon of unmarried childless thirty-plus women spending small fortunes in order to go see a teenybopper on tour is a new one, actually.

C.S. Lewis answered that one

But C.S. Lewis did have varied and challenging artistic tastes! There's nothing wrong with a person in their thirties reading YA fiction in addition to reading books intended for adults. It's when YA fiction, fantasy, sci-fi etc. is all that you read that it becomes a sign of immaturity.

Elvis's rabid teenage fans grew up to be his rabid thirty-plus female fans (and his remaining rabid 80+ female fans who sustain SirusXM's Elvis channel). Same goes for Swift; she's not a teenybopper anymore; she was famously born in 1989 making her 35 years old.

Possibly this was less obvious in the days of “live fast, die young”.

But that's actually my question - in the 1970s, were there actually any unmarried childless women in their thirties showing up to Elvis gigs and literally fainting with excitement?

Sorry, when referring to Taylor Swift as a teenybopper I meant that her music's primary target demographic is and always has been teenage girls, not that she herself is a teenager.

But that's actually my question - in the 1970s, were there actually any unmarried childless women in their thirties showing up to Elvis gigs and literally fainting with excitement?

In a word, yes.

I mean, do you have any evidence to support this claim?

Do you have any reason to doubt? I couldn't, without significant effort, produce specific evidence of this. And my experience with "citation needed" is no citation will be accepted anyway. But here's something in the ballpark.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Elvis/comments/xhef68/on_december_31st_1975_elvis_performed_the_largest/

And my experience with "citation needed" is no citation will be accepted anyway.

That was needlessly rude. "There's no point providing evidence for my factual claims, because even if I do you people won't believe me anyway" seems profoundly out of keeping with the ethos of this space.

"There's no point providing evidence for my factual claims, because even if I do you people won't believe me anyway" seems profoundly out of keeping with the ethos of this space.

Maybe, but that doesn't make it false.

My claim was that celebrity mania in adults was nothing new. You responded with the very specific and hard to verify claim that no over-30, unmarried, childless women were fainting at Elvis Presley concerts in the 1970s. Having been around in the 1970s, I'm fairly certain that's not true; I know for certain that many of Presley's earlier, older, fans were still going to those concerts, but I can't verify that they included unmarried childless women nor that any of the latter fainted. Probably a search of newspapers at the time would either verify this or fail to do so, but that would be considerable work. But if I found such a report, I feel the chances are good the goalposts would move again.

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Sorry, when referring to Taylor Swift as a teenybopper I meant that her music's primary target demographic is and always has been teenage girls, not that she herself is a teenager.

This is obviously false, though. Her primary target demographic, throughout her career, has been, “people of roughly the same age as Taylor Swift.” As she has aged, her fanbase has aged along with her, and her lyrical subject matter has evolved concurrently. Yes, many girls who are currently teenage are into Taylor Swift, but she doesn’t have the cachet among that demographic that she did 10 years ago, and the majority of people at her shows are millennials, none of whom are currently teenaged.

That's fair. I guess from a compositional standpoint, what little of her music I'm familiar with screams "pop for teenaged girls" for me, even the more recent stuff, even if the lyrical content is more mature than one would expect of pop for teenaged girls.

People’s comfort music is usually reminiscent of what they listened to as teens. Not sure why they’re so over the top about it, but the preference is unsurprising.

I’m not hugely into following pop stars, but aren’t her most popular songs from earlier in her career when she acted like a teenager because, well, she was one.

Not at all. Her commercial peak began in her mid- to late-20s and has persisted well into her 30s.

Of course, but even her more recent singles (like "Anti-Hero") sound, from a compositional perspective, largely indistinguishable from singles released by the current generation of teen or early twenties pop stars, whose target demographic is teenage girls.

I mean you basically just admitted you haven’t listened to very much of her music, so why should anyone take seriously your opinions regarding its composition qualities?

Last year I was curious if there was anything to this whole "academic analysis of Taylor Swift's music" thing, so I listened to the song which, to my understanding, is universally considered to be her crowning achievement: "All Too Well". It sounded like a Sixpence None the Richer cut that didn't make the album, and the lyrics were decidedly adolescent, even juvenile. If that's the best she can do (according to all the music critics and academics who have built up a cottage industry around obsessively analysing her music and lyrics), I see little reason to dig any deeper. If there are songs in her discography which are more impressive from a compositional or lyrical perspective, I'll give them a go, but I honestly don't expect to be impressed.

I'll grant that some of the singles are catchy if forgettable.

I think there is something different in a lot of these areas in that the fans of (insert Taylor Swift, LEGO, Star Wars, Marvel, Funko Pops, Video Games etc) would probably still have been fans in the past, at least to some extent, but due to trends around marriage and having kids, instead of listening to a radio station or going to a movie or whatever they have high levels of disposable income and time to spend on their hobbies that would otherwise be spent on children.

I personally see this as net negative for society, others might see it as net positive, but I think it is hard to argue it is not happening.

I personally see this as net negative for society, others might see it as net positive, but I think it is hard to argue it is not happening.

It's not that it's not happening. It's that it's not new. Video games are kind of the exception, but the idea that they were ever just for children never really solidified; the Boomers (except the youngest) pretty much played them ONLY as adults if they played them, and every generation since never stopped playing.

There's nothing wrong with a person in their thirties reading YA fiction in addition to reading books intended for adults. It's when YA fiction, fantasy, sci-fi etc. is all that you read that it becomes a sign of immaturity.

This seems like a classic motte-and-bailey situation. I find that I'm put off by this sort of rhetoric not because I disagree that having varied and challenging artistic tastes is of value, but because I at least suspect that I am actually being called to narrow and limit my artistic tastes. Indeed, your OP here is all about how our society needs to be less permissive - how we should permit fewer things, fewer styles, less art.

I at least suspect that I am actually being called to narrow and limit my artistic tastes.

What makes you think that?

Because the complaints focus on the cringe art that the targets of the criticism are associated with, and not on the good art that they are failing to engage with.

Well, it's rather pointless trying to discuss the merits of a particular work of art with someone who hasn't experienced it, surely.

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