"What the Great Depression Did to Culture"

[Fletch]

I think you can throw all of those under the "pop culture" umbrella, really -- it's basically defined as any kind of culture produced for mass consumption, as opposed to "high" culture, even if it's supposedly the product of a "marginalized" subgroup. "Popular Culture Studies" tries to examine how they meld into some ill-defined cultural mass that can basically be interpreted in whatever way a PhD candidate wants to interpret it. Or, if you want to be cynical, it's a discipline that lets college kids get class credit for reading comic books and watching "Star Trek," as long as they pretend not to enjoy it.

You "want to be cynical," don't you.

That's all right; so do I.

 

[Dr Doran]

It's not so much that as it is the whole hand-wringing, condescending "how naive these people must be to believe such things" mindset that goes along with the interrogation. It's that kind of attitude that put me off ever considering any kind of formal career in cultural studies, that implicit attitude of "we're so much more *enlightened* than those poor bogtrotters as

What you are identifying is a very left-wing, very politically correct viewpoint that treats, for example, mild nativism as violent racism, that treats the US as though it were the only land in which slavery had ever existed, treats the human family as an intrinsically oppressive, arbitrary social construct, treats labor as inherently demeaning <!>, and views every exchange between two parties as one of oppression in which the victim needs exoneration and the opressor needs to be chastised. I hate it, and some academics still do it. Many are young, so it will exist for as long as I do. But I hate it too.

we stroke our beards and sip our chardonnay." Feh. I'd rather work for a living.

Perhaps I am feeling a bit defensive, but please do keep in mind that I did work for a living, in the grocery industry, for 12 long years while I put myself through school. When the opportunity came to earn money by reading and teaching, I took it.

So please do not commit the sin against academics that they commit against the Noble Worker Of The 1930s and look down on ALL of them quite so much. Academia has many nimrods, it's true, but a few great folks as well. (Just like any other field.)

 

[LizzieMaine]

So please do not commit the sin against academics that they commit against the Noble Worker Of The 1930s and look down on ALL of them quite so much. Academia has many nimrods, it's true, but a few great folks as well. (Just like any other field.)

True, and for what it's worth, from what you've contributed here, I've never pegged you as a goatee-caresser. But in the areas in which I specialize -- broadcasting and media history -- just about everything that I've seen coming out of academia in the last twenty years has been 90 percent overeducated blowhardism and 10 percent fact, and often selected-only-to-support-the-thesis fact at that.

This is my biggest gripe against cultural studies as it's taught today -- the assumption that it's far more important for the reader to know how Today's Fashionable Intellectuals™ interpret history than it is to know exactly what happened and how. More hard factual research and less coffeehouse philosophizing would be a very good thing, if you ask me, and if you're carrying the flag for that, more power to you.

 

[Dr Doran]

True, and for what it's worth, from what you've contributed here, I've never pegged you as a goatee-caresser. But in the areas in which I specialize -- broadcasting and media history -- just about everything that I've seen coming out of academia in the last twenty years has been 90 percent overeducated blowhardism and 10 percent fact, and often selected-only-to-support-the-thesis fact at that.

This is my biggest gripe against cultural studies as it's taught today -- the assumption that it's far more important for the reader to know how Today's Fashionable Intellectuals™ interpret history than it is to know exactly what happened and how. More hard factual research and less coffeehouse philosophizing would be a very good thing, if you ask me, and if you're carrying the flag for that, more power to you.

I have no goatee, true. I hate blowhardism, too. Perhaps one of the irritations you face is in the fact that you are dealing with the DISCIPLINE of "Cultural Studies" which rests on axioms that are questionable. As Fletch pointed out, Stuart Hall was a bigshot in early Cultural Studies and he was kind of interesting in his interest in the working class. Cultural Studies as a field tends to lean on sociology, which, as a discipline unto itself, contains at the present day (i.e. after Max Weber, who was great) at least 50% nonsensical, very P.C. theory selected by the ivory tower goatee-Volk you rightly despise and their female counterparts, who also sometimes have goatees. Cultural Studies as a field overemphasizes identity politics and we have all seen how completely insane this can get (for example, essays on "feminist epistemology" as though reality itself is different if you are possessed of female reproductive organs vs. male ones). The monstrousness of post-WW2 literary theory from existentialism onwards, particularly as I mentioned earlier including the perspectives that are associated with postmodernism, has a great effect on Cultural Studies too, as far as I can tell.

History as a discipline, on the other hand, has been slower to embrace these fads, and I like that about it. I have often observed the thing you say about how students are more trained to think about how the last two and a half decades of fashionable intellectuals have THOUGHT about a topic, rather than being expected to understand what happened, where, what the causation is, and so on. I hate it. (Lately History as a discipline has been embracing things like demography and quantitative social science and I like that fine.)

I had an odd conversation with a certain youngish confirmed American marxist about 5 years ago. I told him of my love for film noir. Instead of discussing the actual films, he started asking me about the theorists who had written about the films and who my favorite theorists on film noir were! And my favorite theorist on film noir is Eddie Mueller who hates capital-T theory (the hilarious introduction to his book Dark City explains this). So I simply looked at the marxist condescendingly and said, "I prefer to study the primary sources, not the secondary interpretation."

I won that exchange.

 

[kampkatz]

Thanks for the very deep discussion. Important for those of us truly interested in historical fact.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I had an odd conversation with a certain youngish confirmed American marxist about 5 years ago. I told him of my love for film noir. Instead of discussing the actual films, he started asking me about the theorists who had written about the films and who my favorite theorists on film noir were! And my favorite theorist on film noir is Eddie Mueller who hates capital-T theory (the hilarious introduction to his book Dark City explains this). So I simply looked at the marxist condescendingly and said, "I prefer to study the primary sources, not the secondary interpretation."

And that brings us exactly right back to my basic point. I don't have a problem with the *idea* of cultural studies -- but I submit that before one can attempt to credibly interpret culture, one must be thoroughly familiar with the primary sources of that culture. Too many of the people writing in the field today clearly are not.

 

[Dr Doran]

And that brings us exactly right back to my basic point. I don't have a problem with the *idea* of cultural studies -- but I submit that before one can attempt to credibly interpret culture, one must be thoroughly familiar with the primary sources of that culture. Too many of the people writing in the field today clearly are not.

I agree with you one thousand percent, Lizzie. That's why I like the fact that the field of History (as a discipline) emphasizes thorough familiarity with the primary sources as opposed to emphasizing interpretative strategies.

 

[Dr Doran]

Thanks for the very deep discussion. Important for those of us truly interested in historical fact.

One thing that freaks me out is this. I have absolutely no antipathy against gay persons in general. However, I recall on two occasions a favorite text of mine from the 1920s was lectured about by, on one occasion, a gay graduate student, and on another occasion, a gay professor. Both of these persons spent their entire lecture on the alleged gay content of the 1920s novel in question. It is true that the book COULD be interpreted as having a hidden gay theme; but it is also true that that might be entirely imaginary, a sort of wishful thinking on the part of these two gentlemen. I can excuse one of the gentlemen as his lecture was specifically about the alleged gay content of the text in question. I cannot excuse the other one: for he was introducing the text as a text TO UNDERGRADUATES whom he might have served better by discussing the more general themes present in the text, the social crisis, the period the author was writing, etc. But NO: he got up on a soapbox and Told The World His Interpretation, which was entirely gratuitous and .... had a lot more to do with the 1990s than the 1920s. In this case, the 1990s had colonized this defenseless text.

I have seen this with many interpretive schools, not just the school of Gay Studies. I have seen this coming from Marxists obviously; this can be a bit interesting, at times, though: one Marxist interpreter of Aeschylus made me see things in the Oresteia that I had never seen before.

And I have seen this a lot from radical feminists, especially when they are analyzing an unbalanced character who happens to be female and they essentially justify the crimes the character has done, with the excuse that, in a man's world, any woman who breaks out -- even by murdering her own children, in the case of Medea -- is doing something admirable by serving a purported 2,800 year old connected international feminist movement.

The Christians have not been doing this lately as they are not so active in academia at the present moment, or at least, they are not actively pushing forward a Christian interpretive school of world events. But they were once, and one sees occasionally in old texts from the early 1900s arguments that God's plan was active in the Roman Empire's conquest of the Mediterranean. How this claim can possibly be falsified or tested against other competing claims is never specified -- and I cannot respect that.

 

[Fletch]

One thing that freaks me out is this. I have absolutely no antipathy against gay persons in general. However, I recall on two occasions a favorite text of mine from the 1920s was lectured about by, on one occasion, a gay graduate student, and on another occasion, a gay professor. Both of these persons spent their entire lecture on the alleged gay content of the 1920s novel in question. It is true that the book COULD be interpreted as having a hidden gay theme; but it is also true that that might be entirely imaginary, a sort of wishful thinking on the part of these two gentlemen. I can excuse one of the gentlemen as his lecture was specifically about the alleged gay content of the text in question. I cannot excuse the other one: for he was introducing the text as a text TO UNDERGRADUATES whom he might have served better by discussing the more general themes present in the text, the social crisis, the period the author was writing, etc. But NO: he got up on a soapbox and Told The World His Interpretation, which was entirely gratuitous and .... had a lot more to do with the 1990s than the 1920s. In this case, the 1990s had colonized this defenseless text.

Somewhat apropos to this: I read a good bit of a book recently whose thesis was to define "culture keeping" - saving material culture - as a more-or-less intrinsically gay activity, based on the historically high-profile role of gays in building preservation. The book's basic argument was pretty strong - if you accepted the idea that classical masculinity obligates one to tear down, build anew, and leave a mark, and took certain other coy old stereotypes "everybody knows" as fact.

I don't buy the idea that that extends to being "keepers of culture," but in today's academic context, it would be difficult or impossible to counter-argue it without being labeled antigay. In fact probably more difficult than with your historian. Houses and objects don't let you defend your interpretation of them the way books do.

I have seen this with many interpretive schools, not just the school of Gay Studies. I have seen this coming from Marxists obviously; this can be a bit interesting, at times, though: one Marxist interpreter of Aeschylus made me see things in the Oresteia that I had never seen before.

Good point. I did a paper on Adorno & Horkheimer's 1944 essay The Culture Industry as applied to Web 2.0 (and got a very good grade, IIDSSM ). There was a lot there to work with. At the same time, a little background on Adorno revealed that he was miles away from me on the topic of 30s and 40s culture. The same movies, music, cars, and radio shows we Loungers so enjoy today gave this uncompromising refugee intellectual the spiritual dry heaves.

 

[Dr Doran]

\The same movies, music, cars, and radio shows we Loungers so enjoy today gave this uncompromising refugee intellectual the spiritual dry heaves.

That is very funny. I do meet young kids of 20 or so who are so excited about the movies, music, cars, and radio of the 1970s. I tell them I lived through all of it (albeit as a child; but still.). They get so happy. But 1970s style gives ME the dry heaves (hence a long, cruel thread somewhere in the Fedora Lounge that I started, called "Why do I hate the 1970s so much?" which should really be redacted).

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

That is very funny. I do meet young kids of 20 or so who are so excited about the movies, music, cars, and radio of the 1970s. I tell them I lived through all of it (albeit as a child; but still.). They get so happy. But 1970s style gives ME the dry heaves (hence a long, cruel thread somewhere in the Fedora Lounge that I started, called "Why do I hate the 1970s so much?" which should really be redacted).

One man's nostalgia is another man's dry heaves? lol

 

[Dr Doran]

One man's nostalgia is another man's dry heaves? lol

:eusa_clap lol

 

[Fletch]

I'm thinking we may want to re- or subtitle this thread: "What Culture Did to the Great Depression."

BTW, this is one hell of a stimulating discussion - more so than I can imagine taking place in a graduate seminar. Maybe it's a good thing we're not in that context, where folks take care not to tread on certain metaphorical toes, but often freely stamp on others.

 

[Dr Doran]

lol You're murdering me. Or maybe "What Academia Did To The Great Depression"? Hee hee.

I have a reputation as a fireball in the graduate seminars. Once there was an Aeschylus grad seminar, on the Oresteia. We had read a 1978 radical feminist article by Froma Zeitlin which essentially argued that Aeschylus' Oresteia is all about the suppression of women. I don't think the trilogy is in fact about that at all, but about the suppression of vendetta-killings. I argued my point vigorously.

The idea that anyone, particularly a Pale Heterosexual Male, would DARE to vigorously critique one of the Icons Of Academic Feminism (Froma Z.) was absolute anathema to the professor, a P.C. California Brit, as well as to my grad school nemesis, who is the classic example of Mr. "I defend the oppressed at every turn and harshly chastise anyone who dares to question the P.C. values of leftist orthodox dogma." to these folks, any critique of any position by any feminist can ONLY be motivated by misogyny. It was hilarious: both the professor and my nemesis were actually yelling at me. I loved it, and wrote a seminar paper attacking Zeitlin incisively; the professor gave me an A for the argument since it was airtight, but he was very angry at the paper since I did not toe the party line.

Another time, I foolishly took a literary theory graduate seminar. I angered everyone there by arguing that (in a discussion about how "biased" science is) Western science has not INVENTED taxonomy, but DISCOVERED how species are actually, naturally, biologically related to each other, and then DESCRIBED it. The postmodernist grad students in the room (all younger than me) were horrified, practically crying, because they want to believe that all of science is an imposition of arbitrary Western "constructs" on an essentially amorphous world. The teacher rudely ridiculed me. I held my ground. And guess what? I wrote a paper defending my view, and that professor also had to grudgingly give it an A.

The groupthink in these institutions is unbelievable. If you do not agree with their precious post-WW2 axioms, they try to pressure you into thinking you must simply be an idiot. But they cannot do this to me, since I am 10 years older than them and unlike them, I have a scientific background and some training in the study of what intellectual currents become dominant in a given period and why. I have ended up befriending some Christians, not because I am a believer, but because I have something in common with them: we both are stuck in an institution in which people are HORRIFIED if you do not agree with their precious little views.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The groupthink in these institutions is unbelievable. If you do not agree with their precious post-WW2 axioms, they try to pressure you into thinking you must simply be an idiot.

One form of orthodoxy exchanged for another. So much for the myth of free inquiry.

 

[Dr Doran]

One form of orthodoxy exchanged for another. So much for the myth of free inquiry.

HOWEVER -- if you publish, people will critique you but others will come to your aid. I was describing the grad seminar situation at Berkeley, and to be perfectly fair, Berkeley is an unusually orthodox environment in respect to two things:

1.) postmodernism

and

2.) P.C. (the latter equalling radical leftism in general, especially "identity politics", plus an INSISTENCE that if you do not agree with the party line, you are a bad person).

I think many academic institutions (especially major ones) TEND that way, but not all are as freakish about that sort of thing as Berkeley is.

It really was not a good choice of school for me, in retrospect. But it doesn't matter anymore since I'm writing the dissertation now and I don't have to deal with people much. And now, I can write my rebuttals to this sort of craziness in print and try to get them published.

 

[Foofoogal]

:eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap

 

[Dr Doran]

More on postmodernism

Berkeley philosopher-giant John Searle performs a superb hit against postmodernism here, and on the way, explains its ... ummm ... problematic axioms:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23077

 

[ThesFlishThngs]

When exactly, I wonder, did having a differing viewpoint turn into the same thing as hate? It's a sad "enlightened" world, that cries out about embracing diversity while at the same time flinging accusations at anyone who dares give voice to a question that might make them think.

(And the English major in me cringes at the screwy tenses used, but sometimes it's hard to get it right....)

 

[Dr Doran]

A lot of this comes from a sense of urgency that these people had or have. This sense of urgency pushed them to consider the current state of affairs between the sexes, between the races, between the workers and the bosses, between the animals and the meat-eaters, between the gays and the straights, etc., as completely intolerable. Thus they get very hissy if anyone comes along who disagrees with them, or even has a different emphasis on some social issue. They feel that if you do not agree with the party line, you are one of "THEM." It's really fascinating on a sociological level.

Before I decided that after all I was an atheist, I used to call myself a Catholic. This immediately raised the suspicion of these people. A few had a faint amount of respect as that religion is so old and venerable, but most only look at its oppressive features.