Posted by
Andrews on Sunday, January 11, 2009 3:51:32 PM
I was wondering if perhaps my recent posts had gone a bit too far, assigned too much meaning to rather trivial recent events, but then, IMDB chat boards come riding to the rescue. Following my
criticism of The Watchmen, and my argument that it was one of the forces pushing the "antihero" concept into the pop culture mainstream, I visited IMDB to see if the film was yet scheduled for release. (It is,
in March of this year, but that is beside my point.)
While looking through the comments on the message boards I
found this (ellipsis is mine, to remove an obscenity):
It was a f[...]ng post-modern critique! The entire story was about deconstructing cliches! That's what post-modern means!
And with those words, I was convinced that my criticism was entirely founded.
If there is one thing that I despise more than anything else in modern cultural trends it is the "deconstruction" trend. Be it in the lit crit set, or their expansion into meaningful fields such as law and architecture, the entire concept that art needs to be not about beauty or pleasure, but instead about "subverting" and "destruction" is the most troubling modern trend.
I wrote about this in my post "
Why People Don't Take Academics Seriously", but it probably deserves a more comprehensive analysis. However, for the moment, I will simply say that I feel vindicated. As The Watchmen really started the "graphic novel" as literature viewpoint, as it has been hailed as meaningful by people whose hygiene declares they do not normally read comics, and as comics have gradually been accepted into mainstream culture, I think seeing this "deconstructivist" comic as a baleful influence is hardly a stretch. So, thank you nameless IMDB poster, your attempt at praise has convinced me I was right in ridiculing this effort.
POSTSCRIPT
By the way, I have to add one other trend to our cultural decline, Quentin Tarantino. I admit that
Reservoir Dogs was a moderately amusing movie, though I liked it better when it was called
The Taking of Pelham 123 and did not involve so many pop culture references and dismemberment. And
Pulp Fiction was modestly amusing, though nowhere near as "groundbreaking" as all the fanboys claimed. (For that matter,
neither was the "
groundbreaking"
Blair Witch Project, but most "ground breaking" movies are only novel to those who never saw the films from which they stole.)
However, Tarantino more than anyone else brought the annoying "geek" sensibility into the mainstream. His obsession with trivia, with kung fu films and comic books, his fascination with snarky dialogue and "clever" references to obscure seventies pop culture all have helped to shape some of the most annoying trends in modern culture. In fact, more than anyone else, Tarrantino embodies the sensibility of the internet in film. If you watch a Tarantino film, listen to the dialogue, then read the chatter on Slashdot or IMDB, and see how close the two are. It is not a comparison which is flattering for Tarantino.
Then again, I suppose some will say "they are just movies", and that they are. However, that is one area in which Brent Bozell and his ilk are correct. I may disagree with them about how influential film and television are in terms of violence and so on, but in terms of telling us what is good and bad, what is clever, what is worthy of praise, pop culture does play a role. And sadly, by making the snarky geek and endless pop culture references the height of wit, Tarantino and others have made our culture, if nothing else, much more irritating.