5/31/23
Newsletter #353
The Crack of Dawn
I’ve been bitching for a long time (probably about 30 years now) that movies, music, and all the arts are down the shit hole. I’ve quoted Marshall McLuhan many times over the years that, “Art is the early-warning system of a society.” Meaning, when a society’s art goes down the shit hole, the society itself follows soon thereafter.
As I’ve brought this up over the years, I invariably get the response that art changes with the times, and I’m just not staying up – art is not diminishing; art is metamorphosing into something higher, better, and more complex than an old, simpleminded fellow like me can comprehend. I’m just like every other Baby-boomer; I can’t understand what’s happening, and I’m nostalgic for my youth.
Bullshit. The past is gone. Either we learn from it, or we don’t. In the case of music, since I’m not a musician, I could never quite put my finger on it. Why does music now suck? Well, I brought this up enough times so that my buddy, who is a musician, as well as a former automotive engineer, and just a plain old inquisitive person, sent me this link for a YouTube doc entitled, Why is Modern Music So Awful?
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/michaelgc11%40gmail.com/CqMvqmWZBzpSqrGbZVTdbJtbsHhJjHVsjjCdjCvtqxcSHmzWzKqzFrlvDHHLdNTgpGbsJgmDrJq?projector=1
The host is a young (30?), very bright British fellow named Thoughty2 who has 5.8 million subscribers. He has a butch mustache in his profile picture, but not in the doc. I found his presentation a little odd. He does state a number of very clear reasons for this present phenomenon of awful music, which he illustrates with several disconcerting graphs. One graph depicts the decline in key changes over five decades, and I found it shocking. The quantity of key changes is not an opinion: this is a definable, countable fact. Since 2015 the number of key changes has plummeted.
Another topic for another day is Rick Beato and his Understanding Music show. He has one show about key changes – a thing I couldn’t identify with a cocked .45 at my temple – and how magically satisfying they are. And they are.
Another statistical fact that I didn’t just dream up is that lyrics have become dumb and dumber. How is this measured? Simply by counting how many different words are used. Presently, less words are used intentionally to achieve simpler algorithms. Of course, they are, but I never would have thought of it. The part of the story where you find out just how many writers are composing these simpleminded songs for every single singing star of the present moment, I found shocking. Nevertheless, though modern music is awful, I was pleased to be proven sane, as opposed to being nothing more than an aggravated old curmudgeon, which I am anyway.
Last night as I bopped through YouTube, its algorithmic recommendations based on my previous views, found me the mustachioed Thoughty2 explaining why modern movies are so awful. This time I found Mr. Thoughty2 – with his Freddie Mercury-like mustache – incredibly incisive, yet somehow unwatchable. But he pointed out and named an idea upon which I could not put my finger – meta-modernism.
I didn’t like his examples – Top Gun: Maverick and High Noon – and I quickly turned Thoughty2 off. But he did get to me thinkin, and gave me a term – meta-modernism – and I thank him, but I didn’t watch his show – he used the word “modernism” 25 times in ten minutes, and I had to bail. Nor did he give me a term for pre-modernism – pastism? Old fashioned?
From my perspective (not his), it wasn’t until 1935 that movies began to take that step into what he is referring to as modernism – that it’s not simply puerile crap that might possibly sell – that it’s actually saying something about the human condition, and is therefore art. Pastism to modernism, if you will, is a step up in sophistication. With this paintbrush I can do more than just paint signs; I can paint my interpretation of life.
But modernism is over, man. Get with the program. Now we’re in meta-modernism.
Meta is a popular prefix these days, not to mention a company name, and it has several meanings. I think Mark Zuckerberg – who seems like somebody I met at a Bar Mitzvah – thinks of Meta meaning “transcendental” or at least “more comprehensive.” But Thoughty2 is referring to Meta’s other meaning: referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; being self-referential.
Winking at us. Tongue-in-cheek. Insincerity. We know that we’re in a movie. Movies, somehow, became about movies, not about the story they were telling. And my brain went directly to 1992. That was the year of Unforgiven, which to me was somehow, “the last great movie.” But 1992 is also the year of Reservoir Dogs, which I could easily accept as the beginning of the meta-modernism era. Quentin is most definitely winking at us.
YouTube will probably give me back Thoughty2’s video, which I will watch all of this time. But he has made me think. His point with Top Gun: Maverick, BTW, which I haven’t seen, nor feel the need to see, is that it’s dead-ass sincere, and therefore not meta-modern, and that’s why it seemed old-fashioned. And that’s why it made a lot of money.
However, if it takes resurrecting a piece of shit like Top Gun to return us to the “good old days,” you can have them. I’d rather drive a truck.
The sun also rises, ever think about that?