I'd like to think of myself as a culture critic, naturally. I don't want to
believe I'm just a guy, narrowly past 50, who is having a kneejerk "Bah! This
generation..." reaction. Not that such reactions are entirely without value.
Every generation needs to be critiqued; needs a mirror held up, by someone more
experienced, so it can see itself. But when we're mere curmudgeons, we hold up a
funhouse mirror, we distort the picture.
Not sure of myself here, though. Not sure if my mirror is distorted. But I see
young men with their spiky but not too challenging haircuts on Fox, or young
women in that little pseudo-program wedged into a window above the scrolling
list on the TV Guide Channel, talking about Britney Spears, or whoever the
latest media drone is, artlessly gushing over their friend Paris Hilton when
Paris's publicist has gotten her a spot to promote her new perfume (does
shallowness have an aroma?), and it seems to me that they're lifeless in a whole
new way. Used to be (see how curmudgeonly that sounds? But is it wrong?) that
people interviewing celebrities once had *some* kind of core to them, some sense
of person there. Now you can almost hear them thinking ahead to their next
career move. They want to get done with the interview so they can text message
their agent.
I mean, somehow, anyone really looking just intuits that these people don't
think about what life's about, or how they got here, or if there might be a
higher calling; you feel like their idea of finding the way to live is all about
purchasing the right objects and going to the right places for them--are they a
BMW person or a Lexus person? Are they into Cabo or Las Vegas? Designer jeans or
Armani? Do they believe in investing in land or bonds? Do they like sex-buddies
or is a girlfriend more useful? Do they "party" or are they more into
snowboarding? Those are the issues. Nothing more. One perceives that particular
absence in their questions, in their eyes, in their style: nothing else is
going on, inside them.
Much of media feels like an infomercial--like a show that's all commercial,
pretending not to be-- even when it's not. That fashion model with her own talk
show--she's like an excruciatingly high paid infomercial host. Or Joan Rivers'
daughter--and poor Joan Rivers, with a frozen manequin-face shot full of toxin. (No
one has noticed that the word "botox" contains "tox" as in toxin? No one is
wondering how much can accumulate in you before the horrific physical reactions
set in?) There's not a glimpse, the faintest glimpse of anything authentically
human in the way they express themselves in media. Sure, they're different in
person...I hope.
Even the daily papers are redesigning themselves for simplicity of absorption,
offering colorful box photo "menus" to choose from. They'll be gone, soon,
replaced with online newspapers, of course. And I'm just a curmudgeon to
complain about that--even though looking into a screen is not as comfortable as
looking at a newspaper, and even though articles in online news venues are often
shorter, more simple minded. What am I, Andy Rooney over here? I'm turning into
him, I'm afraid.
I play poker, but the television fascination with the game is beginning to scare
me. Young people are beginning to make it a financial goal. It's their early
retirement plan. No one interviews the kids who got into it and lost their money
and their parents' money; who're getting into trouble for credit card fraud so
they can play poker.
Shows on MTV about Sweet Sixteen parties. Teenagers getting --not making this
up--gold and diamond encrusted Playstation consoles. Teenagers shrieking
drunkenly from the roof of $200,000limosines.
Interviewers cooing over rap-stars' cribs. Some of these guys made their first
money beating women into going down on strangers. Now we're oohing over their
"cribs".
"Hey, that's a buzz-kill man--don't be a downer, Shirley. We're only interested
in the winners.Winners by whatever means."
Oh yes. You can read it in their lifeless eyes.
