“Give me back the Berlin Wall, Give me Stalin and St.Paul, I’ve seen the future, brother: it is murder.”
–Leonard Cohen
Urban Outfitters may not be the best place to act as a bellwether for American culture, but if chains can’t represent us, what’s left? The store, which sells t-shirts and other light couture, oddly shaped furniture, various novelty items, and numerous books, is–like most things in malls–aimed directly at the Gen Y dollar. What’s interesting about this is that it’s t-shirts don’t feature current artists and icons, but those of decades ago. The furniture is not designed in some modern style, but are modeled on the retro looks of the seventies. The books, if not some coffee table gimmick, are retrospectives on the work of Andy Warhol, Jimi Hendrix, and Burt Reynolds. The few things that are representative of something new, are of a completely, purposefully, ironic and disinterested attitude, as if to say: Isn’t it funny how awful everything is now?
But I can’t point fingers at a corporate chain for trying to hang on indefinitely to the past. After all, what else is there to hang on to? I’ve realized lately that I, a twentysomething, when not listening to Opera of centuries ago, can usually be seen carrying an iPod filled not with the latest tunes or the newest bands, but with the music of my father’s day. Paul Simon, Harry Chapin, Leonard Cohen, and the Stones: All seem to have been far more interesting and far less dull in their and our time than anything produced today. The radio and current hit-list are filled with crooning, screaming, crying, and shouting, but none of it seems to transcend it’s dead-on-arrival dullness, not matter how violent or sexual it gets. The only movement of any interest in modern music, tends to be the remixes or “Mash-Ups” of, again, much older works.
Read any good books lately? I haven’t. In fact, I don’t think I own a book written after 1990. Those few contemporary works that I’ve attempted to read, possessed much the same attitude as Urban Outfitters: Isn’t it funny, and ironic, and–please God–completely unimportant! The same with modern film, where a 16 sixteen year old has the cynicism of a 60 year old and seems herself to know that ‘it’s just a movie, nothing important’; or there’s the ‘torture porn’ where we watch, usually disinterested, as characters face excruciatingly meaningless pain and unimaginable, but also meaningless, cruelty. No one is willing to take anything seriously anymore, not because there’s nothing to take seriously, but because we’re afraid of committing to anything. We look around and see more-and-more lost battles and decide we’d rather sit and point and laugh at both sides, than to be a loser.
It seems that for a decade–if not longer–things have been ground to a halt. It seems as if we’ve lost something. Music, Art, Film, Literature: none seem willing to move beyond irony and artifice. Is this a generational funk or is it just over?
Have you considered Subscribing to all of this madness?
Here, in the beginning was the word. And the word said 'here' and here he was. He knew not why he was here (do any of us?), but he was here and there was nothing else here, only darkness--though lacking even the quantity called 'darkness'. And though there was not yet loneliness, terror, or cold; the being found himself terribly lonely and cold. Before the being could utter a magic word or a command, light raised up to the sky and illumination seeped onto the earth causing the being to smile for a moment, but then again he found himself crying because the light had only further lit up and revealed the full extent of nothingness.
The old men of the village had their eyes firmly focused on politics again. And the economy. And property values. And sports. But not their wives; their wives were safe at home now--safe and unlooked on. The candlelit dinners and music, the awkward dancing and even more awkward reading of poetry had stopped when the young men left. No need for it anymore. Yes, the old leaders of the village no longer had to watch their spouses like hawks--even though they sat at home all day, bored. So, though there was a war going on, the elders were all noticeably calmer than during peacetime and the council meeting had a relaxed air to it.
"Liberty Univer..." Mark stopped. It was the first time either of them had said that, the word "kill". Madison Square was completely dark now except for a few people at the enclosed dog-run. 
Kyle thought as he went for a better arrangement of the list. His structure still seemed off and taking it out of alphabetical order hadn't fixed the problem. He scribbled down on his notepad again: Homosexuals, blacks, Aisans, lesbians...
Both the young teenager and the old officer were terribly embarrassed as the Police cruiser careened through some of Wilson's earliest paved roads. 
There was nothing that crazy about the nickname; Americans are a practical, simple, right-to-the-point kind of people: And quite simply, practically, that's what it was good at. Well, of course, planes are, first and foremost, good at flying, but this one was particularly well suited for killing Arabs. It was untraceable on radar, could effectively dodge either a bullet or a missile--while it's own projectiles were effectively unstoppable, and so precise that, according to one Army pilot, they could take out a towelhead without disrupting a hair on his goat's ass (his words, not mine). This was the fear of God, or Allah, or whatever.
Summer in the city. The grid is lit up like a dirty grill, hot and red, caking on the filth and the remnants of last night's meat. It's the weekend, but who cares, we have places to go, the atoms say, stretching apart, thrown together, brushing up against eachother's agendas. A week ago, a crane fell and killed two and we stood on the cool breezy street, talking and complaining to absolute strangers, calling for Mike's resignation, for action, for bureaucratic blood. Now the papers report that a crane operator had been bribed and, so long as the AC works, let's bribe him some more and move, move, keep moving, the city is swell, though it feels like hell.
Do you mind if I link to this on my blog (trust me, you won’t even notice an increase in traffic)? You hit on a lot of things I want to respond to with a bit of detail, but for the time being I’ll make one or two small comments:
Firstly, I DO own more recent books; usually it’s hard-boiled detective novels or dystopian fictions (and I DO love dystopian fiction) - either that, or they’re non-fiction philosophy, history or theology/anti-theology books. There’s a LOT of good stuff still being written, but like so many other things, none of it is mainstream.
In fact, I think that’s come to define modern consumer culture: the great things - the truly enjoyable things - are hard to find, not because they don’t exist, but because the market has been flooded with low-cost tchotchkes; high-volume, low-content sweetener, meant as a sort of filler to get people hooked but never to satisfy.
I’ve read it described as post-capitalism; the idea of producing goods so disposable that consumers are forced to buy again and again and again with zero-thought given to durability or quality.
Music, fashion, auto-makers, shoe-makers, literature; all of the big names have moved to the business model of the tobacco companies & street-level drug dealers.
It’s a good point, Steven, one does have to look very hard nowadays to find something of value; and then must keep it a secret from the masses lest it be taken, dumbed down, and re-packaged for the 18-30 demo. Which seems dreadfully unfair.
Of course you can link to me.
Yea, Urban Outfitter’s is the perfect microcosmic evidence of a balkanized culture that claims to be inventive and creative enough to produce greatness, but is actually mashing up, or even just repackaging, former greatness. And books are also an excellent example of this.
I’m like Steven, in that I do enjoy a wide range of excellent books written in the last 20 years, but they mostly belong to genres and sub-genres: hardboiled detective and political novels (james elroy), global history and food history (felipe armesto), cultural history (barzun), economics and new marketing (seth godin), travel literature (paul theroux ), fantastical/post-apocalyptic science fiction (jonathan lethem, magnus mills, leguin, gibson, and others). These books lay no claim to our culture at large, but market to niches, as Godin describes better than anyone.
Great literary fiction (there actually has been some in recent times), has been pushed into a niche market, by the Reagonomics-led consolidation of publishing into big business. The New York Times Book Review is a joke. However, the idea that there remain ‘laureate’ (in the metaphorical sense) writers of literary fiction, to whom we all should at least consider paying attention, still lives on. So what does the major media feed us our appetite for great literary fiction? Half-assed shit.
Like Micheal Chabon and Dave Eggers, who rely on “niche-research”, on salt, or jewish golems in prague, OR, alternately, on hyper-real, super-duper cool characters, settings, and cool but fantastical plot twists (franzen and delillo specialize in that pony trick). Both genres utitlize 2.5 dimensional characters and both are able to pass as literature.
And that’s what displaces, more than they should at least, the great books that you know have ripped into the authors’ souls as much as they rip into yours. Get you worried, angry, furious, relieved, happy, make you long, and make you laugh with joy, or at sarcasm, or even bitterly. Any feeling. And make you understand how people connect to other people, and lie and love, and cheat and evolve. And deal with death. The real shit, man.
Literature. Greatness. You’re right — it’s not just books, it’s everything. Our culture is dying. But some great echoes of the past are still hanging around, and some seeds of the future are here and there.
Ro, I suppose as long as there are human beings, there will always be a few people doing great, and truly original work in any given field. If not, we wouldn’t be dying we’d be dead. It’s unfortunate that they’re so drowned out in these mass-produced times, but, yes, at the core there is some hope.
I completely agree with you on those authors (Eggers, et al), by the way.
Someone wrote a book about Burt Reynolds?
I completely agree with you when it comes to music. Most of today’s music is pretty disposable and young people don’t have access to current artists that really speak to them. When I was young, you could live for up a year with a single album by the Stones or Springsteen, or any such band that was capable of songwriting - and it would mark you for life. You understand if you are listening to that music now. You let it go for awhile and you always come back to it. If you ask any 18-year old what five albums he/she would take with them on a deserted island, they would probably have a total meltdown trying to come up with the list.
Cormac McCarthy wrote “All the Pretty Horses” in 1992.
Michael Ondaatje wrote “The English Patient” in 1992.
I think it ended in 1993 for the writers.
The interesting thing there, Marsha, is that those artists were, at least fairly, mainstream in their time. As others have pointed out, if one wants to find anything of value in these times, it takes work, research, and digging to find it. Quality has become a niche.