I know this guy’s band (Motorhead) and probably have the ability to recognize its logo.
But I have no clue what this band sounds like and other than reading a portion of this article, I cannot name any Motorhead songs (other than “Ace of Spades,” which, according to the article is the band’s “iconic” song … which makes me think I heard it on a VH1 Top 100 Metal Songs, something-or-other …)
The fact that I know this (without truly “knowing” in the experiential definition of the word … which I’ll address later), aligns me with a certain type of people (most likely white, most likely male, most likely of a certain age and musical taste).
This information is called “cultural knowledge.” When I am in a conversation and I use this knowledge, it becomes “currency,” in the sense that I am giving this knowledge in the hopes that my knowing it will return some sort of benefit, usually tied to the idea of respect (since I know the tidbit). Exchanging the information also brings out the identification with the type of people who would commonly know this information.
As for pop culture “knowledge,” the idea of “knowing” without truly having “knowledge,” calls to mind Postman’s use of “The Judgment of Thamus,” in his book Technopoly. In it, King Thamus says of writing:
“As for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction. and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant” (p. 4)
It seems the same with pop culture knowledge. Most of us”know” about things in popular culture without truly experiencing them. We walk in a sea of information the same way we walk through air. We pick up certain tidbits of it and use it in order to be thought wise, but, in reality, we are just prophets of trivia.
But, at least it keeps the small talk moving at parties, doesn’t it?
Bush’s rise to power this decade contributed significantly, if not primarily, to the emergence of what Stewart has called the “satirical industrial complex.” The complex’s roster includes Stewart and his late-night Comedy Central cohort Stephen Colbert; the “Saturday Night Live” troupe, which has experienced its own surge during the 2008 presidential race; and sundry other parodists and comedic agitators ranging from low-key Tom Tomorrow cartoonist Dan Perkins to Chris Rock, who recently quipped that President Bush has “fucked everything up so much, he’s even made it hard for a white man to become president.” (Pardon the language.)
And finally, the blog “How to Save the USA” defines the comedy-industrial complex as “obnoxious left wing comedians who turn politics into a joke.”
However you define it or understand it, the comedy-industrial complex seems to be a byproduct of one of the underlying biases of electronic media, particularly television (upon which I assume the comedians wield their power): Everything on television eventually becomes entertainment. 9/11 becomes a plot-line. Politics becomes a punch-line. Thank you Neil Postman.
It really doesn’t matter who is in power. With the country so divided, even if you make 50 percent of the people angry, you’ll make 50 percent happy.
How do you think Rush and Beck remain so popular? (And, yes, I’m placing them on the fringes of the comedy-industrial complex.) It’s the age-old Archie Bunker syndrome. Archie Bunker was a stereotype and created to mock traditional middle-class men. Half the people turned in to laugh at him … but the other half turned in because he was exactly like someone they knew, or said exactly the things they felt. In other words, he was both a rallying point and a punch line.
Thirty years later, I give you Rush.
Wow, sorry for the rant.
Anyway, new phrase: Comedy-Industrial Complex. I love it.
Use it three times in the next 24 hours and it will become a permanent part of your vocabulary.
Over the weekend, the Ramble turned one. If it were a child, it’d still be drooling. And in some ways, it is.
Anyway, as a way of looking back and as a way of clogging up the Internet with more mindless blather, I thought I’d offer “The 10 Minute Ramble’s Top 10 Posts of the Year” by page views:
What’s a Hero? The Dark Lebowski mashup was born out of an assignment I forced on other students. It’s a mashup for its time and place.
Say what you want about James Carville, but he gets it. Whether you agree or disagree with his politics, it doesn’t matter: he gets it. He’s good on television and he uses that to his own benefit. He knows that you can’t take it too seriously and self-deprecation is entertainment.
As Neil Postman wrote:
“Entertainment is the supra-ideology of all discourse on television. No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure.” (Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 87)
I was touched both by the impressiveness of the SNL parody, as well as the reaction. He was, I think, honored and embarrassed. And he had his woman to back him up.
That’s the lesson about today’s media-blitz world: thick skin and a supportive partner.
Here’s my answer: an old Duran Duran concert tour shirt from the March 30, 1984 performance at Greensboro (N.C.) Coliseum. I went with school buds Jan Woods, Sarah Fletcher, Shawn Pruitt and Jan’s sister Beth, who I believe was the chaperon. This was also the first night I remember thinking, “What’s that? It doesn’t smell like tobacco …”
Say what you want about Duran Duran and the 1980s, but this tour was one of the first, I believe, to truly incorporate video into the concert experience. This not only revolutionized the concert-going experience, it signaled how much, as Neil Postman would theorize, we saw reality AS television.
Anyway, here’s the relic. It’s a little threadbare (I used to wear it a lot back in the mid-80s), but has held up nice. Plus, I googled “Duran Duran sleeveless tour shirt 1984″ online and could not scare up another shirt like this one. (As a side note, “vintage” Duran Duran tour shirts from this era run $35-40.)
That makes this my contribution to online knowledge.
The oldest shirt I own. The only place you’ll see it online. I’ll put it on my vita.
(Video text from YouTube: The song “Rio” by Duran Duran performed live from the Cinemax/MTV film “As The Lights Go Down.” Aired in 1984.)
I know this guy (Lemmy)
