Pop culture phenomena and you

[Jacob]

Which pop culture phenomena have you missed out on that you wish you had been there for?

For example, in my case:   Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

I love quiz shows.  If Jeopardy! is on and I have time, I will watch.

So back in the day when I was in university, I had a work/study job with two shifts a week and one on the weekend.  The show originally fell on one of the nights I worked, so I always missed it.  Other things also sucked up my time, but there came a point when the show started to dominate, being on FIVE nights a week and serving as a frequent topic of conversation.  I was thinking, "How did I miss this?"  I felt left out.  And then boom, the show had become overexposed and was gone.

Ah well.

[martin88nyc]

bedtime cartoon 

[Mono no aware]

I don't know if I find myself "wishing I was there for it," but I have an innate prejudice against the music of the millennial generation.  Any artist who debuted after the year 2000 is suspect.  But sometimes a millennial act will win me over.  The first album by the Killers is nearly perfect, so the milliennials have at least that one to their credit.  And recently I have discovered a band called British Sea Power, and even though they look like giddy J. Crew dorks their music is pretty decent—or pleasant enough that I don't barf.  For some reason all these modern bands look fashionable and cute.  I guess people my age probably thought the same of the Beatles and the Stones in the early 1960s, though.

One thing I wish I had been there for is the British Invasion of the mid-60s and the psychedelic scene of the late 60s.  I should've been born twenty years earlier, and then I would've been fourteen when Revolver and Blonde on Blonde came out.  British Sea Power is okay, but their sound is wispy, generic, and forgettable compared to Tomorrow Never Knows or Visions of Johanna.  The baby boomers are being eviscerated on another thread, but one thing is for sure: the baby boomers and my generation (Generation X) had the best music.  The precious little milliennials are just languishing in mediocrity.

[Chestertonian]

I don't know if I find myself "wishing I was there for it," but I have an innate prejudice against the music of the millennial generation.  Any artist who debuted after the year 2000 is suspect.  But sometimes a millennial act will win me over.  The first album by the Killers is nearly perfect, so the milliennials have at least that one to their credit.  And recently I have discovered a band called British Sea Power, and even though they look like giddy J. Crew dorks their music is pretty decent—or pleasant enough that I don't barf.  For some reason all these modern bands look fashionable and cute.  I guess people my age probably thought the same of the Beatles and the Stones in the early 1960s, though.

One thing I wish I had been there for is the British Invasion of the mid-60s and the psychedelic scene of the late 60s.  I should've been born twenty years earlier, and then I would've been fourteen when Revolver and Blonde on Blonde came out.  British Sea Power is okay, but their sound is wispy, generic, and forgettable compared to Tomorrow Never Knows or Visions of Johanna.  The baby boomers are being eviscerated on another thread, but one thing is for sure: the baby boomers and my generation (Generation X) had the best music.  The precious little milliennials are just languishing in mediocrity.

the solo album from Brandon Flowers was underrated his stuff with the killers gets more attention of course you won't take any of my pop culture opinions seriously in light of my opinions on sufjan stevens

[Mono no aware]

the solo album from Brandon Flowers was underrated his stuff with the killers gets more attention of course you won't take any of my pop culture opinions seriously in light of my opinions on sufjan stevens

Sufjan Stevens aside, I do take your pop culture opinions seriously, Chestertonian, so I will give Brandon Flowers' solo albums a try.  It looks like there are two: The Desired Effect is available on Amazon Music.  The other one is called Flamingo, which I can listen to on "shuffle play" on Spotify.  I just thought the Killers never lived up to the consistency of the material on their first record.  I listened to Battle Born this year and a great deal of it was utter crap.  "Miss Atomic Bomb" is a nice enough song, though.  That's been their legacy since Hot Fuss: albums with a few good songs and the rest is filler and dreck.

[Heinrich]

Are you serious? Pop culture is a tool of satan. Seriously. I am still fighting the attachments to this day and forlornly look to my youth with regret. All that crappy music and crappier television that did nothing to promote any beauty whatsoever. The worst were those made-for-tv teen dramas. Dark. And then there are the John Hughes contributions to (lite) marxism.

[ÆneasQuébécois]

Are you serious? Pop culture is a tool of satan. Seriously. I am still fighting the attachments to this day and forlornly look to my youth with regret. All that crappy music and crappier television that did nothing to promote any beauty whatsoever. The worst were those made-for-tv teen dramas. Dark. And then there are the John Hughes contributions to (lite) marxism.

Amen! I was hoping someone here would finally say what I was too afraid to say myself. As I've said to some of my acquaintances before, I'm a fan of pop culture, that is the pop culture of the Middle Ages.

[Mono no aware]

I was being serious, Heinrich, but I definitely take your point.  The problem with holding up pop culture as "a tool of Satan," however, is that such a stance immediately impugns traditional Catholics who indulge themselves with pop culture as being partakers of the devil's offerings, and naturally they will react defensively and claim that pop culture indulgence is perfectly licit.  And then we get the epistemological dilemma: how to determine who's right?  In theory you could take it all the way up to the final arbiter, Pope Francis.  You could say, "Holy Father, would it be okay to listen to Brandon Flowers' solo albums?  Wikipedia classifies him as 'soft rock' and 'electropop.'"  And Francis would probably pat you on the head and say, "those terms are unfamiliar to me, my child, but who am I to judge?  Listen to whatever you like, so long as you have compassion for transsexuals, Muslims, and polar bears.  Vaya con Dios."  And you would come away from that experience feeling like you didn't really have permission because the person giving it was mentally defective. 

At that point you could turn to the traditional Catholic clergy, but among them there is a famous bishop who once deemed The Sound of Music to be pornographic—an opinion which betrays either a careless hyperbole or a deranged mind.  From priestly fraternity to priestly fraternity, and from priest to priest, there is a spectrum ranging from permissive to puritan, and the laity can just align themselves with whoever justifies their own position.  Despairing of the clergy's lack of unanimity, you might turn to the saints to buttress your case, but traditional Catholics seem to have no compunction anymore about putting down the saints if it suits them, from deeming St. John Chrysostom "proto-Islamic" to rolling their eyes and saying "St. Vincent Ferrer didn't even get right who the pope was, so why should we trust him on obscure matters of soteriology?"  There was one poster here who was copious in compiling citations, and people actually joked and laughed that he quoted saints and popes, because they thought his position was too extreme. 

So where does this leave the notion that pop culture is a tool of Satan?  I'm afraid it becomes nothing other than a personal theological opinion.  "I feel your pain," but I think these variances on important issues are an overlooked problem with traditional Catholicism.  There certainly exists what has been called an "ecumenism of trads [sic]" or "tradcumenism" that glosses over the glaring differences due to a feeling that the common enemy in the Vatican is a bigger problem than any internecine squabbles between Latin Mass-goers.  It seems like this scene should have a discomfiting ring of Protestantism for those who have eyes to see, but people appear quite willing to just shrug it off.  Padre Pio's maxim of "hope, pray, and don't worry" seems to get invoked any time someone suggests there is something other than the modernist hierarchy to be concerned about.  In any case, I apologize for derailing the thread by mentioning sixties and millennial music.  The OP was referring to wholesome and inoffensive pop culture phenomena like quiz shows.

P.S. Chestertonian, I am halfway through The Desired Effect and the effect is that it's awful.  Tinkling exuberant dance-y vomit.  I'm on track six and there's autotune.  Zero stars out of five.  I won't be finishing it, sorry.

[Matto]

Is pop-culture a "tool of satan?" I generally think it is and that it gets worse and worse as the years go by. To cite an example, on Halloween this year the man who sings the songs and plays guitar at the local Novus Ordo churches and used to be a teacher at the local Novus Ordo school and is heavily involved in the local Church was having a Halloween party and he was playing loud music for a group of children. I generally ignored it because I do not like most modern music but there was one song I did know. The rap song where the chorus goes: "It's getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes!" And he was cheering and all the ten year old children were hollering like it was the best thing since sliced bread. So I would happily argue that pop music like that and the people who listen to it and play it for children really are "tools of satan." I should have gone out there and yelled at him but I just ignored him and stopped listening to the music.

One of the last current records I ever bought was "Is This It" by a band called the Strokes which was released around the time of 9-11. I really liked it and thought it was good modern rock and roll, but I wouldn't listen to it now. I generally don't listen to pop music that often but I sometimes do listen to some songs by some of the more tame bands and musicians I used to like. When I am in the car and my father wants to listen to music on the radio I generally suggest he plays the 50's station on the satellite radio because I think the songs are not as bad as the more recent ones. There are many bands that I used to like that I would not listen to now like Led Zeppelin and the Velvet Underground and Black Sabbath and Metallica and Guns N Roses and Van Halen.

I remember watching a youtube video by some protestant who was condemning Hollywood and the music industry, from the eighties I believe, and he was talking about how all of the performers in the industry were witches and that you had to become initiated into witchcraft to work in the music industry and he said they had ceremonies when they made the records and they invoked demons and put curses on the records they made invoking the fallen principalities and powers to curse the records so that everyone who buys the records or listens to them falls under the curse. Of course it sounds crazy and it is probably not true but I wouldn't be surprised if something like that did happen.

As for the original point of this thread, I do not have a desire to experience much recent pop-culture, but perhaps I would have liked to have been in the audience to see one of Ibsen's plays if I knew the language or perhaps one of Shakespeare's plays when originally performed. But I bet there were Churchmen who would have problems with that also as some were more strict on cultural matters and others were more lax.

[Heinrich]

Are you serious? Pop culture is a tool of satan. Seriously. I am still fighting the attachments to this day and forlornly look to my youth with regret. All that crappy music and crappier television that did nothing to promote any beauty whatsoever. The worst were those made-for-tv teen dramas. Dark. And then there are the John Hughes contributions to (lite) marxism.

Amen! I was hoping someone here would finally say what I was too afraid to say myself. As I've said to some of my acquaintances before, I'm a fan of pop culture, that is the pop culture of the Middle Ages.

Art is the parameter of society: Vive le Roi!

[Heinrich]

I was being serious, Heinrich, but I definitely take your point.  The problem with holding up pop culture as "a tool of Satan," however, is that such a stance immediately impugns traditional Catholics who indulge themselves with pop culture as being partakers of the devil's offerings, and naturally they will react defensively and claim that pop culture indulgence is perfectly licit.  And then we get the epistemological dilemma: how to determine who's right?  In theory you could take it all the way up to the final arbiter, Pope Francis.  You could say, "Holy Father, would it be okay to listen to Brandon Flowers' solo albums?  Wikipedia classifies him as 'soft rock' and 'electropop.'"  And Francis would probably pat you on the head and say, "those terms are unfamiliar to me, my child, but who am I to judge?  Listen to whatever you like, so long as you have compassion for transsexuals, Muslims, and polar bears.  Vaya con Dios."  And you would come away from that experience feeling like you didn't really have permission because the person giving it was mentally defective. 

At that point you could turn to the traditional Catholic clergy, but among them there is a famous bishop who once deemed The Sound of Music to be pornographic—an opinion which betrays either a careless hyperbole or a deranged mind.  From priestly fraternity to priestly fraternity, and from priest to priest, there is a spectrum ranging from permissive to puritan, and the laity can just align themselves with whoever justifies their own position.  Despairing of the clergy's lack of unanimity, you might turn to the saints to buttress your case, but traditional Catholics seem to have no compunction anymore about putting down the saints if it suits them, from deeming St. John Chrysostom "proto-Islamic" to rolling their eyes and saying "St. Vincent Ferrer didn't even get right who the pope was, so why should we trust him on obscure matters of soteriology?"  There was one poster here who was copious in compiling citations, and people actually joked and laughed that he quoted saints and popes, because they thought his position was too extreme. 

So where does this leave the notion that pop culture is a tool of Satan?  I'm afraid it becomes nothing other than a personal theological opinion.  "I feel your pain," but I think these variances on important issues are an overlooked problem with traditional Catholicism.  There certainly exists what has been called an "ecumenism of trads [sic]" or "tradcumenism" that glosses over the glaring differences due to a feeling that the common enemy in the Vatican is a bigger problem than any internecine squabbles between Latin Mass-goers.  It seems like this scene should have a discomfiting ring of Protestantism for those who have eyes to see, but people appear quite willing to just shrug it off.  Padre Pio's maxim of "hope, pray, and don't worry" seems to get invoked any time someone suggests there is something other than the modernist hierarchy to be concerned about.  In any case, I apologize for derailing the thread by mentioning sixties and millennial music.  The OP was referring to wholesome and inoffensive pop culture phenomena like quiz shows.

P.S. Chestertonian, I am halfway through The Desired Effect and the effect is that it's awful.  Tinkling exuberant dance-y vomit.  I'm on track six and there's autotune.  Zero stars out of five.  I won't be finishing it, sorry.

Now how am I supposed to respond to that?

[Mono no aware]

Now how am I supposed to respond to that?

No response is necessary, of course; sorry.  It was just my long-winded way of saying I appreciate your position, but unfortunately, the way things are, it can only stand as a theological opinion.  A sound and traditional theological opinion, of course, but an opinion nonetheless.  And therefore some other traditional Catholic can come right along and say, "well, that's just your personal opinion, Debbie Downer.  Now put on some Brandon Flowers so I can dance."  It's a confusing state of affairs. 

[Carleendiane]

Not all pop is bad or evil, but I do believe the gateway to evil music was drugs and free love.There was some fun sweet music from 50's and some from 60's. Artistically done quite well. When metal became music, in my opinion, the beauty and poetry disappeared.  Loud and fast took the place of beauty and poetry. This was a shame, because the standards for music dropped. Not that you won't find stupid in the old music, but a good portion had truth beauty goodness and order-which was art. Without these elements it no longer is considered art. Just noise.

[Kaesekopf]

If I missed out on any pop culture phenomena, it wasn't long-lasting or impactful (because I can't think of any!...)

[abc123]

Only since I've gotten older (just turned 40) have I realized the adverse effects of pop culture on my own personality. We soak things up unconsciously which can then manifest themselves in undesirable ways.

I actively go out of my way to be as out of the loop now as I possibly can be. I can't name any of the top 5 songs or musicians currently popular. I haven't watched TV (aside from sports) in years and can't tell you what the popular shows are these days. The last movie I saw in a theatre was The Passion of the Christ. I have no social media presence, etc. My children have thankfully been shielded from the most damaging (music, movies and 'art') modern pop culture phenomena and seem better adjusted for it.