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Culture Notes: My Real and Serious Thoughts on the "Beauty Blogger Controversy"
Culture Notes: My Real and Serious Thoughts on the "Beauty Blogger Controversy"
Posted by Dain, Saturday, February 02, 2008 8:45 AM (Eastern)
I wrote The New York Times Declares War, Apparently after a marathon of watching Absolutely Fabulous, so that might explain some of its frivolous mood as I bemusedly crept out of Youtube into Blogger. I straightaway told Colleen it was a stupid issue when she forwarded me the drama. Really, it is absurd that Ms. Schaefer wrote the article in the first place. She was hardly a consequential journalist, and I have a really low opinion of journalism in the first place. Without the glittering shield of the New York Times, she'd have been labeled a "troll" on the internet boards: selfish attention whores. It wouldn't have been right to pass it by, of course, but I quite agreed with Colleen that we paid her exactly what she wanted by ranting about her inane opinions. But now, that I have had some time to reflect on it, the issue actually seems very important, so I decided to make a more reasoned response.
Modern philosophy, for the most part, embraced science as a liberator, an equal partner in the cause of reason. In retrospect, there is no fool like a wise fool. For nothing could have been further from the case. While philosophy raked down the old idols in its apostatic zeal, technology harnessed itself to money-making practices from the start, and rightly understood there was no profit in philosophy for the sake of philosophy, while morality, bemoan its lack as some may, took a feeble hold on political correctness. It is a chokehold, now. Respect everyone, especially minorities, the corporate PR motto (unless they threaten the profit margin). At least the Church had the wrath of God (e.g. eternal damnation in hell) on its side, and by "at least", I mean there is at least a good story in it. Suited representatives with plastic smiles aren't half so romantic, and now people who consider themselves practical sneer at books in their inner hearts: Books! Dead stuff! For useless thinkers and elitists!
Political correctness is an invisible wall, and throw yourself at it as you might, it stands solid and stalwart. Comedy makes it tangible for a moment, but once the laughter subsides we forget what it is we were looking at. Our great comics mine our buried sensitivities, our racial slurs and sexual innuendos. Politically correct, we stand on moral ground. But this is specious, as when Franciscan friars, a brotherhood founded on such an utter devotion to poverty that St. Francis refused to touch money, grew so fat and lazy atop their ambling donkeys that they'd carry extra long ladles to collect their donations. Political correctness has been with us for a very long time, and greed even longer, but the emphases change. History is not a nightmare from which we are trying to awake, but an endless shifting of the same bloody human elements, sordid or transcendent or just plain mundane.
Every time a new technology arrives on the scene, it explodes with possibilities. When the printing press made books cheap and pamphlets cheaper in the 15th century, every one who had an opinion was free to express it. Perhaps it was years of blogging, but my particular interest within English literature was the 17th and 18th century, because it is incredibly diverse, chaotic, and fluid. Think of what came about because of the printing press. Martin Luther and his 95 Theses. The Enlightenment. The Novel. The Scientific Revolution. Capitalism: commerce overtaking land as the basis of economy, urbanization (and subsequent suburbanization), colonialism, industry, consumerism. The decline of the aristocracy and the rise of democratic republics. Darwinism. Marxism. World wars. Never, ever scorn the power of the idea, the idea that catches. The internet, dear reader, is an invention akin to the printing press, and I make that claim solely on account of its uncontrollability by the powers that be. If that threatens print journalism, then let them quake in their fucking boots. Or, at least, write mealy-mouthed articles bitching about what they themselves lack. Please, bloggers, thunder your opinions as loudly, and as long, as you can, before the inevitable standardization sets. Let Youtube replace movies, Limewire replace CDs, eBay replace the mall, and Wikipedia replace the Bible*.
While we're at it, I'd like to tear down that bloody wall.
* I mean the Bible as a historical, not religious text, implying that they were composed in the same manner: piecemeal, a vast and comprehensive literary work containing all sorts of knowledge. Most Biblical scholars agree that the Pentateuch was not in fact written by Moses, but several authors, usually noted as J, E, D, P... and memory does not serve me further. I think it is called the Documentary Hypothesis. Google it if you like. Google knows all. ; )
Labels: culture notes, internet, philosophy
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