Skip,

Slow down, my friend. Some of us went to state schools.

This post will be an attempt to answer some arguments, expand upon others, and introduce others still for future consideration.

I’ll start with your conclusion. I would whole-heartedly agree that we as yet don’t have the vocabulary to define those issues that direct the themes of the new pop culture. That, I think, is part of the point. You’ll notice in my first post that I was having some difficulty defining what is relevant to today’s consumers of pop culture, but that I had no problem pointing out what was not relevant. (Truth be told, I started that post as a cheap and easy vehicle for a swipe at Hornby. Little did I know that I would be asked to defend my ramblings.)

Lessons to be learned? Most certainly, but regarding which crises? Those that have been minimized by economic opportunity throughout the Western world? Or those crises that have arisen or persisted through our economic and cultural journey from Victorian age, though modernism and into post-modernism? (I would like to point out for the record that you and I can only be talking about those of us who live in Westernized, liberalized society. We’re the ones driving the popular culture you and I consume, and quite frankly, are the only ones bored enough to give this much thought. I wish that the six or so billion people for whom this conversation doesn’t apply were in on the fun, because it might mean that a lot of their problems [hunger, political freedom, basic security] had been solved, but unfortunately that’s not the case. God, that sounds patronizing.)

I would argue that, not unlike the U.S., much of Europe also has a race problem (see the suburbs of Paris, the south Asian minority populations in Britain, the Middle Eastern immigrants of the Netherlands, etc.) Europe CREATED our race problem, to be quite honest. Though that race problem often manifests itself as a class issue (poverty), I would further argue that the problem would resolve itself (via every American’s favorite word: opportunity) if racial barriers were lifted. Let’s be honest about the situation: Jim Crow is as alive in France as it still is in some parts of Mississippi (way to stay vigilant, Department of Justice!).

These are serious issues, indeed, but unfortunately I don’t think that the French have the capacity to comprehend the blues, so I don’t look for them to create a relevant pop culture medium to express their concern.

Whether British pop culture producers and consumers decide to let go of their obsession with class is, of course, up to them. I don’t want to give the impression that good work on class has never been done. It certainly has, and it certainly has by Brits (The Clash, anyone?). I just don’t think works that feature white, educated American or British protagonists facing class battles have much to say about the world as it presently exists.

For our part, though our issues with race are far from resolved, at least Americans managed to move ourselves to the point where an African-American could be not only a serious contender for the highest leadership position available, but obtain it. Now if only Britain could start electing bag ladies to Parliament…

I think the more interesting, and indeed important, discussion is this: What, exactly, is that confounded, indefinable issue that has us throwing class into the gutter?

Could it be that we’ve finally figured out the point of The Wasteland? (I’m claiming Eliot as an American, by the by. He was born here, so he’s ours). Is it that we’ve finally found ourselves among “a heap of broken images, where the sun beats/And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief/And the dry stone no sound of water.”? Is it that we’ve swung away from a discussion of our interactions, economic and social, with each other to a new movement of self-examination? Eliot was pointing out, among other things, that we find ourselves lost in a place where the old explanations no longer make any sense, and all of the old comforts are no longer available. The indefinable is the issue.

I find this whole idea, that what we face now as a society is not an inability to interact with others, but is an inability to define, understand and, therefore, accept what’s happened to us as human beings while we were off pursuing other things (wealth, power, God, love, whatever), fascinating. The question is not whether we are, because who can answer that without being glib? The question is what we are as individuals, and the authors, musicians and artists that seem to hold my attention more are the ones who seem to recognize that. I really don’t care how much money is in my bank account (that would seem obvious to anyone who knows what those of us in this line of work make). I do care that what defined the world for our parents, our parents’ parents, and so on, no longer makes sense and I’m at a loss for anything that does.

I named Palahniuk in my original post as someone who’s work I have paid attention to for a number of reasons. One of those was a line that stuck with me the moment I read it, one that says a lot about what I think we now face: “Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives.” A little emo? Yeah, but he’s right. And what I love more about that line than the observation is that there are no answers contained therein. Hell, there aren’t even answers contained in the book it comes from. He doesn’t even try to offer any. In fact, he goes out of his way to create a character that’s so lost he ends up biting his own critique. What does that say about us?

What does it mean that more and more of us no longer take comfort in the basic political and economic luxuries afforded the West, those comforts that kept our parents and our parents’ parents from waking up at 3 a.m. screaming? In the clearest example of what cable television can do to talent, one of my favorite political maxims was generated by a man who Comedy Central made out to be a boorish lout. Doug Stanhope has a bit about the disillusion comes to when you think about what bureaucracy has done to the basic social contract. I paraphrase, kinda: “They say, ‘Give a man to fish, he eats for a day.’ Teach a man to fish… and he has to get a fishing license, but he doesn’t because it costs too much and the line’s too long. We aren’t free. We’re born free, we get screwed out of half of it and we wave miniature flags to celebrate that fact.” What does the fact that I get where he’s coming from say about me, or the group of people in the club during the recording of that bit that burst into thunderous applause?

(This is the one and only blog post, hopefully ever, that will have quoted both T.S. Eliot and Doug Stanhope.)

Skip, I think you nailed it with “slim hope.” The two modes of thought about what drives the world are utterly divergent. Gender, race and class are poor yardsticks for measuring what holds the human race back these days (I confess, I stole that thought from an Against Me! song). Perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe there is something definable in what moves the world in the post-modern era. But if we are still, as we humans have ever been, chasing “absolute truth,” doesn’t it make sense that we’d be unable to put a name to it? Have we finally figured out that there is no such thing? Are we scared yet? I am.

I’ll leave you with that. Before I sign off, I do have to point out that I really am enjoying this. It makes me feel like good old Dr. Sam Johnson. Now there was an Englishman with something to say.

Nick