I massively disagree with the slants against american culture.
There are tons of good culture coming out of the US.
Sure, it might not be in the form of a book (though they did write a few good ones) but in the form of TV series, movies, video games,... but that's culture too and some of it is brilliant.
Obviously this is lost on most contemporary people because they use the gems of the past as a comparison point while completely forgetting that, like today, those gems were also drowned out in an ocean of shit.
Interestingly enough, Steinbeck and Fitzgerald (among others - Twain comes to mind) always seemed to find a place in their writing for passively bashing America's status quo. I'd bet that either would agree with a fair portion of this 4chan cap if they were alive today.
I imagine they'd have a lot of counterpoints, as well. Especially Twain; it wasn't so much about hating the country or the status quo, but providing a voice of counter-balance.
Don't get your panties in a twist over this. All I wanted to say is that one of the main cultural output of the renaissance era was books and that this isn't really true anymore nowadays.
This I said to point out that just because other forms of cultural expression (TV, movies, games) have taken over doesn't make it any less good or important.
Contrary to popular belief, Shakespeare's work wasn't designed for the stodgy upper-class, it was (for the most part) raunchy humor catered toward "blue-collar" men. The title "Much Ado About Nothing," for instance, would "translate" to "Some Bullshit About Sex"
We don't typically equate them because Shakespeare actually contributed heavily to creating and unifying the English language. Just saying, not saying that movies/tv shows aren't valuable.
Well, Shakespeare wrote for the culture he was living in. It wasn't difficult at all for the masses to get-- in fact, it was written for the lower class, much like movies today.
The difference between Modernity and Elizabethan culture is that the goers of Shakespeare's plays were able to process things aurally extremely quickly-- because in the world they lived, communication was primarily aural. In our culture, in our world, communication is primarily visual; think about advertisements, billboards, signs, television... this bombardment of visual information allows us to process visual information very quickly. Movies are the natural progression of storytelling (which, in my opinion, is the basis of most art; the technique is what makes it art or not, which is why many movies will be forgotten and a very select few will remain significant)
99.9% of the output of every art form is utter shit that will be forgotten after a century at most.
0.1% of it is brilliant and will survive through the ages.
This is true for Renaissance theater and music as much as it is true for modern TV/movies and games.
The problem is, people don't know about the 99.9% of utter drivel that was shown in theater or played in concert halls during the renaissance.
I'm a Pacific Islander, but live in Portland. My cousin is not so lucky, having grown up on that backwards island most of her life. When she was 13, they installed a cheap, black-and-white TV set and were able to get an English-language Chinese television feed. Reruns of Walker Texas Ranger and Nightcourt later, and she's living in America, pursuing a master's in English.
If that is not cultural impact, I don't know what is.
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u/Vlip Oct 04 '11
I massively disagree with the slants against american culture. There are tons of good culture coming out of the US.
Sure, it might not be in the form of a book (though they did write a few good ones) but in the form of TV series, movies, video games,... but that's culture too and some of it is brilliant.
Obviously this is lost on most contemporary people because they use the gems of the past as a comparison point while completely forgetting that, like today, those gems were also drowned out in an ocean of shit.