“Artists also talk of Good Work; but decreasingly. They begin to prefer words like ‘significant,’ important,’ contemporary,’ or ‘daring.’ These are not, to my mind, good symptoms” (C.S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night, p. 72).
Poetasters As Self Important
“He there faces the fact that modern poets are read almost exclusively by one another. He looks about for a remedy. Naturally he does not suggest that the poets should do anything about it. For it is taken as basic by all the culture of our age that whenever artists and audience lose touch, the …
Why Being Smart Just Changes the Speed At Which We Can Get Into Sin
“I gladly admit that we [the cultured] number among us men and women whose modesty, courtesy, fair-mindedness, patience in disputation and readiness to see an antagonist’s point of view, are wholly admirable. I am fortunate to have known them. But we must also admit that we show as high a percentage as any group whatever …
The Man Ain”t Got No Culture
“Culture, like religion, is a name given from outside to activities which are not themselves interested in culture at all, and would be ruined the moment they were. I do not mean that we are never to talk of things from the outside. But when the things are of high value and very easily destroyed, …
So Call Now
“Like biblical parables, commercial messages invade our consciousness, seep into our souls. Even if you are half-awake when commercials run, thirty thousand of them will begin to penetrate your indifference. In the end, it is hard not to believe.” (Neil Postman, How To Watch TV News, p. 124).
Scripted Authenticity
“A considerable number of events are staged to attract television cameras. When a political candidate goes to a closed factory or stands outside the slums so that a camera can capture the scene, the candidate is manipulating television coverage. Some people get so good at figuring out how to do this that they get paid …
More a Sign of Desperation Than Mastery and Control
“In the blink of a tease you are enticed to stay tuned with promises of exclusive stories and tape, good-looking anchors, helicopters, team coverage, hidden cameras, uniform blazers, and even, yes, better journalism. It is all designed to stop you from using the remote-control button to switch channels. But the teasing doesn’t stop there. During …
Worship In the Temple of High Brow
“Until quite modern times—I think, until the time of the Romantics—nobody ever suggested that literature and the arts were an end in themselves. They ‘belonged to the ornamental part of life’, they provided ‘innocent diversion’; or else they ‘refined our manners’ or ‘incited us to virtue’ or glorified the gods. The great music had been …
Sensate Hatred of Nobility
“The ripened sensate mentality of today, seeing human beings as no more than physical objects moved by instincts, reflexes, and drives, virtually disallows any attempt to raise them above the animal level. Genuine heroes are all by banned from literature and all but impossible for authors to create.” (B.G. Brander, Staring Into Chaos, pp. 300-301).
Special Effects, Dry Ice, and Lasers
“Instruments continued growing in size and complexity. Everything else about music grew as well, as colossalism transformed the art. Some theaters seated up to forty thousand people. In one play a thousand mules pranced about the stage. Concerts featured a hundred blaring trumpets, accompanying thousands of actors and acrobats. ‘Not being able to make it …