From High Brow to No Brow

My last few posts have almost exclusively concerned themselves with world literature and pondering ideas to be found therein. This may give off the suggestion that I am some lonely scholar entrenched within the dusty halls of academe, shut out from humanity and the coarse pulsations of mass culture.

Nothing could be further from the truth! I could point to an impromptu viewing of 1983's Flashdance, just the other evening, starring Jennifer Beals, boasting more synth bass than a Parliament single and more close-ups of jiggling leotard-clad buttocks than....anything else I've seen all year. To see Jerry Bruckheimer AND Giorgio Moroder AND Joe Eszterhas all mentioned in the opening credits was to feel a sense of impending doom settle upon me. And yet I watched the entire program, and even sang along with Michael Sembello's Maniac at film's end.

OK, so if my slightly sneering recounting of a Flashdance viewing still reveals me for the snob I am, how about a thorough deconstruction of the April 13, 2009 issue of US Weekly? I wouldn't dream of positing how it found its way into my lap (I certainly don't hold a subscription), but seeing how it was laying around the house anyway, the 88 pages between glossy covers proved too tempting to ignore. As with any cultural text, mysteries abound, especially on the front cover (see above image), and for me these mysteries lie not so much in the blue banner concerning OCTO MOM but the following completely indecipherable headline, expertly posed between two scantily-clad ladies - DWTS DIET SECRETS. I've struggled over tracts by Derrida with more success than I made with this headline, utterly unable to determine what DWTS might mean, who it was, or what it stood for. It was Jane who finally crcaked the code for me, but only because she had previously read the article - DWTS stands for Dancing With The Stars. Which, yes, of course, I've heard of, if never actually viewed. I understand it's rather popular, but has our nation's love affair with this CBS reality show really reached acronym proportions? Do we love DWTS as much as we love other government-sponsored bureaucratic nightmares, like CIA, NAFTA and the USA PATRIOT ACT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, in case you didn't know)?

So, perhaps I'm still giving off a veneer of ivory tower-ness - the clueless academic stunned at what passes for entertainment among the masses. I'm sure the inability to immediately decipher DWTS really gives the game away. But I plunged inside nevertheless, whipping past fascinating segments such as "Who Wore It Best?" in which 100 lucky souls standing outside Rockefeller Center were asked to compare Lindsay Lohan, Marisa Tomei and Michelle Williams in an identical $595 Alexander Wang dress (Ms. Tomei won by a landslide), updates on Rihanna's "shocking" tattoo (an unnamed source opined, "it's her way of taking control and showing that it's her body"), and 25 Things You Don't Know About Me featuring Nick Lachey (I might never have guessed #5, "The next movie I want to rent on DVD is Napoleon Dynamite," but #21, "If I weren't in the entertainment business, I would have explored a career in sports medicine," came as little surprise) to ponder the page posted below.

And here I pondered my own mortality and the passage of time. If Matthew Arnold once stood upon the shores of Dover Beach and remarked upon Sophocles' own hearing of the tide beating upon the Aegean Sea, I glance down upon page 12 of US Weekly and become one with the elders of the world left behind in the march of progress. Because I discovered an entire page filled with celebrities of which I only could positively identify one - and that celebrity was Tina Yothers, apparently hanging out these days on the stages of Celebrity Fit Club. Shawn Johnson? Willie Ames? Amber Smith? Or such reality shows as Celebrity Apprentice or Celebrity Rehab? Sorry, not a clue. In fact, I find it hard to believe anybody would be interested in stalking the green-gowned Johnson (maybe it's not the most flattering photo - I understand she's a fine gymnast). But mostly, I ponder the fact that Tina Yothers has become my lifeline to popular culture.

Well, what more can I say to plead off charges of elitism? That I tried to read with some interest the diet tips offered by DWTS' Julianne Hough ("I eat only until I'm full," she sagely observes, before discussing her love of orange juice in language that might make the surgeon general proud; "I drink it all day...it's got vitamins and makes me feel great")? That I shed a tear for poor Jennifer Aniston after seeing how mean old John Mayer launched a "Final Insult" her way in the lyrics of new ditty "Heartbreak Warrior"? (Sample lyric: "If you want more love, why don't you say so?" Despite US Weekly's hyperventilating over this "public slap in the face," it hardly seems defamatory towards Ms. Aniston). Or that I once again was forced to puzzle over the American fascination with quintuplets and other acts of super-human strength, this time also questioning if the media attacks upon the fiendish Octo-Mom (sounds like a mutant villain in an old Batman story line) aren't just further demonstration of the dominance of mother / whore thinking? (HER STRIPPER PAST! WON'T WASH BABIES! IGNORES KIDS TO SHOP! are only a few of the topics open for discussion in this long, thoughtful investigation into private lives and the politics of reproduction, and while I didn't stay long, I am somewhat placated to find out that her "stripper past" involved one topless spin across a gentleman's club stage fifteen years ago).

No, I guess the final argument in my own defense is that I simply cannot accept the fact that Rascal Flatts should be viewed or accepted as the new "Country Kings". As the photo below clearly demonstrates, these three finely-coiffed and no-doubt-pedicured poseurs have about as much to with country as Panda Express does with the Eight Great Traditions. The leering one on the left seems to have mistakenly entered a David Bowie lookalike contest, the average joe in the middle looks like he's a whiz at properties management, and the slightly-unkempt fellow on the right looks like a Hobbit. I'm no advocate of violence, but I'd love to lock these three imposters in a room with the ghosts of Johnny Cash and Hank Williams to see who emerges the worse for wear. And there ain't a damn thing snobby about a good ol' southern ass-whuppin'.