Politics is Downstream from Popular Culture
I am honored that my most recent book, The Culturally Savvy Christian was chosen as CrossLeft's book of the month. The subtitle lays out the thesis: A Manifesto for Deepening Faith and Enriching Popular Culture in an Age of Christianity-Lite. I believe American Christianity has taken on the marks of today's superficial popular culture (diversionary entertainment, mindless amusements, celebrity, propped up by marketing and new technologies--not about art and ideas). I am also arguing that despite its shallowness, popular culture has risen in influence while religion's influence has largely declined. I think entertainment and political culture flow from our spiritual & intellectual life and given today's impoverishment of mind and spirit--our entertainment culture and then our politics are a reflection of that impoverishment. A spiritual and intellectual renewal is required before we'll see a richer cultural and political life. What do you think?
But Producing what?
I agree that production costs are going down, but this fits under my assessment of popular culture's reliance on technology. It is ideas and aesthetic we are lacking today, and new technologies and lower production costs just mean we can make crap cheaper and distribute it faster!
lot of judgment there
Dick, I think there's a lot of judgment in your statement, but i also think your missing the overall point.
Your claim that teens and perhaps the rest of us are just programmed consumers may have worked even 5 years ago, but it doesn't work in today's age. The fact is that virtually everyone is not only a consumer of content but also a producer.
For example, I have a friend who is an aspiring writer and he does some really good stuff (you might call it crap, but I think it quality art). He has yet to publish his novellas, but he can distribute them online and build an audience over time. He's also gotten into dramatically reading his work and turning those into podcasts. The lower cost of technology for production and distribution has allowed him to express himself to not a mass audience, but a smaller self-selected audience in ways he could not have done previously.
Similarly with blogs. Some blogs are terrible, but other blogs rival any opinion columnist for a newspaper.
Much of the book is a reaction to forces that are in flux. I would encourage an embracing of the new age that allows for self-expression, community building, and variation in content such as nothing that has been seen before. Again, while I agree that much of the content available in the mass media is not so great, your analysis about mass consumerism is off because so much is rapidly changing as we enter into this 2.0 age.
Feedback on Culturally-Savvy Christian
Dear Dick,
Thanks for joining us in dialogue. I am about half way through the book and am enjoying the book a good deal.
While I largely agree with the critique of the vacuous nature of popular culture, I actually think the critique misses a good deal of the cultural changes that have happened over the last decade. For example, you claim that mass media has "transformed our teens from creative producers to consumers."
Given what's happening in the Web 2.0 world, I think nothing could be further from the truth. The cost of production for writing, audio and video have come down tremendously over the last few years. Youtube, itunes, and the blogosphere provide distribution challenges for the creation of content from every day people to provide a long tail for cultural and political content.
We are now all producers and consumers like no other point in human history.