Perhaps the only good thing about being a social outcast in your own culture is that you can pick and choose what you build your inner culture out of without having to worry if you\u2019re doing it wrong.\u00a0 And that\u2019s because you\u2019re already wrong by the definition of the dominant culture so you can\u2019t be more wrong for leaving something out.\u00a0 For instance, I like old movies.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not a big fan of musicals.\u00a0 So even though I\u2019m told that old Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly movies are supposed to be great I don\u2019t see it that way.\u00a0 Sure, I don\u2019t have anything against these movies but if I\u2019m picking my top 100 movies the only musical might be \u201cThe Wizard of Oz.\u201d\u00a0 So, whereas I won\u2019t complain if someone wants to see some musicals from the 30s and 40s, if someone tells me that West Side Story is a great American classic, I assume we are not going to see eye to eye on most things.<\/p>\n
So, I\u2019m going to use my own preferences rather than whatever nonsense gave us such ridiculous things as ballet, Jackson Pollack, performance art and the Beat Poets.\u00a0 I was discussing film with an old friend and we got on the topic of \u201cCitizen Kane\u201d and he noted that numerous critics have maintained over the years that it is the best motion picture of all time.\u00a0 And that got me thinking, I don\u2019t think Citizen Kane is even good.\u00a0 It\u2019s loaded with dysfunction, depression and annoying characters that descend into a world where life has no meaning and isn\u2019t worth living.\u00a0 And that got me thinking.\u00a0 The world view that finds Citizen Kane exemplary is a distorted one that is a symptom of the problems we\u2019re facing now.\u00a0 A philosophy that sees no meaning in life, that denies the existence of good and evil always devolves into nihilism.\u00a0 And when people with that philosophy create art, no matter how technically adept they are the product always celebrates death as the only reality.\u00a0 And the effect such a message has on viewers is corrosive.<\/p>\n
A distinction can be drawn between a message that is unhappy and one that is nihilistic.\u00a0 There are plenty of books and films and works of art that are sad but uplifting.\u00a0 After all death is an inevitable part of life and death brings great sadness to most of us.\u00a0 And there are a multitude of unhappy things that happen every day in the world.\u00a0 But life correctly understood is the triumph of the human spirit over all these challenges.\u00a0 So portraying unhappiness and tragedy isn\u2019t the problem.\u00a0 The fault with the modernist world view is the mentality that finds no value in human life at all.\u00a0 Happiness and unhappiness are equally meaningless and the only activity they pursue is to stave off boredom by portraying things that outrage the chumps who still believe in things.\u00a0 And because every outrage eventually becomes dulled by familiarity each new outrage has to be more extreme and more diseased.<\/p>\n
And so, this is the point.\u00a0 Just because something is fifty or a hundred years old doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s a \u201cclassic.\u201d\u00a0 And something made tomorrow can possess the qualities that make it exemplary.\u00a0 The quality is either there or it isn\u2019t and it doesn\u2019t require a college degree in art criticism to recognize it.\u00a0 All you have to do is see whether the point of view of the book or the movie says that normal life has meaning or not.\u00a0 It\u2019s as simple as that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Perhaps the only good thing about being a social outcast in your own culture is that you can pick and choose what you build your<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237],"tags":[2794,1179,38,1355],"class_list":["post-12881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-cultural-relativism","tag-normal-life","tag-review","tag-reviews"],"yoast_head":"\n