While teaching William Blake's "The Tyger" this past year, one of my students asked, "What's an anvil?" I attempted to explain an anvil by alluding to classic WB cartoons. Some of my students were completely clueless. I realized that a lot of the common cultural memories given to previous generations by the existence of only three networks will be missing in the present generation. Few things will reach all people. There will always be moments of great import like the Kennedy assassination, the moon landing, or 9/11. But the smaller things will not be as commonly shared within a generation and the bigger things will have to be truly big to get anyone's attention above the clutter of IM, www, cable, and gaming. I was reminded of this while watching the work presently being done on the space shuttle. The Challenger disaster was a defining moment of my childhood. On the day of the Columbia disaster, I was at the thrift store when the news came over the store's display of thirty-year-old TV's. It was a Sunday. I came to school the next day prepared to discuss the import of the event and the tragedy of the loss. They didn't care. The overall attitude of my classes was one of "People die everyday, why is this different?" Knowing that a large number of them go to the same Sunday night youth group, I guessed that the youth pastor had talked about it along these themes. But they bought into it; the next day they forgot it happened. I still get chills when I see footage of the Challenger taking off and exploding in a "major malfunction". I don't think our culture has figured out what the influx of such a massive amount of information and entertainment, much of it of questionable value, will have on the information generation. I fear we are losing our common center, our common culture. This, perhaps, explains the unquestioned acceptance of post-modern philosophy. We are free to shape a personal culture for ourselves from a half-baked smorgasboard of ideas and values. I had more to say about this, but I have forgotten it. Alas. Dang information overload. I gotta go check my three e-mail addresses.
Peace
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A palimpsest of past, current, and future happenings in the life of a teacher.
About Me
- Splitcat Chintzibobs
- High School History/English Teacher. One son who is nine. One daughter who is six. Two twin boys who are three.
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2 comments:
Respectfully (very, very respectfully), I disagree. At least with the idea that we have ever had a common cultural center. Nostalgia and the passage of time cause us to latch on to 10 common points out of a bazillion.
I think this same lament could have been written 50 years ago by someone bemoaning the decline of comic books. 50 years before that bemoaning the waning popularity of sheet music. Opera before that, etc.
You can almost see a Far Side cartoon with two cavemen looking at a cave painting and talking about kids today . . .
I think, in the long view, that the medium changes but the fractured nature/commonality of culture does not. We reference the same cartoons, or grandfathers referenced comics, our kids will have something else when they're thirtysomethings bemoaning the state of the culture.
For example, every boy I know who is 5 years old or more knows about Pokemon. Whether or not he has ever played a game, owned a card, etc. (It's coming, accept it.)
As for mass events, they cross media. That's pretty much the definition of a mass event. The Kennedy assassination, moon landing, Challenger disaster, 9/11, are all remembered by anyone old enough to remember anything at all, whether they saw it on TV, heard it on radio, etc.
Sadly, I don't think the Columbia disaster registers the same way. With Challenger, we read all about it beforehand, the first "normal" person going up, etc. We were all watching on that day. The explosion was beamed live into a million schoolrooms.
Columbia, without much fanfare, was not receiving the same attention, and so its destruction was not something "everyone" witnessed. Those of us old enough to remember Challenger were probably much more affected by Columbia than those who, like my own children, barely knew we were still going to space.
I agree with most of your disagreement. I was trying to make two points in my post. I made my first one poorly and forgot my second one when I came back to finish it. As for cartoons (like old Looney Toons--which were actually before my time anyway) I think you are right in suggesting that every generation essentially creates its own generational identity and my complaint fits an age-old whine against the young 'uns. I should have just left my point as 'no one watches the classic cartoons anymore because they are too busy watching that junk American Idol', taken my fiber, and polished my dentures. However, the second point I was trying to make, I shall try to finish (I remember where I was going now).
I think we are losing a common cultural core, as Americans have to make an increasing number of cultural choices. Americans have no choice but to become specialists. Let's use the history profession as a case example. Look at an average historian fifty to a hundred years ago. They would have been able to have an intelligent debate with VDH on ancient Greek warfare and with Stephen Ambrose on Lewis and Clark. They could read ancient Greek, Machiavelli, and knew who won the War of the Roses. They were generalists. I know more about history than most history professors today if you don't count their specialty. Specialties like 17th Century Virginia Tidewater Lesbians. I say this not to brag on my own historical depth, but to expose the lack of it the history profession. Or look at great men of the American past: Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson. Men who were aware of all of the leading trends in history, science, political theory, etc. There was a commonality to knowledge that is not possible today. A history professor could never get tenure unless he studies composting habits of colonial regulators (I'll let you wiki that one). This same trend is one we see in everyday culture. People become overwhelmed by the mass of information available so they give up and choose a specialty (like collecting Hummel figurines). E-bay has built an empire because of this specialization. But in becoming specialists, Americans have lost their generality. They don't know the significance of the Columbia because it doesn't apply to their area of speciality (granted your point about the teacher astronaut is quite right: it was a more important mission and the shuttle was still mostly new. For the record, it was a snow day. I was watching Gilligan's Island when my brother called to tell me what happened).
My other support for this idea comes from the re-writing of history, but I won't elaborate on it here as I have written too much already, and I have probably further muddled my argument.
Thanks for setting me straight with the challenge. I realize what I have written in my comment is not very similar to what I posted. Careless.
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