The Cultural Placebo Effect

As one of my most popular blog entries to date, I’ve decided to give “The Cultural Placebo Effect” its own page.

I’m your average, everyday, run-of-the-mill non-conformist. I spend my time not watching “The Hills” or listening to “The Pussycat Dolls,” or thinking up other ways to otherwise not confirm. I believe in some Big Brother-esque conspiracy known simply as “The Man,” and I’m convinced He spends His time thinking of ways to “hold a brother down.” I quietly, and perhaps only internally, think of myself as a punk even though I know full well that the last person who had the right claim such died of a self-inflicted shotgun blast on April 5, 1994.

And while to some extent this previous paragraph does describe part of my personality, it does little to distinguish me as an individual. The aforementioned can be said about (and have been written by) anyone who’s heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” read 1984 and has a vague understanding of American popular culture. Even a rudimentary description of what makes a person unique in modern America at some point degenerates into vagaries and a bullshit sense of superiority-through-enlightened-individualism. The truth is that most Americans follow the truism of Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the title character attempts to dismiss his followers by explaining to them the follies of blind hero worship, saying “You are all individuals!” to which the crowd responds in unison “Yes, we are all individuals!” (and in then in classic Monty Python irony, one lone voice says “I’m not”). In our society today, everyone tries to be that ironic individual, but we’re stuck following the same mentality. If Brian were to speak before a group of American youth today, what would the refrain be? It wouldn’t be a staunch confident declaration of independence, it would be a pseudo-ironic attempt at mocking conformity: “No, we’re not!” Doubly ironic for its blatant admission of conformity via non-conformity.

PBS Frontline did a fantastic, though slightly out-dated, documentary on this called “The Merchants of Cool“. That link is to the first part, you’ll have to follow the YouTube links on your own to watch the whole thing, which I strongly suggest you do. What’s strange in watching this documentary is that at times it seems like a period piece, in the same way that the 1980s pundits’ attacks on rap music now look.

Another example: yesterday at lunch three of my co-workers were discussing whether or not the first Austin Powers film was “old.” The film (and I use that term loosely) was released in 1997. As a sort of cultural barometer, in 1997: Bill Clinton was in his second term as president, Third Eye Blind released their self-titled debut album, Brett Favre led the Green Bay Packers to victory over Drew Bledsoe’s New England Patriots, and I was in fourth grade. So granted, 11 years seems like a long time ago, but when you consider the turnover rate for artifacts of popular culture in our society, 11 years seems more like 22 or 33 years ago.

For illustrateous purposes, imagine every movie, film, book, television program, and major cultural person or event as a piece of food. Now when you think about all that we as Americans have (sometimes unwilling) ingested over the past 11 years – 3 Austin Powers films, 3 presidential elections, the rise and fall of the Dot Com Era, two economic booms, two economic recessions, 7 Harry Potter books, 5 James Bond films, 2 James Bonds, Paris Hilton, Sarah Palin, Lapel-Gate, Barak Obama, Enron, Tyco, a second OJ Simpson trial, Anna Nicole Smith, fat Anna Nicole Smith, skinny Anna Nicole Smith, dead Anna Nicole Smith, dead Anna Nicole Smith’s baby-daddy drama, 6 Britney Spears albums, 3 Spears’ offspring, K-Fed, N*Sync, Backstreet Boys, the return of New Kids on the Block – and when you considered all the stuff I choose to omit, it’s no wonder America is fat.

We’re fed a gluttonous diet of popular culture. Why? The rise of new media: television, the Internet, cell-phones, and the ubiquity of this technology has left capitalists battling not only for our time between 6 and 11pm, but for every spare second of our lives. As such, we are so over bombarded with options and images, that things become passe at an alarming rate. As capitalism races to keep up with culture, it perverts the very culture it is seeking to emulate.  Remember slang like “fly”, “bad”, “hella”? They became so engrained into what the culture saw as cool that marketers seized upon them in an attempt to emulate that coolness the same way a dad might try to connect with kids by saying “homie.” The second people over 30 become cognisant of an element of popular culture, its half-life doubles.

The natural an opposite reaction to this is better known as “sub-culture.” For as long as there has been culture, there has been “counter-culture” or “sub-culture.” Counter-culture has always been revered (through the lens of history) for its individuality and radical, progressive thinking. Let’s take, for example, the hippie movement… if you can call it a movement. If you were to believe the portrayal of this era you’d end up with a world view like this: all the cool people were doing psychedelic drugs, fucking in the streets, and single-handedly ending the war in Vietnam. If you weren’t a hippie, you were a “square”: you believed in an antiquated notion of America, you were probably a war-monger, voted for Nixon, and killed babies in your spare time when you weren’t being “square.”

Such a notion is ridiculous, but if you look at every modern portrayal of the 1960s and 1970s, that is the imagery you are bombarded with: the people in the streets vs. the people in city hall, as Tenacious D would put it. Just like 10 million people claim to have marched in the Million Man March on Washington, people celebrate and idealize the individuality of counter-culture, because it answers man’s most primal (and self-indulgent) question: who am I, and why am I here? But while the past is marked by decidedly counter-culture movement, our modern society does not have that luxury.

America is often referred to as a melting pot; every culture melding together into one whole. The problem with melting crap together can be seen in the metal drives during World War II: melting nails, scrap iron, and other crap together doesn’t make anything useful. The same is true about the culture melting pot; you just end up with brownish sludge. In reaction, the prevailing culture has no identity to itself, but is rather an amalgamation or confederation of sub-cultures.

Let’s look at Top 40 radio: Miley Cyrus, Metro Station, Rihanna, TI, Linkin Park, Nickelback. Country, Emo, Pop, Rap, Metal, Rock. Claims that this is diversity and good for the country are bullshit. Without a prevailing culture, there can be no counter-culture. And without counter-culture there can be no cultural progression. What we have in America now are sub-divisions: sub-cultures. Goths, Emo, Hipsters, Rednecks (ala Blue Collar Comedy), Yuppies, Hippies, Faux-Intellectuals, Anti-Intellectuals, Barbies, Jocks, Nerds, Gangstas, et cetera. The majority of these sub-cultures define themselves not by who they are, but by who they are NOT. There is a bullshit sense of superiority, and a mistaken sense of individuality.

This is the placebo effect of culture. By cutting down the number of people you associate with you create a warped perception of the world. Even Jocks and Barbies can play the “oppressed” card, because they’re mocked by the Faux-Intellectuals. The divisiveness between sub-cultures breeds hate, misunderstanding and completely destroys any hope of cohesion (and with no cohesion there is no strength). The placebo effect is that these people believe that they are truly unqiue because they’ve spent so much of their time trying to play up their differences from the people they are not and believe they don’t want to be. This gives them a false sense of culture, much like a patient taking a sugar pill thinks he’s feeling better just because he’s taking a pill (and doesn’t know it has no effect).

These sub-cultures are the sugar pill of our generation: they have no effect, and like all drugs (even fake ones) they are expensive. Hipsters spend thousands of dollars (of their parents’ money) on clothes, hair products, accessories and so on… so they can look like they didn’t spend any money at all… WHAT? This is the kind of confusion that is bred in a society that has its culture raped and pillaged. As museum curators have been saying for years (when seeking funding and donations): a lack of culture begets idiocy.

Welcome to the culture of the idiot.

{VM}

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