Linear Culture and a Mad Man’s Quest

Every night my remedy for insomnia is to watch one one-hour show to help usher in the beauty of sleepytime. Sometimes my late night visual snack is of the more noble persuasion with something like John Adams, and other times it is of a baser delight in something like True Blood or Battlestar Galactica (modern day version of course).

Lately it has been with a show called Mad Men – a series that transports one back to 1959-1964 Manhattan in the world of big-shot advertising agencies.

Much of the show is a bit on the soap-opery side, but what it does do quite well is sink you in to the zeitgeist of that time. They make pains (sometimes too much) to portray that time and how it differs from today.

Most things are pretty obvious, e.g., the chain-smoking, the workplace drinking, the common use of the term ‘Negro’, the woman’s place in the kitchen etc. But it’s the subtle differences that are resonating with my personal thinker elves. Here are a few-

Culture today is no longer on a forward moving, linear trajectory.

In the 50’s and 60’s, culture was on a linear pathway. What was happening in 1964 was definitely not happening in 1960. What was happening in 1969 was definitely not happening in 1965. Everything was moving forward and looking forward. Maybe it was the space race with the Soviets that helped keep culture looking to the future. When JFK said we would put a man on the moon by 1970 it gave everybody a simple, singular goal to focus on, even if it wasn’t a conscious, everyday focus. It was sort of a collective feeling that ‘in the future’ is the place to be looking, and the epitome would be when man finally set foot on the chunk of cheese in the sky. An unimaginable feat.

Or maybe it was the fact that many things actually had not been done before so there was a sense one could truly create something, not just regurgitate it. ‘Been there, done that’ hadn’t been there and done that.

Now, cultural and Media theorists call our culture a ‘recombinant’ culture, or a ‘remix’ culture,  where we look backward for ideas and inspiration just as much (if not more) as we look forward.

One may argue, “Well, but back then the middle class white kids were looking backwards to the old time black blues players for inspiration, isn’t that the same?”

No, it’s not. When they were looking to the past it was for inspiration to attempt something that had never been done. Sure, Robert Johnson and Willie Dixon wrote those blues tunes BUT they had never been done in a four piece rock band at deafening volume. It was still a sense of forward motion that was taking place.

Is Michael Buble bringing anything new to the table with his shtick? No. It’s completely retro. It’s a complete recycle. One may argue it’s good, but don’t argue that it’s new.

Now don’t get me wrong, ‘recycling’ can bring about something cool and creative. Beck (not Jeff, the other Beck) showed us that.

Today the idea of a ‘Generation Gap’ is a thin one and in many cases doesn’t even exist.

Sure, somebody who is thirty-six may not get the whole reason for that crazy Twitter thing the kids are using these days, but one can just as easily turn around and find someone who’s thirty-nine or forty-seven Twittering like crazy.

In the 60’s, what the ‘kids’ were doing was for the most part completely lost on the parents. The music, the attitudes, the grass smoking, the growth of self-awareness were just a complete foreign language to a generation who were kids in the depression, fought for their lives in WWII and Korea, and were content to just live in peace with a decent job in the 60’s. The Baby Boomer ‘kids’ wanted more. They wanted purpose, they wanted meaning and some ‘old’ (forty-something) WWII fogey  shouting in their faces, “What are you looking for? You should just be damn glad you ain’t speaking German you little ungrateful sh*t!”, wasn’t going to hold them back.

Two worlds, two perspectives and boy, did they clash.

Today, oftentimes the biggest difference between a eighteen year old and a thirty-eight year old is the eighteen year old loves Nirvana and the thirty-eight year old loves them too, he just saw them in concert.

When I went back to school for the 400^th time to finish a degree and found myself in a sea of ‘kids’ who were 5,10,15 years my junior, I was struck by the fact they all liked the same music I did. Zeppelin, Hendrix, and Pearl Jam as well as Feist, Moby and The White Stripes. There was virtually no difference in our perspectives and perceptions.

Definitely not the case in 1965.

Today, the concept of ‘fighting the man’ doesn’t exist.

In fact, now we worship ‘the man’. We wait with baited breath to see what Steve Jobs will put an ‘i’ in front of next. We look at pimply faced, Billionaire, Facebookie, 26 year old Mark Zuckerberg as a massive success, not even remotely as a sell-out. In fact, the concept of being a ‘sellout’ is kind of lost.

In the 60’s the idea of using your brains and talents for a higher cause or the pursuit of some sort of truth was a dominating one. It drove the sub-culture of ‘youth’ who were going to right all the mistakes the older generation made. Corporations were ‘evil’, art was ‘good’; there was a truth to be pursued. Morrison knew it, Hendrix knew it, The Beatles let their mop-tops grow out and they eventually knew it.

Nobody over 30 knew it.

There was ‘the man’, he was everywhere. He was your boss, he was the government, and he must be fought. And it was the youth who would rise up as a collective, subversive, powereful underground movement and present keys and concepts exposing the lies society had foisted on the unsuspecting public.

Today? ‘The man’ is…Obama. Actually, he’s called ‘The One’. And you vote for him. And then let him do all the work. And then whine when he doesn’t deliver.

And then go about your way trying to invent the next Google and become a billionaire.

Truth? Fighting the man?

Oh yeah… isn’t that a Rolling Stones song or something?