n+1 has a new piece on the changing landscape of the “sellout,” and the assertions of authenticity that have been re-shaped in the relationship between art and commerce. Evan Kindley is writing a review on a few books in the topic, one of which is spotlighted, by Timothy Taylor, The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture. Going back to the origin of music being used for advertising ends, the book archives the radio-days of musicians crafting Lucky Strike jingles, all the way to the visual age of musicians having their own songs (and personas) implanted into…
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Another Week Ends: Abercrombie’s Hot People, The Neverending “Me Me Me” Era, George Jones’ “Choices,” Katharine Welby, New TV, and New Vampire Weekend
1) The Atlantic provided an insightful zinger to the finger-waggers of today’s adultescent. Looking at today’s young people, of whom I am one—blogging away, shoes off—the piece is a response to the recent cover article of Time magazine, “The Me Me Me Generation.” The Time piece is a backhanded spotlight on the millennials, a heat-ray at their unique and insipid self-absorption, their phones, their extended stays at home. Contrary to this, Elspeth Reeve writes that the Me, Me, Me Generation is every generation—that we’ve been locating (and writing about) the narcissism of youth since we’ve written. She then delineates a…
Cigarettes, Cupcakes, Narcissicism, and Sympathy: Reflections on Judd Apatow
Yes, the Oscars are just around the corner and yes, there are still a bunch of nominated films I haven’t seen either. Amour and Lincoln and Django are at the top of the list (at least I caught the hilarious and bloody “Djesus Uncrossed” this morning!), though I have no idea how they’d possibly surpass Silver Linings Playbook in terms of grace and intelligence and entertainment value. Suffice it to say, it was a good year for cinema. One film that’s stuck with me that hasn’t been mentioned with the rest of the pack is Judd Apatow’s This Is 40.…
Lunatic Faith, Computer Digits, & the Myth of Money
This American Life and Planet Money recently produced an episode titled “The Invention of Money.” You can listen to it here.
The story places the concept of money into the framework of faith, mainly due to the fact that money is no longer a physical object with tangible value like gold. Instead, it is fiction, myth, a number generated on a computer, passing through the internet. With just the push of a button, we’ve got the genesis of currency; something they call in the story “Opening the Fed Window.” The only way this money-myth has value is if people have faith…
Love in the Time of Credit Scores
Well, you thought you had met Mr. Right. Everything lined up, all the expectations you had compiled since middle school, all the inner-complexities you had longed for and, what’s more, there’s spark. It’s not just that he’s everything you thought you wanted, you actually like him, too. And then you ask him… “What’s your credit score?”
This was published in the Christmas New York Times, an assumable but no-less-shocking progression in sizing up a mate. It again just goes to show the endless bounds to which we circumvent love for love-of-law, and how quickly we can feel snuffed on the other…
America / Books / Everyday / Identity / Law / Money / Psychology / Science / Sports / Technology / TV
Another Week Ends: Fans and Debtors, Reverse Psychology, Brooks on Merit Power, Batman and Walter White, Spousal Surveillance and Christian Technology
1. From The Atlantic comes “Why Being an Obsessed Soccer Fan Can Make You Really, Really Happy,” a look into the camaraderie of fandom–which seems simple enough–but not only does fandom give purpose and an unusual chance to breach the confines of self-interest, it also provokes inclusion by way of exclusivity. People have the opportunity, despite their level of fandom, to be fans, together—to identify with something that’s not themselves, together.
The Penn State Nittany Lions Paternoville “White Out”
Trying to rationalize fandom can be a complicated, even futile process. But studies by psychologists have shown that identifying yourself with a…
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Another Week Ends: Trickle-Down Distress, Klout Scores, Playful Parenting, Glorious Ruin, Churchy Beer, Moonrise, Darnielle on Amy Grant, Blur and Louis CK
1. “Trickle-Down Distress: How America’s Broken Meritocracy Drives Our National Anxiety Epidemic” – what a title! Maura Kelly’s piece in The Atlantic functions almost as a survey of a number of the studies and articles we’ve highlighted in recent months, such the WHO reports that show America leading the world in clinical anxiety by a significant margin, and the recent piece about Having It All. In what essentially amounts to a treatise on the cruelty (and practical and psychological dead-end) of works righteousness, Kelly looks at how thorough-going the conflation of personal identity with material/career success has become in our…
Creditors, Debtors, Forgiveness, and God
Among the podcasts to which I subscribe is NPR’s excellent Planet Money, a program which was born out of the Great Recession and guides listeners through the intricacies of the global financial system, both past and present. Sounds really boring, I know, but it isn’t, and has been very helpful to this New Yorker, living in a finance town with no finance knowledge or experience. And it’s great for sermon illustrations, as you will soon see…
A recent episode caught my attention – “History Is a Battle between Creditors and Debtors” - in which the hosts discuss how the kind of tension…
When Enron Gamed the System
This one comes to us from the illustrious Jim Zucker:
Living in Houston, even more than ten years after the collapse of Enron, references to Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Andy Fastow, et al., still catch my attention. Recently, Fastow, the Enron CFO who became the Government’s “star witness” in its prosecution of Lay and Skilling and has served his own jail sentence, spoke to a Financial Statement Accounting class (riveting!) at Tufts. His observations (as conveyed by the professor) on the effect of the law and regulation are not surprising to regular Mockingbird readers:
“Regulation has not prevented fraud. In fact, it…
Lost in Transition (to Adulthood): Whatever Makes You Happy?
In line with the boomers-stickers speech from Wendell Berry, Christian Smith’s Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood is a sociological look into the hyper-relativist boom-ist mentality of today’s 18-23 year old. His book identifies five of the premier values of emerging adults today (consumption, sexual relativism, binge drinking, political apathy, etc.), all of which point to an infantilized adulthood, an adulthood priding itself on mobile acceptance, a conception of freedom which paradoxically kills it. Smith is a bit heavy on the criticism, to the point that his understanding misses empathy, as well as too much of the…
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Another Week Ends: Inner Machiavellians, Lutheran Insults, Whisky Priests, Monkees, Mets, Parenthood, Veep, Viola Davis and Frankenweenie
1. I’ll admit it: I’ve been trying to lay off the David Brooks, at least in the Weekend columns. As insightful as he frequently is, there are plenty of fish in the digital sea, are there not? Well, to paraphrase a Pacino, every time I think I’m out, he pulls me back in. That is to say, giving anything top billing other than his NY Times column from yesterday, “The Machiavellian Temptation,” would be dishonest. It’s getting to the point where I suspect we’re being punked a la Candid Camera. Anyway, this time around Herr Brooks is contrasting recent breakthroughs…
Three Years In, Still Determined, Still Anxious
The 11-part Heartland polls came out, and the Atlantic was quick to pick up on the psychological implications this recession has had on Americans, three years in. It turns out–yes, go figure–that we are just as determined in spirit (though with, as they call it, a renewed sense of “reluctant self-reliance”) and maybe a little more anxious, a caustic combination if you ask me. The polls make clear that we are undeterred, resilient in our belief that our efforts are going to make the change, not the institution. I wonder why…
More than three years into the deepest economic downturn since…
Populist, Piggishly Nostalgic Do-It-Yourselfers: Our Pictures of Ourselves in 2011
The Atlantic has always done a splendid job with immediate meta-cognition, at taking a few steps back from the cogs of the e’er-turning world “spinning madly on,” and communicating not only what’s going on, but what’s going on behind what’s, uh, going on. It’s hard not to celebrate journalism that is doing this kind of work–and we’re completely unbiased here–the kind that looks deeply into what we’re looking at everyday anyways, and asks what frameworks are at play. The news behind the news, in other words. It’s not always good news, but there’s something good about analyzing what greater narratives…
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Another Week Ends: Deadly Doing, Horton on Incarnation, Epic Fantasy Appeal, Schizophrenic Hope, DFW Syllabi, Nice Guys, George Harrison and Superman
1. Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish produced a stirring little meditation earlier this week which brought together two of our favorites, philosopher Michael Oakeshott and social psychologist Daniel Kahneman, under the dynamo Oakeshott-inspired title “The Deadliness of Doing.” He speaks about Oakeshott’s lifelong project of trying to recover was a way of doing things which was as unselfconscious as possible. It’s not terribly different from the dynamic described in Tullian Tchividjian’s book we reviewed earlier this week, that true spiritual progress consists in being liberated from self-reference as much as possible, i.e. becoming less fixated on the me-centered notion…
Hollywood’s R.I.P.-Roaring Recession Redux
Hollywood is taking it to the tents! Over the past two years, in deference to the 99%, television shows and star-studded films are telling the stories of the least, last, and (job) lost. According to Alyssa Rosenberg at The Atlantic, two particular new shows and movies are thematically confronting the American mythology of stability-as-salvation. These certainly aren’t the only two, either. Rosenberg is on to something, that Hollywood is tapping into the clarifying health of “downward mobility,” that death to the checkbook and circumstantial control is a paradoxical–though certainly painful–rest in peace.
Understandably enough, a lot of these productions have an…
Charles: "full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction" ...
Paul Walker: Amazing post! Thank you....
David Morton: Thanks! Ummm... yeah... that was probably the most dead-on, jam p...
Mark Salomon: How am I only discovering this... today? Best to you and your future e...
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