Who is really clinging to the past?

Someone I was reading this morning linked to an old Atlantic article that complained, "Why Is a Music Genre Called 'Americana' So Overwhelmingly White and Male?"

The key thing to remember when confronted with this sort of argument is that the terms "white" and "male" here don't refer to race or sex. These terms stand for everything urban Democratic Party supporters detest, supporters who themselves are, ironically, very white and male.

This irony is lost/not-lost on people like Giovanni Russonello when they write pieces like this. He has to know what is going on but denial is a powerful emotion. So out come the clichés.

Before it became a term for a musical genre, "Americana" was slang for the comforting, middle-class ephemera at your average antique store -- things like needle-pointed pillows, Civil War daguerreotypes, and engraved silverware sets. 

What's so "comforting" about this stuff?  There is an argument hiding way in the background here and we can all fill it in. It goes something like the following: "This music, like nostalgia-inducing items purchased at an antique store, is like a security blanket that people cling to rather than acknowledge that America has changed."

I'll tell you the problem with that argument.  Giovanni Russonello doesn't believe it. For starters, does anyone really worry about people who nostalgically cling to a past that has been left behind? The threat here, the thing that Russonello can't be honest with himself above, is that this past is very much present. Americana is popular and that popularity indicates that the world is not changing in the ways he wants to believe it should be changing.

This is even more clear if we look at his conclusion:

... if an art form is going to name itself after this country, it should probably stop weatherproofing itself against America's present-day developments. 

If you click on the link he provides you get a story that begins, "There is a strange dichotomy occurring in 21st-century America: The country is becoming more diverse and less equal."  It backs this claim up,

Federal Reserve data and Bureau of Labor statistics show that although the nation is becoming less white, wealth is being disproportionately allocated into white hands. Wealth and income gaps continue to widen along racial lines, with whites earning $2 for every $1 earned by African Americans and Hispanics. That gap has remained consistent for 30 years -- despite affirmative action policies of the 1970s and early '80s. According to research by the Urban Institute, white households held four times the wealth of black households before the Great Recession, and that factor managed to increase to six times by 2010.

Meanwhile, the face of poverty, lack of opportunity and discrimination in employment and criminal justice remains overwhelmingly black and brown. The recent census data and court challenges to programs aimed at creating an egalitarian, racially integrated society force the question of whether America is prepared to reconcile the harsh realities of its tortured past with the potential progress of its multiracial future.

 I don't doubt that the actual facts in those two paragraphs are correct. What I would like you to be skeptical about is the way the language spins the facts to support an ideology. Notice, for example, "wealth is being disproportionately allocated into white hand" (emphasis added). "Allocated" says this is an intentional act. That implies that somebody, or a group of somebodies, is handing out the money and they are doing so in a  racist manner. That goes way beyond saying that the system is biased in a way that disfavors some racial groups. And then notice the "harsh realities of its tortured past". Okay, no one can dispute that there were harsh realities but the language here implies that that tortured past, and only that tortured past, explains growing inequality today.

There is a whole boatload of questions being suppressed here. The "programs aimed at creating an egalitarian, racially integrated society", that are supposedly in danger, for example. These statistics tell us that these programs have achieved the exact opposite of what they were supposed to do. Why then is it so important to save them?

It's reasonable to ask who is really clinging to the past here. I'd argue that we are seeing the children of baby boomers everywhere in the world are desperately clinging to the illusions their parents fed them. Russonello writes,

Five years later, Dylan had left folk behind. He was already being called "the voice of his generation," but to merit that title he couldn't just keep writing about revolt -- he had to make sizzling, mercurial music that actually sounded like mutiny.

The events he is describing here happened more than 50 years ago. Take a listen to a revolution in music that was as far in the past in 1967 as Dylan going electric is now.



Try to imagine someone coming along in 1967 and not only saying this is what real revolution sounds like but simultaneously claiming that people who liked rock music with electric guitars were clinging to the past. The level of self deception at work here is mind boggling.

Back to Russonello one more time:

By implying that bands like Dawes encompass some omni-American ideal, the Americana genre doesn't just reify the notion that a white male perspective defines the American experience. It runs the risk of confusing oldness with authenticity.

That was plausible in 1967.  Since then, we've seen a lot of revolutionary ideas come and nothing much has changed. Today, it is just as plausible to ask if maybe there are some things about the human condition that just don't change come what may. That we tend to struggle with pretty much the same challenges and, therefore, the wisdom of the past is still worth listening to. They didn't know how to change the human condition but they knew how to live with it.

Dawes uses some pretty newfangled jargon here but what he is talking about is as old as humanity.

On being punched in the face

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." Mike Tyson

You may cringe at the source but there is deep wisdom in that quote. Plans seem deeply reliable to the people making them but they are easily disrupted. You may think that punching people in the face is a brutish, unthinking persons way of solving problems and that civilized, rational people make plans. And you'd be absolutely right to think that. And that's your problem right there. For not only is life full of brutal, unthinking persons, far more important, nature is brutal and unthinking. Any nasty jerk who wants to can derail your plans and it could happen any time but even pull of the extremely unlikely feat of avoiding brutal jerks all your life, life itself will punch you in the face.

There are probably a number of corollary principles that follow from that but the one that occurs to me is this: A person who has never been punched in the face will tend to put too much faith in plans.  That probably explains a lot of millennial angst—a generation that was raised in a very structured, protected fashion is getting punched in the face for the first time and they really don't like it. The correct lesson to take when life punches you in the face is to learn to roll with the punches. Millennials aren't doing that. For now, they are doubling down on plans. They still have time to learn.

In case you're asking, I have been punched in the face, both literally and figuratively.

Is this escapism or stoicism?

The following is a rambling and very personal post that just trails off instead of reaching a conclusion.

This carnivalesque portrait of provincial Italy during the fascist period, the most personal film by Federico Fellini, satirizes the director’s youth and turns daily life into a circus of social rituals, adolescent desires, male fantasies, and political subterfuge, all set to Nino Rota’s classic, nostalgia-tinged score. The Academy Award–winning Amarcord remains one of cinema’s enduring treasures.

I've been listening to a couple of podcasts that could nicely be summed up as  "a circus of social rituals, adolescent desires, male fantasies, and political subterfuge". The podcasts in question are called Creek of the Week and Beyond Yacht Rock. Both are light and amusing and really funny provided you have a very high tolerance for sophomoric and vulgar male humour. I, as my wife would insist, pretty much have to have a very high tolerance for sophomoric and vulgar male humour. If I didn't I'd have to hate myself.

That will come as a surprise to anyone who knows me only through this blog as I don't engage in much of it here. There is some but not a lot. You could read that two ways. Either 1) I am a deeply conflicted person who puts on a false front for public consumption or 2) I'm a person who strongly believes that the public and private spheres should be kept separate. I tend to favour the second but I can understand why others might go with the first. I believe they are wrong but, the problem is, they have access to exactly the same set of facts as I do—that facts are not in dispute, only the interpretation of those facts.

And I'll just leave that there.

Back to the podcasts, while I laugh very hard at both, I'm feeling a bit uneasy about it. There is something ineffectual and wimpy about this. Both podcasts are also nostalgic, something that isn't necessarily a problem but can be.

Closely related to that, both podcasts are deeply political and partisan. The partisan side of it—mostly blind, irrational rage at Donald Trump—I don't share. That actually makes it more troubling as I can recognize something of myself in their rage even though I don't share their particular set of paranoid concerns. I have my own set of paranoid concerns. The similarity I recognize is a way of not-really-dealing with reality.

And I'll just leave that there too.

The risk of puritanism

The men who've been lately alleged to have committed various acts sexual harassment and/or assault—think Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Mark Halperin—all directly or indirectly supported harsh judgments against young men on university campuses. The same is true those of the many people who knew what was going on and never said a word about it. Think about that for a while: the people who insisted that the ludicrous "statistic" that one of every five female university students is sexually assaulted chose to do nothing about actual sexual assault happening in their own social and work lives.

Don't even think of calling this hypocrisy. This had nothing to do with concealing their true character. This was pure, sanctimonious puritanism right out of the Joe McCarthy playbook. These people have cheerfully smeared men and raised fears of a non-existent "rape culture" for years solely for the power thrill it gave them. They pilloried all men as rapists while exploiting women not because they are one thing in public life and another in secret. No, they are the same power-abusing jerks all the time. And now it's come back to bite them on the ass.

What exactly is this ugly word supposed to mean?

[Jennifer] Lawrence is known for speaking her mind, yet she says that didn't make a difference on this specific occasion. "I asked to speak to a producer about the unrealistic diet regime and he responded by telling me he didn't know why everyone thought I was so fat, he thought I was perfectly 'fuckable.'

 The word is new but the concept goes back decades. It's an insane notion on the face of it. For starters, that's a ridiculously low standard. There are very few women men wouldn't be willing to have sex with.

It's just a fact of our evolutionary psychology. As discussed here before, both men and women would have sex with a frighteningly large number of people if it were simply a matter of desire. Everyday, the vast majority of men and women on this planet walk by several dozen people they'd have sex with. That they don't is a reflection of circumstances other than desire. We tend to want not just sex but sex under conditions we feel comfortable with.

So what exactly does this word mean? It might be more useful to think of the concept than just this particular word. There are two related senses we find used in. There was an example in the comments at the Althouse blog the other day. Althouse had put up a post about the ongoing trainwreck that is Megyn Kelly's career. The very first poster had this to say,

I know she has had a rough year, but I'd still do her.

She's still got that going for her. 

I've heard that sort of comment all my life. It's so stupid even if meant ironically that there isn't much to say about it. It's like saying, "I'd accept $1 million for my 15-year-old Subaru". No one's offering and they'd be the ones doing you a favour if they did.

And yet it continues to be said. Keep that in the back of your mind.

The other use of the term, the one directed at Jennifer Lawrence, I think is a relative one. Think about characters in teen dramas. Blake Lively was twenty the first year she played teen-aged Serena van der Woodsen. That's pretty standard practice as actual teens are rarely as good at acting. Teen characters played by actual teens only work if the kids are not expected to extend their acting range beyond goofy. But if teens are going to be played by people in their twenties, the actor playing the part has to be plausible as a teenager.

If we go back to movies and TV shows, the female lead has to have enough sex appeal that it's going to be plausible that the male lead would want her in the face of the competition. And that is a tough standard, a much tougher standard than real life. The female lead is going to surrounded by exceptionally good looking women. She has to be plausible as the one who draws your eye. The script and the camera are on her side, as they were when Blake Lively played a teen, but there are limits to what the highly paid creative staff can do.

Of course, this is only an issue because the entertainment industry is  one of the most sexist work environments on the face of the earth. Women are hired for their looks and for their willingness to do sexual things. Outside stripping and prostitution, I can't think of any other field where women are treated so unfairly. The woman at the car rental counter who gets only five seconds of screen time has to be smoking hot to get the part. Even women meant to look unattractive are typically played by super-hot young women made up to look less attractive and/or older.

Now, it must be said that Jennifer Lawrence deludes herself. She couldn't make it in a field that didn't operate like that. Her career depends absolutely on her looks. Yes, she can act but she wouldn't even have had a shot at a career if a) she didn't look like she did and b) she wasn't willing to sell herself as primarily a sexual being. She's like a prizefighter, she got her job in the first place because she could go in the ring and stomp the competition, she can't complain now that she only gets to keep her job so long as she can keep that up. If the job was purely a matter of acting skills, there are thousands of women who'd rank above her. She's profited from the very sexism she now decries. That said, this is an appalling industry we should all stop supporting.

What would a non-sexist entertainment industry look like? I don't think anyone even has a clue. There never has been such a thing.

In any case, the ugly word means, this woman is still plausible as the most exciting character on the set even though she's going to be surrounded by lots of other exceptionally beautiful women. And I can understand that even though I don't support the way the industry works. She has to shine in a way that she stands out over every other woman in the cast.

The only the other thing to say is that it didn't used to be quite this bad. It used to be a standard plot line that the male lead would find the "girl next door" more attractive as a partner than the bombshell. That's not to say that the female leads were anything less than beautiful but they didn't have to be the most beautiful woman on the set.

I don't know exactly when that stopped being the case. The change had definitely happened by 1994. In that year, The Mask made a joke of the old convention. The male lead has a the choice between seemingly nice girl in reporter Peggy Brandt or femme fatale, and gangster's girlfriend Tina Carlyle. He duly chooses Peggy who promptly betrays him to the police and then ends up with Tina, who turns out to be trustworthy and caring. I remember thinking at the time that this was a nice send up of a plot cliché. In retrospect, that's not so clear. Once upon a time, Hollywood that character trumped sexiness. That hasn't been the case for a couple of decades now. That The Mask could make a joke of it shows that Hollywood had decided that the standards the rest of us look for in a partner were just a quaint joke by 1994.

More polarity

Both are trans-identified, but belong somewhere in between genders, and they've amassed huge social media followings as gender nonbinary, femme, and fabulous human beings. They've become celebrities in their own right, with Jacob regularly walking down the red carpet at LGBTQ galas and Alok featuring in the Janet Mock–narrated HBO documentary The Trans List.

But if you think all that would land them a date, you'd be wrong. And nobody is more puzzled than me as to why such obvious catches are having dating problems when so many clamor for their attention.

The related article is here. Short version: two celebrities who identify as "non-binary" can't get a date. Think about that: they're famous and quite literally no one wants to have sex with them. The problem is not that no one they find attractive wants a date with them. No one wants them. No one! They are not unique in this. I seem to remember that Morrisey of the Smiths couldn't get a date either. That said, it's difficult.

I could argue this one at length but I'll cut straight to the point. In our culture you can be anything you want. You can identify with any of a whole bunch of genders. You can even make up a new one and identify with that. If that isn't good enough, you can do what the two lonelyhearts described in the article above did and be non-binary. If, however, you want to have a shot at happiness, you should do the following:

1. Be a man or a woman, 
2. Be very good at being a man or being a woman,
3. Stick to it.

It really is that simple. You're free to do otherwise but any other choice is a one-way ticket to unhappiness.

What and when was the sexual revolution?

Harvey, the man who launched a thousand philosophical contemplations:

First, here is Harvey himself, who early on in this on-going debacle said this:

“I came of age in the 60’s and 70’s, when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different. That was the culture then.”

Stop the presses. Harvey has in fact put his finger on one serious cultural truth.

That's from an interesting piece in the American Spectator. The claim there is that the "sexual revolution" , by throwing away all the old rules, left a generation lost and confused. The next step, not explicitly made in the piece, is that poor Harv was one of these.

There are (at least) two ways we might think about the sexual revolution. One way, the American Spectator way, is to speak of a system of sexual morality that was working and then along came chaos and now we all reap disaster. We can nuanced in this view. We don't have to pretend that the sexual morality of the early twentieth century was perfect. We can admit lots of problems but argue that throwing all the rules out was crazy. And it was crazy. All that said, I still think there is another way of looking at things. This other way says that the sexual morality of the first half of the twentieth century was doomed no matter what happened; that if a twelve-year-old Hugh Hefner had ridden his bicycle into traffic without looking and had been killed by a passing truck the history of the 1960s and 1970s would not have been substantially different.

What happened in the 1970s was crazy. That said, Harvey Weinstein is a monster and the only person to blame for that is Harvey Weinstein. Even without rules, some people managed pretty well. We can't keep going that way so we won't. That said, if feminists and/or social conservatives get their way, we'll be plunged into a new puritanism that will make the 19th century look like a glorious age of freedom.