Down a Lost Highway

After years of being on my must-read list, I am finally getting around to Peter Garalnick's Lost Highway, after a gracious friend recently gave me a copy. Despite barely cracking it, I'm already gripped by the eloquence and depth of the writing. And it's the following that so cleanly sums up what I've been trying to expound about popular culture for 15+ years.

"In order to appear on network television, it is necessary to appeal to the lowest common denominator; all regional identification must be smothered over. So - and this is the final step in my simplified syllogism - what is entertaining people on a mass level is no longer genuinely popular culture - in which the audience at whom the entertainment is aimed, out of whom the entertainment has sprung, continues to have a real input - but a pale evisceration, a pathetic dilution of a rich cultural tradition. If Elvis came out today, you have the feeling, he would not get the airplay, simply because he was, well - too strange, too out of the ordinary.....It seems sometimes as if we have all been convinced that we owe it to ourselves, we must be entertained by whatever entertainment is most readily at hand." p. 14

Despite being penned in 1979, I'm not sure this assessment has ever been more applicable. It's why folks run out to see the latest crappy blockbuster over something with, well, actual substance. It's why tepid acts like Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes elicit hipster adoration while acts with ten-fold more soul and creativity are often forced to close shop due to public laziness. It's why Austin City Limits is reserved for public television while American Idol has 6.5 million fans on Facebook. And it's why I know that American Idol has 6.5M friends on Facebook, while treasures like Magnet Magazine and Harp have fallen off the racks.

I recently saw Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life and have been raving about it ever since. While sharing my hyperbolic review with a friend, he paused and said, "Do you think it's possible that you simply find it great compared to other options? If it came out in the 70s when great films were consistently being made, do you think you'd react with the same enthusiasm?" And although I continued to defend the film, I realized that there was definitely something to his hypothesis. We're so smothered by big budget garbage that perhaps the smallest glimmer of actual creativity and depth reveals itself as The Godfather.

In a world so immediate and easy, just like Garalnick over 30 years ago, I guess I wish we just took more time to dig a bit. The arts weren't and aren't meant to be force fed to us. But this is today's reality. And in such a reality, it's never been more imperative that we chart our own course. Who knows, it might just change your life.