 |
Main >> News Listing >> June 2004 >> Article ID 5060
 A most uncultured culture | Type: Internet Article |
| | A most uncultured culture | Jun 04, 2004 | by Pat Clark
Summary:
Preteen girls see bikini-clad, gyrating women in music videos, nude-bodysuit-donning Britney Spears and micro-everything-donning Christina Aguilera and want to be just like them.
Read on for the whole article. |
Trash culture.
That's a phrase a friend used recently to described the sad state of our society.
I couldn't have agreed more.
From music to movies to television to the clothes people wear, the world we live in has become one big pop-culture dump.
Consider:
The music industry once gave us artists too numerous to count who produced an ongoing catalog of true hits -- inspiring, thought-provoking songs. Think The Who, Pink Floyd, R.E.M., Marvin Gaye, Talking Heads, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, and so many more it's hard to imagine.
They were embraced by their record companies, guided, allowed to grow, to express themselves and become megastars.
But today, the same industry inundates record stores and radio waves with cookie-cutter bands and singers who enter the hit-making assembly line from the left and quickly exit on the right, never to be heard from again.
They are slap-dashedly developed, touted, sold as commodity and then trashed to make room for the next "big thing" who also will last no more than a few months.
Today's movie screens are filled with recycled material -- either remade from previous features, TV shows reworked into features, or sequels of anything that turned from red to black at the box office.
And many films that aren't purely recycled are simply more of the same -- been-there, done-that story lines that we've seen over and over again in which only the names and wardrobes have been changed.
Sure, there are a few original films tossed in here and there, but they're getting harder and harder to find amid the rest of the rubble.
Do I really have to say what's trashing our television screens? We all know -- whether we're watching them or not -- that reality programs are garbage, garbage, garbage.
They're enticing, cheap garbage, though, so we get more and more of it flung at us from nearly every nook-and-cranny network known to remote-control wielders.
If shows like "Fear Factor," "The Swan" and "Superstar USA" aren't pure offal, I don't know what is.
Finally, among the most disturbing of trashy trends is the fact that the young celebrities our teenagers look up to are proving to be less and less like role models and more and more like shock-seeking exhibitionists.
If the pants on the trendiest of our trendy celebs get any lower, the rubber band industry will be revitalized into a fashion house.
Young women are presenting themselves as nothing but sex objects, just a few decades after so many fought hard to be seen as anything but.
Even Miss Control, Janet Jackson -- and forget the boob drop here -- was willing to send out this demeaning message by allowing her shirt to ripped off in front of the nation by Justin Timberlake, as though this was perfectly acceptable male-to-female behavior.
Preteen girls see bikini-clad, gyrating women in music videos, nude-bodysuit-donning Britney Spears and micro-everything-donning Christina Aguilera and want to be just like them.
The pastor at my church recently had to use the weekly bulletin to beseech female parish members to show less skin when attending services. He particularly asked that parents make sure their young girls dress appropriately.
If preteen and teenage girls think parading about the pews in tiny minis and tube tops is A-OK, what are they wearing to school? Or to the mall?
It seems so much in today's culture is toss-away. Class, commitment and artistry -- not to mention accountability -- have been thrown out too, the babies with the bath water.
Sure, fads come and go. The fashion trendsetters eventually will pull up their waistbands. But you can bet they'll promote their scandal-sells agenda in some new and more tacky way.
That's because fast money and shock value have risen to the top to rule the heap in this dumping ground we call pop culture. |
 Source: Modbee | |
|
|
 |
|
|
| Username: | Guest |
| Position: | Unregistered Viewer |
|
|
ChristinaMultimedia is a non-profit
website. Costs to maintain the master server and other servers are very expensive. If
you use and enjoy this website and any other websites of CMM, it would be greatly appreciated if you can help out with our costs.
|
|
|
Total Online: 5
5 Guests, 0 Members |
|
|
|
|
Total Articles: 11578
Total Views: 9330423
Total Comments: 1600
Total Hits: 12867594
Total Unique Visits: 1698162
|
|
|
|
FAQ
Login
