First of all, holy shit, I'm genuinely honored that you took the time to engage with my piece at this length and on your own platform. That's the highest compliment a writer can get: not just a comment but a full response essay. Thank you.
And you're making me work here, which I appreciate. You're right that I may be conflating theatrical ubiquity with cultural presence. The Blockbuster point is well taken. A lot of what I remember as "middle-tier moviegoing" was probably middle-tier movie renting, and that's a meaningfully different experience. Fair hit.
Where I'd gently push back is on the "unhealthy peace" framing. I don't think monoculture was valuable because everyone agreed. It was valuable because everyone argued about the same thing. The water cooler wasn't consensus. It was friction. And I think there's a difference between "togetherness for togetherness' sake" and a shared cultural commons that gives people enough common ground to actually disagree productively. What we have now isn't a healthy diversity of perspectives. It's a million separate rooms where everyone already agrees with each other.
But honestly, this is exactly the kind of exchange that makes writing worthwhile. You've sharpened my thinking and I hope I've given you something to chew on in return. I'll be reading your work. Thanks again for the generous engagement. If any of your readers want to come argue with me directly, they're welcome anytime. Subscriptions are free.
I actually don't disagree. One of the other points made in the book sourced above is that the East suffers from being unknown within one's own family, because the group is all-important, while the West suffers hyper-individualism where we've forgotten HOW to congregate in fully healthy ways. Both are incomplete and not particularly good for the individual or the group.
So we do want to gather, we do want to interact, and we do want to argue - this isn't an argument for hyper-individualism. But gathering doesn't have to be everybody, everywhere, all at once, about the same thing. That leads to a complete lack of individual identity, whereas we equally don't want to split the groups into too fine a niche - that's where no one is challenged. But this tends never to be the case: punk rock, women's lib, civil rights, these movements held massive differences within themselves, heated arguments that were important and critical. If people do in fact gather, we will disagree.
Disagreeing about the latest James Cameron film isn't completley valueless, but if that's all anyone is really discussing, then it's a vanishingly small value to culture on the whole. It's a flattening of how much we're discussing at any given time. It's okay for small-ER groups to all be focused on different things. That every man, woman, and child doesn't have well versed opinions on a small handful of products and nothing else. It's difficult to argue that STAR WARS can be that "personal" to anyone, because there's nothing specific to any individual about it - it's too broadly shared and celebrated. If films you saw when you were <10 years old are still your most personal, what does that say about your growth and experiences past that age? Monoculture keeps people in a box. We're all in it together, but this just as unhealthy as remaining in our bubble/room at home, ever gathering. Neither extreme is what we should be propping up or pining for.
First of all, holy shit, I'm genuinely honored that you took the time to engage with my piece at this length and on your own platform. That's the highest compliment a writer can get: not just a comment but a full response essay. Thank you.
And you're making me work here, which I appreciate. You're right that I may be conflating theatrical ubiquity with cultural presence. The Blockbuster point is well taken. A lot of what I remember as "middle-tier moviegoing" was probably middle-tier movie renting, and that's a meaningfully different experience. Fair hit.
Where I'd gently push back is on the "unhealthy peace" framing. I don't think monoculture was valuable because everyone agreed. It was valuable because everyone argued about the same thing. The water cooler wasn't consensus. It was friction. And I think there's a difference between "togetherness for togetherness' sake" and a shared cultural commons that gives people enough common ground to actually disagree productively. What we have now isn't a healthy diversity of perspectives. It's a million separate rooms where everyone already agrees with each other.
But honestly, this is exactly the kind of exchange that makes writing worthwhile. You've sharpened my thinking and I hope I've given you something to chew on in return. I'll be reading your work. Thanks again for the generous engagement. If any of your readers want to come argue with me directly, they're welcome anytime. Subscriptions are free.
I actually don't disagree. One of the other points made in the book sourced above is that the East suffers from being unknown within one's own family, because the group is all-important, while the West suffers hyper-individualism where we've forgotten HOW to congregate in fully healthy ways. Both are incomplete and not particularly good for the individual or the group.
So we do want to gather, we do want to interact, and we do want to argue - this isn't an argument for hyper-individualism. But gathering doesn't have to be everybody, everywhere, all at once, about the same thing. That leads to a complete lack of individual identity, whereas we equally don't want to split the groups into too fine a niche - that's where no one is challenged. But this tends never to be the case: punk rock, women's lib, civil rights, these movements held massive differences within themselves, heated arguments that were important and critical. If people do in fact gather, we will disagree.
Disagreeing about the latest James Cameron film isn't completley valueless, but if that's all anyone is really discussing, then it's a vanishingly small value to culture on the whole. It's a flattening of how much we're discussing at any given time. It's okay for small-ER groups to all be focused on different things. That every man, woman, and child doesn't have well versed opinions on a small handful of products and nothing else. It's difficult to argue that STAR WARS can be that "personal" to anyone, because there's nothing specific to any individual about it - it's too broadly shared and celebrated. If films you saw when you were <10 years old are still your most personal, what does that say about your growth and experiences past that age? Monoculture keeps people in a box. We're all in it together, but this just as unhealthy as remaining in our bubble/room at home, ever gathering. Neither extreme is what we should be propping up or pining for.