There it is.....

I don't make a practice of posting other people's rants, but I'll make an exception in this case.....and it's a comment to a blog*, of all things! There is so much that's marvelous in this comment about the fragmentation of what we have always taken for granted when we say "education," as well as what passes for culture (we now have to modify it and call it "popular culture"). Then there are the more specific things, such as the withering away of a literate readership with a capacity to sense any subtlety in what is written......just read it.

By Yancy Berns on September 23, 2008 7:34 PM
I'm just afraid that we've transformed this culture, collapsed it down to a xylophone shape, and nobody has the time, the inclination, the temperament, even the desire to see what lives within those folds.
Let's wipe away ALL the invisible quotation marks (god, to be part of the 'irony' generation, and to have no taste for the stuff, such have been my days) and state something obvious: your TV critic did not recognize the line from HAMLET, and it doesn't matter, because 10,000 of his readers won't either, and will think its funny that the critic makes a goofy of those "elitist" words... the fact that it is indeed from the greatest written work of western culture (500 years and still at the top of the pops!) would not sway them if they knew. Because they believe that they are righteous, these Invaders, these "new people" who have no time for details, no interest in ambiguity, and can only afford to take everything at face value as they hurtle down their highways. All things pander to this new uni-mind, and I say again, they brim with what must be righteousness.
I could say this to a 25 year old. I could say, "You know 'Hamlet', that play that they shoved down your throat in 10th grade? It's actually a riveting piece of writing that you will see yourself in, throughout, feel your living in, perhaps more than in any other written thing you would be able to find."
They would say, "How could someone who lived that long ago possibly write something that relates to my life?"
And I could say, "Some things never change."
And they would say, "But i live in the modern era. 2008 isn't about moping and worrying! It's about being positive! One love!"
And I would say, "There can be much positive in a dour work of art. Much you can learn about empathy and soul."
And they would say, "I've got enough drama in my own life. Have you seen those gas prices? I don't need this Hamlet business."
And at that point I would walk away defeated, because I realize this is probably the same person who can't relate to 'Under The Boardwalk' by The Drifters either, because it's 40 years old - and what could someone in the early 60's possibly know about living such a fantastic life in such a fantastic age as we do?
And I might mutter, "Forty years don't mean much in terms of human evolution. Maybe you also won't read a fortune cookie if it comes to the table too long after the check, because what could someone in the back of the restaurant five minutes ago possibly know about you, your life, your troubles, your fabulous friends, in this amazing NOW?"
Now, I might agree about the cookie in general, but if there's one disease that has this culture in its grasp, it's utter, yawning apathy... and not just apathy about the big game or the big election, but about the human condition. This may be a failing of the school system, or just a failing of our attention spans, but nobody took my generation by the hand and led them to Kurosawa or Pete Seeger... and good, because what could Kurosawa or Pete Seeger or Edith Wharton possibly know about what it's like to be a human being in this so fabulous, super-speedy 2008?
We've finally reached the future! "This is our time!", the dispassionate shout, "and we choose not to notice all the interesting ways humans can be different than each other, in conversation, in art, none of that! 'Satire'? Oh, I'm so sick of satire! Every time I don't like a movie and someone tells me I didn't get it because it was satire, I just want to slap him in his smug face!"
And so back to that list of useless dead people, who have no possible idea about the amazing human adventure of 2008,and could offer no possible comfort from beyond the grave. Everything is miniature, and everything is fast, and if death carried you away before this wonderful age of all-inclusive cultural ignorance (why actually learn about it when they can just install Wikipedia into my phone?), they you lose, sucker!
And they fall away: Buster Keaton, S.J. Perelman, Kafka, Christ... what could those knuckle-draggers ever know about faster and faster, smaller and smaller? What, are they gonna help me figure out what do when my friend Tony does that one thing I don't like? Puh-leeeezze!

*For the sake of limiting the size of this post, I'll put in only one other quote from the other blog. For the record, It's Roger Ebert's Journal, entry This is the Dawning of the Age of Credulity. The quote from Hamlet referenced in the entry is cited by Ebert referencing a NYT review by Adam Buckman:

Let me give another example of credulity. The following paragraph appeared this week in a New York Post review by Adam Buckman of the season premiere of "Heroes."

"This show, which was once so thrilling and fun, has become full of itself, its characters spouting crazy nonsense. Here's one I wish someone would translate for me: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends--rough hew them how we will," spouts the enigmatic industrialist Linderman played by Malcolm McDowell, who should win an Emmy for keeping a straight face while reciting these lines."

I am still having a hard time believing that Buckman could not have known that the quote from Hamlet wasn't something he'd read or seen somewhere, and then I alternate with wondering whether or not he was being ironic. And yet, it's easily demonstrated that any sort of classical allusions in literate discourse are pretty much fossilized, receding with the speed of light......so I don't know why Buckman's apparent opacity when it comes to a famous Shakespeare quote should surprise me.