AudioShocker

Culturology isn't used to posting retractions; really, I'm still not going to, but I will admit to learning several things with last week's post about Elitism and Idiocy:

1) Just because it's really easy to make fun of Neal, doesn't mean that you should. My approach sensed that a true form could be derived from poking fun at the guy that was too lazy to read Watchmen in its entirety, but really, that sort of zinging is best left relegated to the comments section, however fun, it may well distract from the content of the post itself.

2) It is very difficult to be both a) blatantly disrespectful and b) not come off like an asshole. If I had a point last week (I had several points, really), than one of them was certainly that elitists are not necessarily assholes. Of course, this is a difficult point to prove when you're going out of your way to be an asshole.

3) When dealing with "audience," whether for a single blog post or for a cultural phenomenon at large, it is very difficult to peg down exactly what you're talking about; that is, "audience" is a slippery notion, and oftentimes it slips in less-than-optimal directions.

As I think up and write out these posts on a weekly (always last minute) basis, certain themes come up time and time again. Though its mostly implied, there is a certain mission statement or set of principles behind what I've been calling Culturology. Many of these ideas have already been thematized and written about at some length, so there's some concern that in writing this right now I'm being somewhat redundant, but we're also in the midst of the worst time of year for movies, which tend to be the most obvious fodder for what I write about; thus a post like this, which mostly seems to be seeking to fill its own space, and not too worried about getting anything done.

One of the main concerns that I have, always, and this ties into my stance re: sincerity, is that any kind of cultural analysis or investigation or interpretation is always tainted by "subjective" taste to an extent that renders the "objective" notion of figuring things out impossible, or just plain false. Like what I was saying in the last couple of weeks about the notion of writing "reviews": to me, there's an essential difference between "reviewing" a given movie or album, and analyzing it to see how it works. It's the difference between saying "I like this." and "This is why I like this." Simple enough, right? Except that, at least in contemporary America, credence is generally given to the notion that everyone is a unique individual with unique individual tastes. This can't possible be the case, but at the same time, then, I can't (and don't) claim that my own interpretation is particularly unique either (and actually, if you look back across my posts thus far, you'll see quite a bit of hedging in this direction).

So Culturology, then, sees itself as generating its own audience--if I think this way, then, surely, thousands of other people think similarly as well. This is why it is offended at the notion of writing towards or appealing to the so-called "general" audience. That opinions are just driven by "subjective taste" is uninteresting because, at the level of culture, Americans are much less unique than they think they are. Of course, my ideas will be slanted towards what I think, but at the same time, since they're worried about the broader patterns of culture, operating under the assumption that these patterns are general and not unique, Culturology doesn't need to take that additional step of concerning itself with the "general audience." We all generalize before we even get started doing anything.

So it's not that I claim to objective; rather, I claim that nobody is ever really that subjective. If most cultural decisions boil down to matters of taste or aesthetics, then those opinions are themselves also analyzable, simply because of the amount of sample data available. Looking at how and why such tastes arise--and I admit, one a week to week basis I'm not always as good at this as I might be--is a different matter than simply arguing for one taste or another. The main counterargument to this that I can conceive, is that this sort of culturological structuralism is itself only a certain set of tastes, but, again, while it is itself open to a similar kind of criticism, its also deciphering a different artifact that the standard kind of broad-audience reviews. One aspect of culturology certainly is the reviewing of reviews, and we can (and have before) argue what the role of criticism (of media) and critique (criticism of criticism) are and should be, but at least, I hope, its a bit clearer now what it is exactly that I think I am doing here.