After watching a DVD in a friend’s house the other night we flicked around the television for a few minutes. I’ve only got terrestrial television at home (a rabbit ears) which means I have four channels. Watching cable television in other peoples’ places usually makes me more than grateful for this.
Eventually something called [adult swim] came on. I watched for about four minutes before realising that I had absolutely no idea what was going on. And not in any rewarding kind of way. The Web exposes me to plenty of beyond-weird content that still manages to entertain on some level. This was just nothing. Someone else’s trip.
I got a cold, panicky view of what it must be like to be an old man, trying to fathom youth culture. Every time you turn on the TV it is loud and nonsensical and nothing is linear anymore. On the radio music doesn’t sound like music. It is loud and pornographic and entirely foreign. The news is full or horror and posturing and absolutes are a thing of the past. The faces of people on the street are closed and vacant.
While much of popular culture is pointless and unrewarding to me, it’s still somewhere I feel comfortable enough to criticise as a participant. It’s another thing entirely to be totally alienated from the times in which you live. What will it be like for us at seventy, or eighty, or one hundred and ten? What if every time I turn on the television [adult swim] is on, and people laugh when I point out how shit it is? I suppose we can always surround ourselves with the material of older times. Shore up the walls of our houses with twentieth century music and literature and live an a bubble of esteemed quality. Come to think of it, that’s really what most of us are doing right now.
In related news, Sparklehorse were completely fucking fantastic last night, so, for the moment, pop culture is still delivering.