By Steve D. Matchett
We are assaulted everywhere we go with music that we may not
want to listen to, and with distracting flashing images that we may not see. Pop culture is fed to us whether we want it
or not. Many of us don’t want it imposed
on us; some of us are neutral but take it for granted that it will be there;
some desire it and would feel lost without it.
When I go to my gym, there is a constant barrage of rock
videos playing on one of the TV screens.
This is the only screen with its sound piped into the room. There are other screens with captioned news
and sports shows. The most essential
pieces of equipment I take with me to the gym are my earplugs. Alas, I’m not lucky enough to have a
“soundless” gym like some people are, and switching gyms would be luxury I
can’t afford. Gyms are supposed to be
“high energy” places, but for me I would like it to be a peaceful place where I
can de-stress and think my own thoughts while I sweat.
All this unwanted saturation of pop culture makes me
question the reason that we all put up with it.
This saturation is ubiquitous! I
guess in many ways it makes us feel included in the culture around us, but in
too many ways it irritates us and “dumbs us down.” I feel that so much of it is about our need
for energy, and we turn over our ability to create energetic feelings in
ourselves to the “energy surrogates” of the pop culture world. We want to relate to the energy of others
because they will make us feel energetic ourselves. These false, airbrushed, packaged, and edited
visions and sounds, which are put in front of us, remind us of powers that we
don’t feel we possess. Or we feel we
possess them, but they can lie dormant and “toned down” within us until the
moment is called for their expression.
We surrogate the creators of pop culture to become a representation of
our dormant energy source, so we can feel that it’s always there, safely on
call, if we need it. We expect ourselves
to be at peak energy. Why?…because pop
culture tells us we should be! When we
are not at peak energy, and only on “slow simmer,” we feel like we are
betraying the culture we live in. For
those of us who are older, we want to be reminded of our youth when sexual
energy propelled us. Pop culture gives
us that reminder galore. The falseness
of most pop culture blurs the impressions that help us decide what things are
important in this life, and what our cultural priorities should really be. In an “adolescence” inspired culture like
ours, the worst aspects of our culture get unduly glorified to the point of
nausea. Instead of our kids “growing up
to us” we too often “grow down” to them, or we get stuck in a far less mature
phase of our past. This doesn’t serve the
generations well, as we all succumb to the lure of the advertiser who uses all
this as a prime manipulation tool.
Wouldn’t it be heaven to go to most public places and be
greeted with silence? Silence while we
shop, eat out with our friends, work out at the gym, or even just read at the
bookstore! Libraries are such great
places aren’t they! If for nothing more
than too seek refuge from the storm!
© 2012 Steve D. Matchett
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