2011
Culture and the Internet: Where is society heading?
by Mila CamilleriTechnology has evolved in leaps and bounds in the last few decades. It is a prevalent part of today’s society, so much so that it has influenced culture irreversibly. Culture is both what makes us who we are, and what makes us part of a group. It shapes us as individuals and gives us our identity, yet it can be a common factor uniting a group of people. Some might say that it is difficult to accurately explain culture. Raymond Williams commented that culture is ‘one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language’. [1]
The generation of the moment is young and metropolitan, with a large percentage, mostly females, being interested in popular culture and the wonder of celebrities. This is a far cry from the ‘snobby’,’ high culture of the past. The current culture is one that is accessible to everyone, both ‘high’ and ‘low’.
Culture is a product of the era it is in. Social, economic and religious factors all affect the culture of a nation. This is why culture changes over time, because the environment and its people change.
Today’s culture is very techno-centric – computers and laptops, mobile phones, the Internet and iPods (to name a few) are a part of everyday life. If one does not have all (or nearly all) of these products in some shape or form, one would receive many a confused glance. The earlier one starts to accumulate this collection of gadgets, the better.
We are in the Information Age, where knowledge is literally a click away – a far cry from having to rummage through the aisles of books in dusty libraries. Of course, libraries are still widely used, but why bother leaving the house when all it takes to find a plethora of information is a few words typed into a search engine?
Perez Hilton is a celebrity blogger who shot to fame within the last four years. Blogging is a form of online journal and has been around for quite some time, but it really took off within the last few years. There are various websites that cater to supplying photographs of celebrities in all situations, ranging from the innocent to the downright embarrassing. Perez’s use of his blog is to report the goings-on of celebrities. He blogs about everything and anything, from how big Nicole Richie’s sunglasses are, to Britney Spears’ drunk driving with no knickers on – with detailed pictures of course. Seemingly credible websites that report current news and events are very popular also, but what is interesting to note is that so-called ‘trash’ sites are almost parallel to these ‘serious’ sites.
Perez Hilton’s blog can see up to 300 million hits per month. This is an obscene amount of people tuning into this vapid form of news, but gossip has actually found a genuine niche in society. Before, newspapers were dedicated to hard news, to politics, current events and other genuinely valuable bits of information. Now we have introduced a gossip page, a paparazzi page or even a glamour modelling section filled with ‘Page 3′ girls.
The life of an ordinary person is frankly not very interesting when compared to the lives of the rich and famous, so nosing around in a famous person’s business gives ‘commoners’ the chance to forget about their own lives, even if for a little while. Everyone wants to be rich and loved, so reading scandalous gossip makes one feel like the rich are not that much better than anyone else – they, too, have their troubles. ‘Regular’ people need the assurance that they are not lesser beings, so in reading gossip they are entertained by such things as Lindsay Lohan’s multiple rehab stints, however immoral it may seem to relish at the thought of a skinny, beautiful, rich blonde battling an ugly addiction.
Theodor Adorno believed that the culture industry was something that allowed consumers to amuse themselves during their free time in order to forget about their reality, to seek refuge from their mechanical form of living. It made life more bearable and gave them a break from the Capitalist regime. When consumers are not working, they need something to occupy their minds so that they would not have to think about the reality of their exploitation. Adorno wrote essays regarding ”popular” and ”serious” music. He talked of Standardisation in music and I would like to look at the effect of Perez Hilton in the light of Standardisation.
Adorno believed that popular music was standardised, meaning it forms part of a mould of what is popular. Also, that it acts as a binder keeping society together and it advocates less challenging forms of entertainment.
In one of his essays, Adorno wrote:
Listening to popular music is manipulated not only by its promoters but, as it were by the inherent nature of this music itself, into a system of response mechanisms wholly antagonistic to the ideal of individuality in a free, liberal society. This has nothing to do with simplicity and complexity. In serious music, each musical element, even the simplest one, is “itself”, and the more highly organized the work is, the less possibility there is of substitution among the details. In hit music, however, the structure underlying the piece is abstract, existing independent of the specific course of the music. This is basic to the illusion that certain complex harmonies are more easily understandable in popular music than the same harmonies in serious music. [2]
Consumers are used to a certain type of music; of songs that sound similar and have repetitive beats. This makes them easy to listen to, as there is no need for intellectual processing. The music just ”is”, and it becomes a safe enclosure, something familiar.Music today consists of commercial songs produced by the hundreds, all with a similar variation of electronic beats and bass lines. Music is produced to make money and even the most innocent of things usually have a hidden political agenda. Nowadays, nothing is innocent.
In the way that popular music distracts society and lacks intellectual engagement, gossip websites often fulfil a similar role. In today’s world there is so much corruption and injustice, and people have to live with it. The dwindling economy, the breaking down of family values and the rise in religion-based violence, to name a few, all take their toll on society. Depression rates are on the rise and there is not much that can be done about it. Every little thing counts in making each day more bearable, so forgetting about life’s troubles, for even a few moments, by reading trash news or watching an over-dramatized soap opera, provides some solace.
This passivity in society is another point that Adorno believed popular music and mass culture to advocate. Serious music, for him, was challenging – it made people think. This engagement allowed for a broadening of the mind and cultural understanding and appreciation. Although society might be passive, mass music keeps it together. If the masses are satisfied and obedient, what more could one ask for?
Adorno, Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School spoke of High and Low culture. High culture consists of such things as classical music, ballet and Renaissance art. Low culture, on the other hand, includes trips to the county fair and folk music. Modern dumbed-down entertainment would definitely be classed as low culture. If Matthew Arnold or F. R. Leavis were around today and were able to see what is happening to culture, it is needless to say that they would not be impressed. For them, high culture is the only acceptable culture.
In the past, society was more or less split into two – the rich and the poor – so it was much easier to distinguish between high and low culture. Today, in the Western world, there are no clear-cut economic boundaries – the middle class has expanded to form the largest conceivable sector. Being rich no longer means that one has inherited one’s valuables and snootiness through his family fortune. A lot of people today are successful because of hard work (Bill Gates, for example), being in the right place at the right time (Mark Zuckerberg – creator of Facebook), or even, still, the sheer luck of being born into a rich family (Paris Hilton).
Social mobility is much easier today than it was in the past, allowing for people with different morals and unconventional mind-frames to be in the ‘wrong’ place in the social hierarchy. A man considered low class may be a self-made millionaire. He might attend dingy indie concerts in his chauffeur-driven Aston Martin. Today, this ‘out of the norm’ behaviour is certainly more acceptable. Society is more open minded about people as individuals, unlike the days of Adorno, when society was looked at as a whole and the individual was brushed aside.
First and foremost, the internet has created a global culture. An unprecedented form of development has been born through social networks, blogs, videos, news and gaming websites, virtual communities, eCommerce, instant messaging software and countless other applications. The internet has made it extremely easy for people from all over the world to communicate in a fairly cheap and comfortable manner.
The Internet itself has become a culture because a new jargon and ‘language’ has been created. The internet allows people to share their ideas and opinions with others in ways that were not possible before the dawn of the technological era.
People can not only share things, but also discover and learn. There are billions of pages online full of information and data that help millions of people across the globe. Today’s generation would be lost without the ability to type a few words into a search engine and receive hundreds of helpful hits. The information is endless and new systems are developed continuously in order to make browsing the internet easier and more efficient.
This ‘cyberculture’ has completely revolutionised everyday life. For example, bills may be paid online, shopping can be done from one’s own home, films can be watched and even e-books can be downloaded. The internet eliminates the need to inconvenience oneself with the mundane task of waiting in line. This anti-social, as some call it, aspect of using the internet has both fans and critics – some love the fact that they do not have to leave the house to run errands, whilst others argue that limiting physical contact with the outside world is detrimental.
Although the internet is so popular and widespread, in some cases, a more ‘old school’ approach is preferred. For example, in an online article discussing the difference between internet critics and newspaper critics, an interesting example is given:
Technology may change rapidly, but old business models change slowly. Some of the people involved with making and promoting movies are still — yes, in 2010, still — unsure what to do about the Internet. Just a few weeks ago, Disney decided it didn’t want online critics at advance screenings for You Again, while critics working for print publications and TV shows were welcome[3].
Company executives worried that if Internet critics were present, they would post spoilers of the film on their websites. Bloggers and online critics have to wait just like everybody else to see the film. The reason print publications were allowed in is probably because newspapers are less biased towards companies, owing to the fact that such companies might be beneficial to them in the future or have been in the past. It would not be wise for them to bite the hand that feeds them.
Snider also lists some amusing differences between the two kinds of critics, such as:
Newspaper critic: Has a desk at the office, and the desk has a computer, phone, and stapler on it, and the desk is surrounded by other desks at which other writers sit.
Internet critic: Has a desk in his apartment, and the desk has a computer and a can of Pringles on it, and the desk is surrounded by empty cans of Pringles[4].
These differences show that on the one hand, a newspaper is seen as more serious and on the other hand, the Internet is seen as being more juvenile – juvenile in the sense that the current generation wants everything here and now; we do not want to wait for anything. It is a gruelling task to read an entire book, when there is the option of researching a particular point in a novel online. This leads to the point that the rise of the Internet has led to the decline of printed books and newspapers. In the past, a cultured person was someone who read books and attended the theatre. Nowadays, one can arguably be just as cultured by reading e-books and watching play productions online.
Whilst discussing the Internet and culture, it is difficult not to mention Perez Hilton. The LA Times believes that Perez is ’like US Weekly, the Star, the Enquirer and Life & Style all rolled into one sweet yet snarky, sagacious yet salacious gay man.’ ‘[5] He has become so popular in society that he was voted one of the top fifteen most influential Hispanics (his mother is Cuban) in the United States, and even Cubano of the year. It is a scary thought that someone who has a celebrity blog, rather than a Nobel Prize, is so highly valued. This sends a message that one does not have to have a degree or a business in order to become well-known and successful. In a way, this is disheartening because so many people spend much of their time, money and effort on obtaining educational merits. Nonetheless, his story may be seen to display the beauty of today’s culture, in that someone from a humble beginning can make it big – the American Dream personified.
Culture today is more accepting of things that are out of the norm, so to speak, and it is unlikely that society is doomed to deal forever with reality shows about teen pregnancies, single men searching suitable women, finding the next top model, or websites reporting the most insipid of news.
Television, websites and magazines of this type are bought and viewed by only a percentage of society. There are still countless people who read Shakespeare and Nietzsche – in other words, there is a balance. A balance is better than having society as a whole being a sponge, taking in whatever the officials in power want them to take in. Not to mention that in the last few decades, along with the Information and Technological ages, credible works of art of all forms have been created. Art such as Thomas Heatherwick’s Seed Cathedral, Mario Vargas Llosa’s Nobel-Prize-winning political novels and plays or even Roy Lichtenstein’s pop culture continue to inspire those who dare to take an interest.
The type of culture of the past is unlikely to resurface in the future. The world has moved on, although there will always be people who still appreciate and embrace that past culture. Arnold and Leavis would probably say that society and culture today is a failure, but does their opinion really matter?
People today have more freedom and can enjoy their lives in whichever way suits them best. As banal as this seems, the little, almost insignificant, things in life that make one smile do affect one’s mental and emotional happiness. Today, the consumer’s needs are met, for the most part. Of course, this means that companies make money by giving the masses what they want, but at least part of society is kept somewhat happy. For Adorno and the Frankfurt School, society was ‘bred’ to be a certain way. Today, society is the one doing the breeding (some in more ways than one).
Advances in technology will continue to evolve – the Information Age is here to stay. The masses are too used to the luxury of technology to give it up. People are not afraid to be themselves anymore, no matter how ‘dim-witted’ they are (as politically incorrect as it sounds) and that is a good thing. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.
References
[1]Andrew Murphie and John Potts, Culture and Technology (Macmillan Press, 2003), p. 6
[2] Theodor W. Adorno, ‘On Popular Music’, in Soundscapes (1941)
[accessed 4th January 2011] (para. 17 of 27)
[3] Eric D. Snider, ‘Are There Still Fundamental Differences Between Newspaper and Internet Critics?, in Film (2010) [accessed 14th January 2011]
[4] Eric D. Snider, ‘Are There Still Fundamental Differences Between Newspaper and Internet Critics?, in Film (2010) [accessed 14th January 2011]
[5] Bio – Who is Perez Hilton, in Perez Hilton [accessed 14th January 2011]
Bibliography
Adorno, Theodor W., and Anson G. Rabinbach, Culture Industry Reconsidered (New German Critique, 1975)
Murphy, Andrew, and John Potts, Culture and Technology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)
Online Sources
1. Stephen R. Covey, ‘ The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families’, in Alibaba Resources (1989) [accessed 4th January 2011]
2. Tim Stack, ‘ The Influence of Perez Hilton’, in Entertainment Weekly (2007) [accessed 4th January 2011]
3. Theodor W. Adorno, ‘On Popular Music’, in Soundscapes (1941) [accessed 4th January 2011] (para. 17 of 27)
4. Thomas Dodson, ‘ The Culture Industry has you’, in Pop Politics (2007) [accessed 13th January 2011]
5. ‘Cyberculture: Society, Culture and the Internet’, in Free Encyclopedia of eCommerce [accessed 13th January 2011]
6. Eric D. Snider, ‘Are There Still Fundamental Differences Between Newspaper and Internet Critics?’, in Film (2010) [accessed 14th January 2011]
7. ‘Bio – Who is Perez Hilton’, in Perez Hilton [accessed 14th January 2011]
