Why does our popular culture celebrate the stupid?

[Archae]

I mean, look at our entertainment, TV, movies and music.

Look at too many of our politicians.
(Especially the republican ones.)

Yesterday a "museum" based on young-Earth creationism opened.
Cost 27 million $$$, and visitors pay 20 bucks to be lied to by fucking morons.

Even informational channels on cable.

Tonight on the History Channel is a look at how George Lucas borrowed from just about everyone to make Star Wars, not bad there.
Then a series begins called "Universe."
Sounds good so far, right?
After that, "UFO's Of The 70's." :wtf:
I mean, disco aliens?

[billyskank]

1. Hint is in the word 'popular'

The dross is what marketroids think people want.

[MorningGlow]

4. Tell me about it

Got a "special edition" of Entertainment Weekly in my mailbox today: an ALL-AMERICAN IDOL-ISSUE. Seventy-six special pages of analysis, backstage blah-blah, etc. What in the world warrants 76 pages of coverage of that dreck? (Especially because it's covered incessantly in the regular issues of the magazine.)

:puke: :puke: :puke:

I don't suppose anybody realizes that some people do NOT, in fact, EVER watch American Idol? ...Nah...

[MonkeyFunk]

10. I disagree

it's not what they "think" people want. It's what people want.

You can subscribe to the Economist just as easily as People. Guess which one people choose?


I think people long for a mythical age where low-culture didn't exist - where everyone sat around at night playing the harpsichord and reading sonnets. That age never existed.

[volstork]

2. Probably the "Lowest Common Denominator" theory

you can only be as smart as your stupidest individuals. I also think shrub has a great deal to do with it-- there have been studies looking at military commanders and their soldiers during war; if the commanders are averse to rape and torture, so are the soldiers under their command. If the leaders have an "anything goes" attitude, many more atrocities are committed. I realize that the OP question asked about stupidity, and think the point is still germane: our president is a complete idiot, and there are many who look to mirror those in power... I'm just sayin'.

[unpossibles]

3. a wise man once said to me

"you can't aim too low."

[Left Is Write]

5. I saw the in-depth analysis of Star Wars last night, and I thought it was kind of funny...

All of the analysts were talking about Lucas' use of themes from mythology, Greek tragedy, Biblical religion and so forth, and I kept saying, "Well, duh!" Most classic stories of good versus evil draw from the same recurring themes.

[AllegroRondo]

6. "You'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people"

P. T. Barnum

[Mike Daniels]

7. Except that the same movies, shows, etc... are popular throughout the world

The fact that it's a European country doing the kidney donation reality program proves that European cultural superiority is a concept that died out long ago.

Incidentally, the general concept for American Idol came over from across the pond.

[billyskank]

9. It was Australia that invented the format

They had a TV talent competition to form a pop band, which were called "Bardot." They split up soon after. We copied the format in Britain a brazillion times.

[Deja Q]

11. So did the British shows that created

Three's Company
The Weakest Link
All in the Family (and therefore its spinoffs too)
what became the movie "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure"
The Office
Coupling

I could go on for some time.

The latter two in the list weren't successful, proving you cannot clone an idea. It has to be properly formatted for culture. Both those shows, especially 'Coupling', weren't exactly rewritten or even tweaked for an American audience... and some would say 'Coupling' is just a raunchier version of 'Friends' anyway - and 'Friends' came first... which is okay, because 'Friends' is just an updated version of 'Three's Company', which it was a revamped 'Man About the House'. :D

(Note: Season one of 'Three's Company', like the US 'Coupling', had the scripts copied, with virtually no differences. Even TC had a "pub, just like what they have in England" as a line of dialogue to hide the fact it was a derivative show. It's the cast that understood the material that made TC work. The cast of US 'Coupling' hadn't a flippin' clue...

[Deja Q]

8. It reinforces the claims for justifying offshoring.

The latest spit here goes to home servers and home SAN devices, which claim to replace RAID - home users do not want anything technical.

Heck, most users don't know the difference between a desktop and a doorstop.

Yet we're all stupid and that's why we offshore those jobs to people in other countries who read cue cards and not know any of the things they have to troubleshoot at bad hours of the night; such as 10:15PM according to a coworker... (Doesn't that redefine the concept of "DUMB!!"?)