A series of fascinating articles as usual. As a tenured "academic" at a regional public institution, I think a lot about right-wing charges of all the radical woke indoctrination that allegedly occurs on college campuses across the United States. How innocent, unsuspecting youth are supposedly duped into uncritically accepting, and then parroting, a series of postmodern ideological positions that are, at their core, Marxist and totalitarian, or gender queer, or whatever.
I know there is a danger in seeing one’s experience of the world as being the default condition for everyone else, but if there is a cabal of crazy academics hell bent on destroying America by co-opting the youth (ya know, like heavy metal musicians did in the 70s and 80s, wink, wink) I've never seen it. Most of the academics I know are aging Gen Xers like myself, and are liberal and progressive in a "1994 Bill Clinton" sort of way. A far, far cry from the "trans-groomer" caricature portrayed by right leaning media.
What has changed drastically in the nearly two decades I've spent in academia are the students themselves. They don't need to go to Harvard to "get woke"; they come in that way. It's not middle-aged professors dragging students to the fringe left, it’s the students leading the faculty and the administration over the cliff. Higher ed is afflicted with the same transactional mentality that has infected every area of human endeavor and the kids are the customers, and they're always right, right? If anything, many faculty I know -including myself on occasion- are afraid of their students.
It’s the same mechanisms that convince a kid from suburban England to go join ISIS and fight for the caliphate, or make some shut-in loser think he deserves to get laid because he has a penis, or a preteen girl think she actually should have been born with one: social media. The algorithms that govern everything “the kids these days” (and everyone else) are consuming, prioritize loud and crazy. And because the currency and legitimacy of anyone on social media is tracked in likes and up votes and hearts, the crazier the better, which just promotes more loud and crazy. Sanity, clam, rational debate, and arguments backed up by fact just don’t play well online. Just look at the comment section of City Journal.
Today’s teens and early twenty something’s have grown up with a phone glued to their hands. They, like most of the population at this point, have been steeped in loud, angry and crazy and it has distorted their picture of reality in so many areas it’s hard to keep track of. My grandmother once told me that in high school she had basically three career options: cook, nurse, or secretary. Despite being a great cook, she hated cooking, and she didn’t want to bathe a stranger, so secretary it was. By contrast, I have students who think that the scourge of sexist oppression has never been worse than it is today…..huh? They didn’t get those ideas from Professor McTenure-Track, they got ‘em from whatever nut they’ve been watching on TikTok at 2am.
There’s only one solution as far as I can tell: Thunderdome.
Numero uno: Art is a luxury. Institutions, or societies, that attempt to inculcate an entitlement attitude in serious artists are simply wrong-headed and do them no favors. High art, high culture, is aristocratic, supported by an elite, organized around kinship and a shared belief system. See, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, ancient Greece, Confucianism, Shinto, Voodoo, etc.
Numero duo: There is no art community. Outside of the ever-more politicized curatoriat, professional artists are entrepreneurs attempting to make a living in a competitive market.
Nov 2, 2023·edited Nov 2, 2023Liked by Franklin Einspruch
Regarding the drop in museum-going, I'm not surprised. In major cultural centers with rich and varied offerings this may not be so evident, but in more ordinary places offering little or nothing except le dernier cri (or what passes for it), it's like a desert. I stopped even so much as checking what local venues were showing, because it was invariably the same sort of thing and of no interest to me (and trust me, I'm FAR more into the arts than the average person). It's as if museums are not programming for the public, but for a small clique of insiders presumably sufficiently with-it to "get it." It may even be museums are only showing what their trendy staff is into--including museums getting public money, which I find insufferable and a form of embezzlement. If a museum is running on my money, it needs to be showing what I want to see, not just what it likes. Expect the numbers to drop further.
If the art world is eating itself, it will wind up with a serious case of food poisoning. There is so much wrong with it, particularly the contemporary scene, that I scarcely care what becomes of it anymore.
As for movie attendance, I can't even remember the last time I went to a movie (nor do I watch movies at home). I got fed up a long time ago with the delusional arrogance and absurd presumptuousness of entertainment world types, whose wares are entirely dispensable. Let them strike poses for each other.
A series of fascinating articles as usual. As a tenured "academic" at a regional public institution, I think a lot about right-wing charges of all the radical woke indoctrination that allegedly occurs on college campuses across the United States. How innocent, unsuspecting youth are supposedly duped into uncritically accepting, and then parroting, a series of postmodern ideological positions that are, at their core, Marxist and totalitarian, or gender queer, or whatever.
I know there is a danger in seeing one’s experience of the world as being the default condition for everyone else, but if there is a cabal of crazy academics hell bent on destroying America by co-opting the youth (ya know, like heavy metal musicians did in the 70s and 80s, wink, wink) I've never seen it. Most of the academics I know are aging Gen Xers like myself, and are liberal and progressive in a "1994 Bill Clinton" sort of way. A far, far cry from the "trans-groomer" caricature portrayed by right leaning media.
What has changed drastically in the nearly two decades I've spent in academia are the students themselves. They don't need to go to Harvard to "get woke"; they come in that way. It's not middle-aged professors dragging students to the fringe left, it’s the students leading the faculty and the administration over the cliff. Higher ed is afflicted with the same transactional mentality that has infected every area of human endeavor and the kids are the customers, and they're always right, right? If anything, many faculty I know -including myself on occasion- are afraid of their students.
It’s the same mechanisms that convince a kid from suburban England to go join ISIS and fight for the caliphate, or make some shut-in loser think he deserves to get laid because he has a penis, or a preteen girl think she actually should have been born with one: social media. The algorithms that govern everything “the kids these days” (and everyone else) are consuming, prioritize loud and crazy. And because the currency and legitimacy of anyone on social media is tracked in likes and up votes and hearts, the crazier the better, which just promotes more loud and crazy. Sanity, clam, rational debate, and arguments backed up by fact just don’t play well online. Just look at the comment section of City Journal.
Today’s teens and early twenty something’s have grown up with a phone glued to their hands. They, like most of the population at this point, have been steeped in loud, angry and crazy and it has distorted their picture of reality in so many areas it’s hard to keep track of. My grandmother once told me that in high school she had basically three career options: cook, nurse, or secretary. Despite being a great cook, she hated cooking, and she didn’t want to bathe a stranger, so secretary it was. By contrast, I have students who think that the scourge of sexist oppression has never been worse than it is today…..huh? They didn’t get those ideas from Professor McTenure-Track, they got ‘em from whatever nut they’ve been watching on TikTok at 2am.
There’s only one solution as far as I can tell: Thunderdome.
Numero uno: Art is a luxury. Institutions, or societies, that attempt to inculcate an entitlement attitude in serious artists are simply wrong-headed and do them no favors. High art, high culture, is aristocratic, supported by an elite, organized around kinship and a shared belief system. See, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, ancient Greece, Confucianism, Shinto, Voodoo, etc.
Numero duo: There is no art community. Outside of the ever-more politicized curatoriat, professional artists are entrepreneurs attempting to make a living in a competitive market.
Regarding the drop in museum-going, I'm not surprised. In major cultural centers with rich and varied offerings this may not be so evident, but in more ordinary places offering little or nothing except le dernier cri (or what passes for it), it's like a desert. I stopped even so much as checking what local venues were showing, because it was invariably the same sort of thing and of no interest to me (and trust me, I'm FAR more into the arts than the average person). It's as if museums are not programming for the public, but for a small clique of insiders presumably sufficiently with-it to "get it." It may even be museums are only showing what their trendy staff is into--including museums getting public money, which I find insufferable and a form of embezzlement. If a museum is running on my money, it needs to be showing what I want to see, not just what it likes. Expect the numbers to drop further.
If the art world is eating itself, it will wind up with a serious case of food poisoning. There is so much wrong with it, particularly the contemporary scene, that I scarcely care what becomes of it anymore.
As for movie attendance, I can't even remember the last time I went to a movie (nor do I watch movies at home). I got fed up a long time ago with the delusional arrogance and absurd presumptuousness of entertainment world types, whose wares are entirely dispensable. Let them strike poses for each other.