{"id":524,"date":"2014-01-26T20:20:27","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T04:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/?p=524"},"modified":"2015-12-08T06:43:23","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T14:43:23","slug":"morbid-curiosity-culture-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2014\/01\/morbid-curiosity-culture-is-dead.html","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Curiosity – Culture Is Dead (Move Along…)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"ff_webrip_chart2\"<\/a>

Image: Wired<\/p><\/div>\n

What a week. First there was the Slate piece<\/a> that declared classical music dead. Then spiked<\/a> decided that pop music was over<\/a>.\u00a0Why is it that people keep wanting to kill off great swaths of our culture?<\/span><\/p>\n

These are only the latest in a long series of articles declaring the end of orchestras<\/a>, of Netflix<\/a>, TV<\/a>, the demise of book stores<\/a>, movie theatres<\/a>, publishing<\/a>, video games<\/a>, the English language<\/a>, higher education<\/a>, the World Wide Web<\/a>… it goes on and on. \u00a0Now, even Fox News is dying<\/a>, writes Frank Rich.<\/span><\/p>\n

Partly it’s a device to draw attention to change. Don’t take X for granted, it declares, for better or worse things are changing. The ever-perceptive demographer James M Russell plays with the “death of…” meme <\/a>over at Pacific Standard in a series of posts that uses the dying theme to explain change.\u00a0The spiked essay is an interesting version of the genre. No, pop music isn’t dying, but it is fundamentally changing as a definer, chronicler or barometer of popular culture.<\/p>\n

For previous generations, pop music was as much about the social side of music as it was about seven-inch singles and chart rundowns. Today, when young people are encouraged to hunker down in the bosom of the family well into adulthood, and with the outside world presented as a fearsome place to be, pop music is no longer quite so resonant as a symbol of excitement and independence, sex and romance. The desirability of pop music has faded, not because of MP3s and free downloads, but because the desire to be extraordinary, independent and free is less of a smash hit today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mark Vanhoenacker’s Slate piece about the death of classical music, on the other hand, undercuts its premise by cherry-picking stats that may or may not have anything to do with his point, and knitting it together with dubious anecdotal observations. Others have thoroughly dismantled this piece – Frank Oteri addresses the major points<\/a> in NewMusicBox, while Andy Doe does a gleeful point-by-point take-down<\/a> at Proper Discord, so there’s no need to duplicate here.<\/p>\n

But stepping back, Vanhoenacker’s piece is a great example of a good question hitched to a faulty premise. The question is whether classical music is still relevant or viable. The premise though is that the definition of relevant or viable is something it was in the past and Vanhoenacker\u00a0doesn’t even entertain the notion that the definition might have changed.<\/p>\n

Culture keeps on reinventing itself. It would be peculiar then if the definitions of its relevance were frozen in eras that no longer exist. If an art form doesn’t evolve, it dies. The Slate piece defines success of classical music for a world that doesn’t exist anymore (Time<\/em> magazine covers? Really?). That classical music doesn’t occupy the cultural moment that it once did is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s an inevitable thing. We’re living in an era when every creative industry is having to reinvent itself as old models that support them change or fall away. Audiences want to have different relationships with art and artists; digital media has changed our access to artists and creativity. That doesn’t have to mean decline; it could mean opportunity.<\/p>\n

Any time a medium changes – whether it’s technology-driven or a shift in the way an artform is supported, it’s difficult not to measure the changes using the frame of the old model.\u00a0But when the medium changes, the values we measured in the old model might not be appropriate to the new.<\/p>\n

Just one example: In the 1900s and 1910s audiences were bewitched by silent movies. That pictures could move seemed like magic. A generation of actors became famous at a heretofore unimaginable scale. The best of them could convey with a wink or glance the depth of a character.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But after 1927 with the release of “The Jazz Singer”, the silents went into quick decline. Many of the most famous stars couldn’t make the transition to talkies. The expressive qualities they had developed that worked so well without sound didn’t carry over. Critics of the time claimed that the quality of movie-making had taken a dive and that the art of good movie-making had died. The death of movie acting indeed.<\/p>\n

I don’t think anyone inside or outside of the classical music world disputes that something profound is happening. One orchestra manager recently boasted to me that his orchestra was very different from other orchestras, and he ticked off examples. They were, of course, things that many (most?) orchestras are now doing – informal concerts, cross-genre concerts, concerts in unusual spaces, different collaborations. His orchestra was different from orchestras of the past, but not different from other orchestras now. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the new “normal” at symphony orchestras is trying new things. Whether such initiatives are a reinvention into renewed relevancy, I don’t know. But dead? Pretty difficult to see from my vantage point.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a week. First there was the Slate piece that declared classical music dead. Then spiked decided that pop music was over.\u00a0Why is it that people keep wanting to kill off great swaths of our culture? These are only the latest in a long series of articles declaring the end of orchestras, of Netflix, TV, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-changing-culture","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/ff_webrip_chart2.jpg?fit=660%2C405&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ePZm-8s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":207,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2012\/03\/how-do-you-promote-arts-blogs-a-competition-and-a-rationale.html","url_meta":{"origin":524,"position":0},"title":"How Do You Promote Arts Blogs? (A Competition And A Rationale)","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"March 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"How does somebody who wants to write about the arts get an audience? In the old days you found a small local publication to write for while you learned your craft, and graduated to bigger publications and larger readership. Readership, and often influence, depended on the reach of your venue.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "arts blogging"","block_context":{"text":"arts blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/arts-blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/50496_137853052924676_8763_n.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":975,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2016\/08\/culture-trends-five-stories-from-the-weeks-artsjournal-that-you-shouldnt-miss.html","url_meta":{"origin":524,"position":1},"title":"Culture Trends: Five Stories From The Week’s ArtsJournal That You Shouldn’t Miss","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"August 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This Week: Is the music industry's piracy war really\u00a0about higher royalty payments?... There are signs the Golden Age of TV might be ending... Theatre's emotional toll on actors... LA as the next great center of contemporary music... Europe's tourist glut is damaging its great cities. Piracy Or Pay? The Music\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Weekly AJ Top Stories"","block_context":{"text":"Weekly AJ Top Stories","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/weekly-aj-top-stories"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/image-1027378-breitwandaufmacher-rxyo-1027378.jpg?fit=860%2C320&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/image-1027378-breitwandaufmacher-rxyo-1027378.jpg?fit=860%2C320&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/image-1027378-breitwandaufmacher-rxyo-1027378.jpg?fit=860%2C320&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/image-1027378-breitwandaufmacher-rxyo-1027378.jpg?fit=860%2C320&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1305,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2017\/02\/is-the-institutionalization-of-our-arts-a-dead-end.html","url_meta":{"origin":524,"position":2},"title":"Is The Institutionalization Of Our Arts A Dead End?","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"February 16, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In his essay looking back on Lincoln Center on its 50th birthday, Joe Horowitz suggests that the cultural citadel built optimistically\u00a0to be a launching pad for the American performing arts, might have turned out instead to be a box canyon. Perhaps the buildings are to blame: the Met theatre is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "culture business models"","block_context":{"text":"culture business models","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/culture-business-models"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/steelwool-458840_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/steelwool-458840_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/steelwool-458840_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/steelwool-458840_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/steelwool-458840_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":47,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2007\/11\/the_rise_of_arts_culture.html","url_meta":{"origin":524,"position":3},"title":"The Rise Of Arts Culture","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"November 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I want to make an argument about the rise of arts culture. In the 1950s, at the dawn of TV, the medium's pioneers believed that television would be the great democratizer - exposing culture to the masses. The best of the world's culture could be brought into the living\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2006\/06\/diacritical.html","url_meta":{"origin":524,"position":4},"title":"…diacritical","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"June 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Over the past 60 years the idea of mass culture has taken on a life of its own; this idea that mainstream culture, mainstream media, is so powerful, so pervasive, that it touches every aspect of our lives. Indeed, it's difficult to escape... mass culture - it's everywhere, and leaks\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "about"","block_context":{"text":"about","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":37,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2006\/12\/doug_generally_speaking_the_cr.html","url_meta":{"origin":524,"position":5},"title":"Doug: Generally Speaking (The Critic As Specialist)","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"December 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"John: Two huge topics to jump into, both probably worth spending a whole week on by themselves. I'll wait on answering the first till later, since it's such a huge topic. But the second, about specialist critics vs. generalists is easier to take a bite out of. I don't think\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":634,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions\/634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}