Why I quit (almost)
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Dec. 1, 1999) - The numbers are in, and we now have confirmed what we always suspected: American children are full-time consumers of pop culture.

A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation concluded that the average child in this country spends more than 38 hours a week as a "media consumer," picking and choosing from a range of programming on the average home's three TVs, three tape players, three radios, two VCRs, two CD players, video game player and computer.

Now, you might think that a pop-culture guy like me would greet these findings as some kind of victory: a win for the good guys in an us-against-them, pop vs. classical, lowbrow vs. highbrow, low art vs. high art, populist vs. elitist kind of battle.

You might think that, but you'd be wrong. In fact, my first thought after reading about the study ("Children absorbed full time in media, study shows," Berkshire Eagle, Nov. 18, 1999, A5) was, "That's it; I quit."

Who, after all, knows better than the pop-culture critic just how vile and loathsome is the steady stream of vomit that today comprises most "popular culture?" I therefore greeted the news of children's saturation in the detritus of pop culture with feelings of shame and guilt rather than triumph. When the day of reckoning comes, will I be held to account for in my own small way helping to popularize the dreck which is poisoning the minds and polluting the souls of our youth?

Before you think I've lost my senses, seemingly having adopted the language of the radical right for my critique of "popular culture," let me explain. The problem, you see, is not truly one of "pop" vs. "art." Such false dichotomies were exposed as empty and baseless decades ago, the last refuge of pre-post-modernist scoundrels, grumpy conservatives and racists disguised as classicists bemoaning their loss of power in what was until then a cultural hegemony.

The problem is that what we now call "pop culture" isn't culture at all, but rather the "product" of an entertainment industry run by businessmen and marketing types whose only concern is the bottom line.

I knew something was up when about ten years ago a record company publicist asked me if I had been "serviced" with her "product." After flinching in pain at the thought of such an unpleasant prospect - where would such "service" take place, and would it hurt? - I realized that what she was asking was had I received a copy of her label's latest recording?

Something happened in the last 20 years that changed the whole nature of pop culture, especially pop music. Record companies that were once staffed and run by people who cared about or knew something about music have been swallowed whole by pan-global corporations whose primary business may not even be entertainment. Thus, stockholder share price is now the ultimate value, and there are plenty of aspiring fashion models willing to play the role of pop musicians in order to help the corporation achieve its annual goals.

It's hard to believe, but you once actually had to be "good" -- you had to show some kind of creativity or originality, perhaps some talent even - to get a record deal.
And there once was an independent music press that actually judged for itself whether acts merited coverage. It once actually meant something to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. They even wrote songs about it.

Now, of course, everything is driven by the market. Music magazines trip over themselves to be the first to showcase the season's latest, greatest hype. Thus this past year saw Ricky Martin go straight to the top of the pop charts and immediately to the cover of Rolling Stone.

But wait, I hear someone saying. Hasn't it always been this way? Aren't you just grouchy because younger, newer idols have replaced your graying, well-worn ones? Weren't you an inordinately voracious consumer of popular culture in your youth? Isn't that in part why you grew up (or didn't, as the case may be) to be a rock critic?

Well, there is at least one other huge, qualitative difference between then and now. It's hard to imagine, but 25 years ago, before the advent of MTV and other 24-hour music channels, it was actually hard work to find pop music in the mass media. Sure, you had AM radio playing Top 40 hits and FM radio delivering free-form programming, but that was about it. You had to be an adept navigator to find any real pop music on one of TV's three channels. You had to be a real sleuth to discover late-night shows like "In Concert" and "Midnight Special," and you had to put toothpicks in your eyes to be able to stay up way past your bedtime to watch them.

Even in the late-'70s, pop culture still retained an aura of "counter-culture" left over from the '60s. Expressing an interest in particular bands, particular movies, and even offbeat TV shows like "Monty Python's Flying Circus" or "Saturday Night Live," was evidence of independent, almost dangerous thinking.

Such a notion today, when "pop" has been entirely co-opted by the entertainment industry, is laughable. The vast majority of music, movies, TV shows, video games, clothes, magazines and toys are, like the publicist said, just so much carefully-engineered, manufactured "product."

And with round-the-clock cable TV and the Internet supplying a steady stream of product to potential consumers, there is no longer any effort required to find it, no longer anything subversive about it, and no difference between the marketing of the product and the product itself.

Today's youth are saturated - fully assaulted - with these powerful images with absolutely no mediation, messages whose sole ideology is the religion of consumption. And the industry is targeting younger consumers each year. The brainwashing is apparently so successful that when it comes to Pokemon, otherwise intelligent adults are unable to distinguish between the marketing genius of Nintendo/Burger King and authentic educational values.

So what am I, who wants no part in this cycle of corporate greed, supposed to do? Do I throw up my hands, throw out my keyboard, and give up in disgust?

That was my first response. But then it occurred to me that with this news I had been given a gift. I now have new reason to continue doing what I do: to call a spade a spade, to deny, defy, criticize and categorize. This is simply a reminder of why in his infinite wisdom when G-d created the universe, he included rock critics, those latter-day Jeremiahs, among his myriad, wonderful creations.

And that's no bullfrog.

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[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Dec. 6, 1999. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1999. All rights reserved.]