Cool, 2.0

Clearly a victim of the same elusive, fleeting nature of “cool” it attempted to pin down, The Merchants of Cool seemed to me, above all, dated. After almost ten years since it first aired, I’d go so far as to say it seemed “uncool,” as the kids like to say.

I say this respectfully, of course, with real appreciation for the fact that Frontline cared enough to give average viewers of public television (very much not YAs) a glimpse into the foreign, hyper-consumerist culture of which early-2000s teens were a part. In fact, the “TRL generation” the documentary sought to describe is very much my own: I can’t remember a day coming home from fourth through seventh grade without being greeted by Carson Daly, and, although I can remember all their lyrics, I still wonder what was so appealing about Limp Bizkit. (I suppose Merchants cleared some of that mystery up, since it appears even a rock with an effective-enough marketing campaign could find some measure of success!) MTV, Limp, Britney, Sprite -- all of these were big figures in my formative years, and, I would guess, helped shape me into the consumer I am today. Any adult unaware of how children lived in 2002 would surely have his eyes opened after a viewing.

Nonetheless, whether or not it’s a result of my familiarity with this culture, which extends far beyond what was portrayed onscreen, I found that much of what the documentary had to say broke no new ground. Adults are always a few steps behind the young, but with enough money, new techniques, and advertising outlets, their corporations can weasel their way into the psyche of many YAs. It used ubiquitous cultural figures (who hasn’t gossiped about Britney Spears?) to make this point, plus a tired symbol, MTV, to represent a phenomenon that actually spanned much further, into choice of stores, food, clothing, etc. It seemed, frankly, that the producers had only a vague, conceptual definition of "cool," as articulated by Malcolm Gladwell and big-name CEOs, without many cutting, groundbreaking examples of it at work.

But because I understand the need for a dissection of a youth culture that can seem so cloudy to outsiders, what I’d really appreciate is an updated Merchants of Cool. Britney has been talked to death, but the revival of Disney (High School Musical, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus) and the Twilight juggernaut are fresh, pervasive figures in today’s elementary/middle school culture -- so fresh that such investigative journalism has yet to lay into them. Further, since I’m not as directly involved in this movement, I’d be curious to know how the same ad execs have encouraged their popularity, and how current subject matter has run counter to the angry, crude, and over-sexualized adolescent idols of the late 90s.

In addition, the mention of cool being killed as soon as it reaches the mainstream begs the question of the indie music scene (and accompanying fashion trends), which relies on older YAs competing to discover obscure artists of increasingly innovative/strange (take your pick) genres. As someone who’s actively interested in learning about this music (I work for the campus radio station, the Impact), I know first hand the bittersweet feeling that comes when a favorite band is no longer “mine alone,” even if they are gaining the fame and recognition I know they deserve. I see this subculture as having an even touchier relationship with media and corporate advertising, so I’d be curious to learn how consumerist trends are propagated via blogs, magazines, television, in more subtle manners than MTV is capable of (maybe MTVu?).

Hopefully, then, the producers of Frontline will take it upon themselves to update this documentary someday soon. It will be to the enlightenment of both adults and aging YAs like me, who may need their own “cool hunters” to keep themselves in the know.

Why Critical Theory Today Matters (IMHO)

The mere mention of “literary theory” struck me instantly as something with which I’d be unfamiliar. I’m not an English major, and a textbook with as conventional a title as Critical Theory Today seems so fundamentally “college-level English” – so esoteric, really – that I didn't think I'd care, that I believed I had no reason to be familiar with any of the concepts it addressed. Reading the introductory chapter, I realize now this was just a defense mechanism: in the event that I didn’t understand the majority of what I was reading, I could brush it off as being just the sort of rhetoric that had pushed me away from the study of English in the first place. (Tyson, after all, mentions “fear of failure” at the outset of the book as one of the two main reasons why theory is avoided [1].) As it turns out, however, the book (or at least Ch. 1) was downright comforting, written to gently highlight the advantages of using a informed, theoretical approach to reading -- approaches that the author appears to use and appreciate on her own time as well as in the classroom. I felt genuinely heartened by her appeals to learn theory, since, as she mentions, even our unsystematic, “raw” interpretations of text are informed by some sort of theory, whether we are aware of it or not (4). Thus it is empowering to understand and organize our opinions as they fall into certain ideologies. Further, armed with more “lenses” by which we can interpret texts, ourselves, and the world, we can articulate multi-faceted, fully realized, credible, and interesting literary opinions (not to mention great cocktail-party banter!) (10). This introductory piece perfectly “logic-ed” me out of the fears I had, making me genuinely wonder how much I’ve been missing all these years, reading occasional books for pleasure without any real means by which to analyze them.

It is worth noting, before I continue to heap compliments on Tyson, that the examples she used to exemplify the alienation felt by students left “out of the loop” by theorists struck a particular chord with me (1-2).

(This being a blog, I’m tempted to give boring personal backstory, so please bear with me.)

My 20th birthday resolution – inane, I realize, but the root of my renewed interest in English – was to become “culturally informed, “ to make up for all the ignorant teen years I spent holed up in my room, tuning out “boring” subjects like literature, art, and politics, and consequently losing touch with the world around me. (Moreso, this stemmed out of a sudden realization that I’m an adult now, and I no longer have my parents to ask whenever I’m curious about an unfamiliar reference. If I’m going to have valid opinions and truly feel intelligent, it’s up to me to do the research.) Thus I took it upon myself to start reading in earnest over Winter Break, and found myself with both classics and contemporary favorites, notably David Foster Wallace (very non-YAL, I am aware). I also began to soak up as many blogs and news websites as I could, including Slate, on which I found the attached article by Nathan Heller. Both a book review by DFW in his collection of essays, Consider the Lobster, on a biography of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and the Heller article, a review/analysis of a Zadie Smith book I’d been skimming, coincidentally found their way into my hands around the same time. While of totally different sources, both essays are firmly rooted in theoretical discussion – a discussion about which I was thoroughly uninformed as I began to read them.

The essay “Joseph Frank’s Dostoyevsky” (which I'm not expecting any of you to have read, but I’ll attempt to explain anyway) is presented in the context of a book that addresses all sorts of subjects: a lobster festival, September 11th, talk radio, and even the John McCain 2000 campaign. In no way was the book meant to be confined to the eyes of literary theorists, but that did not stop the author from including references to the “New Criticism” and the “intentional fallacy” – a concept that, needless to say, required a trip to Wikipedia. (I suppose having CTT would have simplified things a bit.) What I came to discover was that the “intentional fallacy” arises out of the same “death of the author” concept of which Tyson made special note (1-2). And with or without Wikipedia, I still felt quite alienated by this strange, pretentious language. I mulled over the article, which, I deduced, examined the concept as it pertains to biographers (if the author has no bearing on reader perception, is it ever worthwhile to study an author’s life as a manner of understanding their work?), but I couldn’t help but wonder, once I had finished, whether I’d actually understood any of what I just read.

Likewise, Heller’s article discusses how fiction should be read according to one author, Zadie Smith, whose newest collection of essays, Changing My Mind, showcases the many identities she’s taken on while pursuing different styles of writing. (This actually solidifies Tyson’s concept of one reader using multiple theories like multiple lenses, to shape many, often complementary literary critiques.) More importantly, the Slate article mentions the “death of the author” debate specifically, with reference to Roland Barthes, who first articulated this sentiment, versus Vladimir Nabokov, who believed that the author was in total control of the readers’ perceptions. Luckily, these particular concepts were somewhat clarified, but the article’s central premise – the idea of theorists contemplating, in depth, the nature of fiction – was utterly foreign to me. (Even more foreign to me was that regular Slate readers were seeing the same words as I was, but actually understanding them.) I obviously learned something (to the effect that I was able to backtrack, re-locate the article, and connect it to our class), but I had no idea of this at the time.

Long story short, I was elated to come across yet another mention of “death of the author” in Tyson, regardless of the fact that it’s a small, isolated element of literary theory, since its explanation in CTT was worded with the understanding of how scary these thoughts could seem to a new student. Her arguments for theory, and for reading her book to understand it, rang so true that the text came full circle. Moreover, realizing that a seemingly obscure notion of theory could find its way into so many popular sources emphasized how imperative it is, to me at least, that I use this book and this class to start “getting the references” within today’s literary (and greater cultural) dialogue.

I’m probably far over the required wordcount, but this post would be completely irrelevant without an attempt to justify how YAL fits into this mix. It appears that what we attempt to do in this class is further legitimize this genre of literature by applying the theories presented in Critical Theory Today, and further that doing so is only a natural extension of what I’ve observed in the essays mentioned above. If theory is indeed becoming mainstream, the most we could do to prove the literary merits of a particular style is to continue this trend, drawing theoretical analyses from the books that both adults and young adults are actually reading. This brings both into the spotlight, highlighting the most enlightening aspects of theory alongside the insightful, innovative nature of today’s best YAL.