The lowering of culture, media and the arts

While the separation into low and high culture is arbitrary I am here to state that there are two destructive factors to future culture in terms of art and media.
1 The universities are attempting to divorce themselves and their qualifications completely from the ability to practice successfully in the subjects they are about.
2 The way the media is playing mainly to the psychological lowest traits in people.
While I admit that culture is arbitrary I think that the culture and media is only moving downwards in the future to lower and lower, less intelligent forms of media and arts. This also seems to be social engineered and I have noticed less coverage in the media for successful clever media and arts.

a reply to: simro

It does seem that the media is trying to lower the tastes of people because they know they can predict and easily control the low ground.

a reply to: simro

Lets raise the level of the discussion;

Philosophy and Art or aesthetics,i see a lot of philosophy and art, just not categorized as art..The aesthetics when it comes to art, is what you think.. Your own little bubble, doesnt matter if you like it or not.. Anyone can be an artist..
Commercials are there for classical conditioning its a purpose and a meaning, culture defines borders or customs..

You see all of them together defines modern society..

a reply to: simro

Artistic taste is entirely subjective, the standard has only been lowered because the incentive is not about passion but about hackneyed attempts at art for the accumulation of wealth. It's essentially consumerism playing its role.

a reply to: simro

Taste, as it is presented by "The Media" must reflect the the cultural faction with the most social capital because social capital is economic capital.

Are you feeling disenfranchised?

a reply to: simro

This is art:




This is aesthetics:




This is a grayzone in between:

It is a sure sign of our nations decline in status and even our demise.

I agree that of course media, art, culture are matter of individual opinion and of course they work together: although everything does; but it does seem that at the very least popular culture is being deliberately lowered. There are now people famous for being famous: people known and yet not for talent or achievement. Not just that but lots of higher level popular culture is being filtered out. The tv programs are becoming more similar to the adverts, they are using psychology to play to peoples base instincts effectively destroying anything above a certain level. I do believe that some media people: such as Simon Cowell: are effectively reducing the level of media, and culture so that they can easier dominate and their position more secure the lower the culture the less surprises the competition can produce to use against them.

a reply to: simro

While CGI might be improvie, movies as a who are getting worse. Acting, scripts, the ability to have a good story line and actually bring it alive, and all the other elements in movies are going down hill.

Art. The things that are being passed off as Art scare me. My husband and I went to an art museum a little over a year ago. While there were some excellent and creative pieces. The works of the two featured artists both dumbfounded me.
One was titled something like 'Woman in the Kitchen' and was just a handful of pictures that had been cut out of a magazine of an oven and things like dishtowels and mixing bowls and glued to poster board. The other was crumpled up bailing wire hot glued to a block of wood. We are somehow supposed to be impressed by the meaning of these two pieces?

Don't get me started on music.

a reply to: [post=19935552]calstorm[/pos
It is not about consumerism and there is no reason why standards cannot improve rather than decline after all consumerism has created increases in much of the items we use in terms of function, and without consumerism there would be no computer for you to now type on or read what I have written. But I do believe that some powerful people believe that media such as tv has to be lowered and lowered in standards and tastes.

a reply to: simro

The demand for better quality is there, so I have to agree that it isn't about consumerism.

a reply to: simro

I think the art you pictured always lived in the streets and fields, the venes and organs of our society.
BUT... nobody with talent gives a sh!t about all of that, just look up a few great artists! Most of them had:

- beef with their university/ teachers/ sponsors
- nothing and gained zero respect or fame (in any media) for their work

This also seems to be social engineered and I have noticed less coverage in the media for successful clever media and arts.

Always has been the case and always will be, as life imitates art.
Catch the drift!


I won't give a single f*ck as well, promised! Time for some change if you ask me, but I don't really bother anymore. Art will find the right people just like good books do, nobody can hide this beauty forever in a cage.

a reply to: simro

Consumerism in the sense that people vote with their wallets in capitalistic societies, they set the trends for what is considered to be of "high quality." People who see these trends are more likely to enable the mass production of these pieces regardless of the subjective nature of the term high quality.

Today culture is controlled by economics, I think it's possible that there maybe people purposely lowering the standard for the trends of high quality media forms because those people are you and me.

a reply to: simro

Do some research....who owns the big media companies?

and perhaps then...

HL Mencken's quote will make sense.

"no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people"

however as one employed by various production companies and a filmmaker my advice would be is start your own production company. With today's technology, it's a kitchen table enterprise, easily affordable by anyone with a myriad of platforms for distribution.

Start here....

www.celtx.com...

Quit bitchin about the state of the media/art/culture and be the change you seek.

Join us!!

originally posted by: simro
I do believe that some media people: such as Simon Cowell: are effectively reducing the level of media, and culture so that they can easier dominate and their position more secure the lower the culture the less surprises the competition can produce to use against them.

Do you think your own website and wares are in any way raising the tone of the culture?

www.spellcaster-psychic.co.uk...

Does being an author and a 'Spellcaster' selling the 'MORE MONEY MAGIC MONEY SPELL CAST' and the 'BIGGER BREASTS, BREAST GROWING BOOBS MAGIC SPELL CAST' help improve the culture?

What makes your own works any more valid than what Simon Cowell does?

a reply to: cuckooold

Actually I have quite a few websites
www.srob.co.uk...
www.werevampmedia.co.uk...

But yes that is one of mine but if you can tell me a better way of selling such things without using pictures then I would like to know. That site isn't art, it isn't even that much media although it is online: it is a shop window for a certain kind of occult service and it is only there for people who want to buy such things.

Also if anyone is interested here is one of my youtube channels

www.youtube.com...

and here is another one

www.youtube.com...

But I actually really spend almost all of my time writing books, and that is my actual job: professional author. But there is nothing wrong with people having shops and anyway what is wrong with magick to help people. But we should not confuse the occult service industry with actual programs and documentaries because they are really quite different things.

a reply to: simro

People have spoken about the decline and decadence of culture forever. But change does not equate to decline.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope
I agree but there is a reduction in quality at least in the uk. But don't get me wrong one of my favourite writers is Arthur Conan Doyle who at the time wrote what people was basically a uk equivalent of pulp, as did Charles Dickens, and many other authors. The same goes for other mediums too and by quality I do not mean to say that quality is determined by a narrow minded view of things. This is especially true because sometimes anything new and that is making money, especially if other things aren't is sometimes thought badly of without actually looking. It is this type of thing especially the way that universities are disconnecting the qualifications and degrees from the subjects so that some lecturers cannot really do their subjects or haven't a body of work: this is definitely true of creative and nonfiction writing lecturers. This way the universities can expand which they do and so try to take over the high ground so that something is only high brow if it is done by an academic who cannot really do their own subject but has many degrees. Media, arts and culture belongs to the people but it is the way that people are being classed as all low and stupid when this is not the case. The internet shows this to us everyday, but media moguls think that the people: all people everywhere: are below them because they themselves would probably not watch the tv or stuff which they produce.

a reply to: simro

The internet shows this to us everyday, but media moguls think that the people: all people everywhere: are below them because they themselves would probably not watch the tv or stuff which they produce.

Who cares...

Media is a product, offered up for sale and no one is forced to buy it.

I also detect a bit of arrogance from you because you are a "professional author" .... Let's see some of your work and we can decide if you might possibly be contributing to the decline in art and culture. I hope that tacky website isn't indicative of your work.

www.spellcaster-psychic.co.uk...

glass houses and all that....

a reply to: olaru12

My work is easy to find, and no occult services aren't media that would be like saying that acupuncture is media. Also I would like to point out that it is a shop my local corner shop isn't about media. Also professional authors don't decline culture we increase it unless you are talking about the mass of celebrity crap that people buy that is usually written by journalists who ghost write them.

Also you are supposed to care if society goes down the drain because what happen in the media and popular culture does affect what happens in the world. Yes it can also work the other way but usually the media can stir things up control a lot of what information we all get access to, get people elected: or at least give them an advantage: like it or not that is what occurs. But I am not being arrogant and I think that this idea comes from your idea of what professional authors are like. We are normal people that do a job and just as you unwind after a days work so do we sometimes by being on here just as your do. But honestly it is very easy to stir up or social engineer people using tv. Its easy for instance if lots of programs and documentaries were made on the good side of eating chocolate after a few years not just would chocolate sales go up but the very idea that chocolate made you fat would seem ridiculous. All that you need to do is to control the info people get from TV. The reason for this is that for the moment it is still the dominant form of media and this would influence what was classed as acceptable for newspapers to report: most only do celebrity and low level news anyway. If a government policy existed for this you would never hear anything negative about chocolate again.

A real world example is occultism and there is a law in the UK and very likely as not many other countries which means that showing people how to do things like magick/occult is illegal with the exception of ghost hunting and stuff like that. But no pagan, satanic, or magical ceremonies are legal and this has given people the idea that there are a lot less occultists than there are. Every Whsmiths: a shop which sells newspapers and magazine in the uk: sells tarot cards and yet people still think that occultism is something not many people do. This is a perfect example of media trying to control and the reason occultism has not declined is because of the inherent interest the subject has for many people. The reason sites like above top secret do so well is because TV won't even talk about some things. This is why people keep seeing the same UFO documentaries because there are rules on what you can show and how. The choice in the media is controlled by other factors other than the pure choice of the consumer and these can be for instance: distribution, rules, size or quantity of company(because small size decreases distribution access), laws regulations, reviewers, people knowing other important people, social class or upbringing of the people who supply it, marketing strategy or budget, star power: especially true for TV... There are many things between much of what you see and what is out there.