Comments on: Owen Gleiberman and popular culture

By: you

you — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 13:52:14 +0000

Owen Gleiberman did a review on “we are marshall” and was quoted saying “The film keeps insisting that we mourn for a team we didn’t know” well you know what you slime, i didn’t know ANYONE that died in the 9/11 attacks i also don’t know ANYONE in iraq who died. So does that mean i shouldn’t have any feeling for them? So why do we have to KNOW this team to mourn there loss. I think a statement like that says very much of the character of person you are, LOW and SHALLOW. And i will never read another review from you again you piece of shit. Maybe you have something against West Virginians because we all know how backwoods and stupid they are. Even though West virginia has the most soldier recruitment per capti then any other state. Or maybe your just an asshole period.

By: y bates

y bates — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 00:39:53 +0000

owen recently gave Date Movie a good review. i’ve lost a lot of repect for the guy. he should read the review written by the onion and be enlightened.

By: steve

steve — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 17:57:21 +0000

I’m afraid that the roots of this recurring myth lie in the deep hostility that dynamic market processes invoke in so many people, particularly among the articulate and those who self-identify as “intellectuals” or “social critics.” The Future and its Enemies traces some of the main sources for this hostility, but it should be no shock that the hostility is deeper than any espoused rationale. Thus, when commercial culture gets less homogeneous, the critics complain about fragmentation, alienation, and “bowling alone,” When the critics saw culture as more homogeneous they unleashed the now-dated critique you decry.

In my opinion, the desire to stand apart as an enlightened observer among a benighted crowd is the psychological mainspring of such criticism. The ideological or philosophical mainsprings are more diverse, coming variously from obsessions with stability, control, equality, or some particular narrow virtue spuriously elevated to the summum bonum. In addition, some people have a great deal of cognitive difficulty with the notion of unplanned, emergent social phenomena; they find conspiracy theories more intellectually satisfying.

By: Grant

Grant — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 10:16:41 +0000

Tom, great point, perhaps as culture moved away from “time out of mind” status into something more dynamic, negotiated, changeable, and contestable, this fear beset us. And yes, there was a side show aspect to this fear, to fan the flames. It would be nice to think that the “sex in the ice cubes” guy was the last gasp of this moral panic. And again the thing I can’t get over is that we continue to regard as alternative something that is now so built into our culture, a virtual boilerplate for many people. Thanks, Grant

By: Tom Guarriello

Tom Guarriello — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 09:11:06 +0000

Nicely said, Grant.

I believe this meme has legs because of the image of mind control that resides in the collective cultural unconscious, going back at least as far as Anton Mesmer in the late 18th century. The notion that people can be hypnotized by clever conjurers to commit acts against their will (awful things, like buying margarine, gasp!) reduces “psychology” to a carnival trick. “Create desire for products by connecting them with various pleasurable states”: it didn’t take Sigmund or Anna to come up with that one.

As for the “homogenized version of suburban normalcy” the “psychiatric elite” was “co-opted in secret by the corporate boardroom (!!)” to “create”; I’m too stunned to even begin to comment. This fellow needs to take a brief look at the history of urbanization in America to get a little better perspective on the roots of suburbia and its veneer of conformity.