Poptimus Prime

Freddie deBoer writes about how poptimism has achieved so much success because of the cultural context in which it was born. A culture that considers it wrong to have standards that can identify one thing as better than another is fertile ground for the elevation of terrible art. That’s why we have record reviews that treat pay-for-play pabulum like Rebecca Black songs as if they were written by Neil Young. It’s a culture that feeds our desire for comfort rather than challenge.

The studios and record labels and platforms figured out that comfort sells and risk doesn’t, and simply gave us what the spreadsheets demanded – and what the spreadsheets demanded was familiar, free of ambiguity, and made for children. It’s surprising how well these three adjectives work across mediums and genres, by the way. Star Wars movies are familiar, free of ambiguity, and made for children. Zombie TV shows are familiar, free of ambiguity, and made for children. Modern pop music, adolescent and thudding and written by Swedish 40-year-olds with a taste for literalism, is familiar, free of ambiguity, and made for children.

deBoer has made the infantilization of our culture a frequent topic in his writing. We are steeping in it, and this century, the trends have only gotten worse.

Via Alan Jacobs