Per aspera ad astra

I bought the Oct/Nov/Dec issue of cream the other day because of the "This Era Vulgaris" article. Although I could have just read it online, but there's something about having a physical copy of the magazine in your hands that's more satisfying than words on a screen.

Anyhoodle. I was standing in the newsagent flicking through the issue and stumbled across the article and am standing there reading it thinking, "Yes, yes, yes. I must buy this. Damn this vulgar era." Not that every era isn't vulgar in some way or another - there's something to be despised in every decade/century/millenium really - but I thought the article summed up so well the way in which our culture so happily feasts on the rotting carcass of trash.

Particularly interesting was the statement by the writer of the featurette, Thereyns Koo: "No longer does the mainstream aspire to dressing up, reading challenging books or listening to clever music, but instead are determined to dumb down the world around them even more, to avoid challenge or change." Amen hallelujah. It pretty much sums up the instant gratification culture and the way in which people are more than happy for "information" to be disseminated through less-than-reputable sources ("I read it on Wikipedia!" "A seven-year-old could have written that!!"), using it as some excuse to avoid having to engage in too much further thought or in-depth analysis...

Instead of being inspired to greatness, we're told to keep it dumb. Particularly if we're female, in which case we should be both dumb and slutty (and yet somehow chaste, because although guys demand you put out, they apparently don't like it if you do), as well as subservient to the whims of men, air-brushed and lifeless. And if not, we must be fat, hairy, man-hatin' feminists. Having an opinion about the things that matter in life is something that seems to be frightening for people, whether you're male or female. However, what you *really* need to have an opinion on is whatever Famous or NW or whatever is peddling about celebrity x this week. As if it matters.

Koo also notes the way in which literature isn't immune from vulgarity at the moment and it's something I strongly agree with. Earlier in the year, my friend Kim and I were lamenting the death of the more interesting variety of book at the hands of such things as chick-lit and other mental midgetry while we were in a bookshop in the CBD. I find it enormously hard to care about chick-lit as it all runs on the same basic theme of 30-ish female faces challenges and singleness, other challenges, nice man, more challenges about as mentally taxing as choosing shoes in the morning, happily paired off with nice man at end of novel. Ooh, innovative. Challenging.

Bad fashion, bad books, bad music, bad art, constantly reveling in things that we really could care less about. Not that the occasional bit of trashy goodness should be avoided at all costs, but why not make the intellectual version of junkfood just a small part of our viewing/reading/consuming "diet"?

Instead of aspiring for better things on an intellectual and personal level, we're encouraged to aspire for the latest plasma-screen tv or a holiday to Bali or some other superficial way in which to "reward yourself" that only depletes your bank balance as you attempt to keep up with the Joneses.

It's all frustrating. Why should we celebrate mediocrity when excellence can be aspired to?