Entertaining Mental Obesity, We are Forgetting to Do Our Jumping Jacks

It would be redundant for me to say that the U.S. is drowning in a sea of selfish materialism, but the U.S. is drowning in a sea of selfish materialism. Now, I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with having nice things or even wanting more things. The problem occurs when we begin form our identities solely based upon our material goods. This problem is becoming pervasive in U.S. society, so much so that some of us (myself foremost) may not even realize what in actuality we are becoming consumed with.

How have we gotten to this point? These ideas have become so pervasive that the majority of our entertainment diet is chock-full of the transaturated fat and calories that encourage selfish materialism (among other things i.e. sexism, racism, violence, homophobia, etc.)

Using an argument here proposed by Lasana Hotep, Hotep basically states that we become so involved in our own sufferings that everything we do outside of work and the daily grind, is focused on being entertained. We are expecting to be eterntained every moment outside of work/school or whatever it is we do. This deviates focus from important issues, and also most mainstream entertainment isn't helping because the current state of the majority mainstream media is devoid of any type of conscious message. It's just pap, pulp-fiction, intellectual junk food. There's nothing wrong with relaxing and being entertained, but increasingly we are looking to entertainment as a permanent escape from the reality...an escape from reality that is more gross and disgusting than reality itself.

Now to focus on how mainstream entertaiment has evolved in the the oppressive machine it has become:
If you don't know, I'm a hip-hop aficionado, I've been listening to hip-hop as long as I can remember. For this sake of this discussion, I will use hip-hop as an example. What we hear on the radio today is not hip-hop. It is rap, and it is based around making money, and aggrandizing materialism. To quote KRS-One (Knowlegde Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone) "Hip-hop is a lifestyle, a culture, something you live. Rap is something you do to get paid." But anyways my point being, in the early days, hip-hop was being played over the mainstream radio, currently we mostly hear rap. The overwhelming majority of songs we conscious, informative and uplifting at the same time. Artists like Run-DMC, KRS-One, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, De La Soul, the list goes on. Now we have Little John and the Eastside boys singing "to the window to the wall to the sweat drop on my balls, all these females crawl" or whatever, decriptions villifying lewd sexual acts,and supressing women, but guess what? We embrace it because it has a good beat. See the problem?

Music from a non hip hop perspective was the same way. Mainstream radio once played conscious stuff, The Who, Dylan, The Beatles, sure classic radio and oldies stations still play them now and then, but the focus now is on what's new, and the new stuff coming out is hardly conscious and lacks focus on important issues facing our nation or the world. This is not to say that some of the artists of past generations did not engage in creating vulgar and ignorant works themselves, but these things were hidden from the mainstream media, and generally music with explicit content was widely rejected. In fact, it was in the artists' best interest to keep the music clean because the public wouldn't buy it if it wasn't.

Look at the old movies too. Most films nowadays are simply apparatuses and excuses used to display disgusting images and ideas, labeling them "art". (For more on this topic see Hollywood vs. America by Michael Medved) Where is my generation's Citizen Kane?

Again, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being entertained, but I'm simply asking the question of what messages are our entertainment mediums sending and supporting?

Now, I'm not saying every artist should focus on some revolutionary knowledge, but there should be a degree of knowledge that assumes people other than the artists themselves are actually going to be receiving the art. This is where art is compromised because in order to be marketable, the artist might have to change the message or content in order to get paid. If vulgar music is what's selling, then that's what the companies are going to sell, and that's what they are going to encourage their artists to create.

This is where we as a people, and the corporate machine comes that markets to us comes into play. Corporations run formulaic movies and music and television in order to make money, and we keep buying it. And in talking to many people, I don't have stats on this, but I would be willing to say, that we aren't that happy with what is being presented from music, and movies and tv. We wish there was more of a market for intectually stimulating material to be present in mainstream entertainment. So seemingly to a majority of Americans, who don't have time to delve into things other than mainstream, this mainstream art is the only thing that may seem to exist, and the reason it's staying mainstream is because we keep buying it, and we keep buying it because we feel there is nothing else out there.

Well, theories are posed. If we stop buying these mainstream things we don't even seem to enjoy that much anyway, what will the corporations have to do? They will have to market other forms and other things. This may lead to the more conscious underground things to become maintream.

"Too long have we consumers been a blushing bride overwhelmed by business suitors. It's time for the bride to assert herself. We can require our suitors to comply with our vision." --Umbra Fisk

I think it's a logical thought process. Businesses are out to make money. If we stop buying their products, they don't make anymore money and are forced to make a new product and/or comply to our wishes as consumers.

The trick is getting the dialogue about our purchasing power started. Especially those of us in the Middle Class and higher. We have the most purchasing power. It will only work if massive amounts of people believe it will, but thinking to convince a majority is probably extremely naive.

Nonetheless it is an interesting theory and one that could work, bearing enough people could be convinced.

If the more conscious art forms come to the mainstream, we will still be asked by advertising mediums to "buy buy buy", but our forms of entertaiment might not be telling us to "buy buy buy" just like their ads do, so maybe some sort of balance in the forms of advertising and entertaiment could be formed, allowing for more focus on the spiritual and moral sides of ourselves as human beings