Cleanth Brooks once identified what he termed to be the “bastard muses:” propaganda, sentimentality, and pornography. Our culture is too often fully prepared to give voice to those “muses,” for proof, just go to the nearest television screen.
However, I noticed something the other day which I think best exemplifies what is wrong with the media -and by extension, society- today. I was shopping in my local supermarket when I noticed something interesting about the magazine rack. It was stock full of copies of Us and People. Soap Opera Weekly, The TV Guide, The National Inquirer, and other tabloids were well represented. Half naked pop stars and tips about receiving a better orgasm were left eye level to the average small child. Rumors about the sex lives of starlets were out in full force. At the very bottom of the rack was one solitary copy of Newsweek. It made me think of the items in my cart. Milk, cheese, vegetables, tea bags, bananas, lunch meat, fruit juice, and a box of cookies. What I would imagine would be a well balanced diet. Yet, if the magazine rack was any indication, the shoppers were being offered the intellectual equivalent of a cart full of cookies. Junk food, causing the consumer to become morbidly obese in spirit and unhealthy in mind.
Perhaps I am reading to much into this. However, I do find it interesting that we live in a society were we can be bombarded with trivia, and have to search for anything of mental sustenance.
Social Criticism in the Super Market
By john w connelly jr - Posted on November 23rd, 2008
I try not to look at the magazine rack at the stores other then for a laugh at the cover story. I have more important thing to waste my time on. I would not let anyone other then my wife make me feel bad about what is in my cart. I like my junk food and my quick meals. When I was in my teens and early twenties my cart was full of chips and French onion dip, cereal (oops all berries when it was being made) and anywhere from 6 to 10lbs of candy. Not much has changed just real food and less candy. Do not let anyone make you feel bad or wrong for what you are doing other then yourself.
"Something given has no value"~Robert Heinlein
"Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is." Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richards Almanack, 1749
The magazines represent the most likely type of people that would show up in a shopping lane waiting to check out. it would be a stay at home mom that has a bad figure because she just had a baby, and she doesn't know if she is performing well enough because of new extra pounds. lol.
i wouldn't look for magazines in a food market if you want intellectual stimulus. a food market is a place were you are hungry and so it is most likely that magazines with articles that have stuff about wieght lost and the celebs losing or gaining weight.
i think those marketers are quite ingenius.
I probably am just over reacting. But it bothered me to see so many trivial magazines and one issue of one magazine with anything approaching respectable content.
"How can we win where fools can be kings" Muse
its okay. i get the same way. i usually just run over to Barnes and Noble to chill out. hahah.
but america is a genius in marketing. they now how to put the sleeper hold on all demographics.
I don't think you're reading too much into this. However I'm pretty sure that it's the nature of the world to offer intellectual and spiritual junk food more than the good stuff, and it's been that way for a while and will probably continue to be that way--though that doesn't mean we shouldn't be working to change it. :)
Did you see the exit polls that were taken of Obama voters? Some amazingly high percentage did not know that Democrats had controlled Congress for the past two years, Similar percentages had no idea who Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi were. But the vast majority knew who much money Sarah Palin had spent on her wardrobe. The public was very well informed on something that was trivial and meaningless and was totally uninformed on things that really matter.
Are the magazines there because there is a conspiracy by the media and the government to make people stupid and uninformed? Or are the magazines there because people are stupid and like being uninformed and would prefer to read that drivel rather than something that mattered.
I suspect the latter but it is fairly clear that the media and the government education system are failing miserably to counteract this tendency towards educational entropy.