[Note from the author: I wrote this for an Oxford University newspaper called The Word in 1997.
It’s a bit smug and abrasive but hits many themes I’ve been writing about ever since and seems remarkable prescient, considering…everything.]
Too many people attempt to defend the appalling Jim Carrey vehicle Dumb & Dumber. It wasn’t funny. I loved Ace Venture Pet Detective and enjoyed The Mask but I simply couldn’t stand a comedy that revelled in the ignorance of its principle characters. I found it vaguely offensive. The film epitomized a movement which has gained remarkable following in the last few years: the celebration of dumb.
Hollywood provides the most obvious examples of this alarming cultural trend, films such as Dumb and Dumber and Forrest Gump have exulted the idiot. These are not isolated incidents. The last refuge of intellect in films, the only one allowed to demonstrate any intelligence is a mad villain, an evil genius. As though genius was somehow always malevolent.
Admittedly intelligence has always been associated with evil and simple minds with virtue. However, there has been a distinct change in the mood of the populace, particularly among Americans. Movies reflect this growing mistrust of intelligence. The main body of pictures now produced by Hollywood fall into three categories: the TV cash-in [or cultural reboot], the hyperkinetic action movie that travels at such speed as to keep conversation to a minimum, and the cretin movie.
The idiot genre has often been described as an avatar of the decline and fall of modern civilization. Even more worrying is the anti-intellectualism found at the high end of the movie scale. Festival films such as Pulp Fiction masquerade as avantgarde by being entirely referential to other films. While modernist writers at the beginning of this century used myths to bring to some structure to their chaotic world our millennial [NOTE: I was using the word here in its original meaning, referring the upcoming millennium] authors have abandoned anything that is not part of their immediate sphere of culture influence.
Irvin Welsh has claimed that Trainspotting was probably more influenced by Star Wars than any other piece of art. This is not to say that modern art is any less valid than art produced in earlier centuries. It is impossible to establish a hierarchy of art. It is simply that many of today’s artists have refused to be influenced by anything produced by anything before the 1960s. They decided to remain ignorant of the vast majority of art in existence. By condemning classic works in this way they are contributing to the devolution of modern culture.
[NOTE: See my essay on TOXIC NOSTALGIA that updated this line of thinking for 2016.]
American culture is being dumbed down. The extent of this far surpasses the world of celluloid. Their progressive education system has moved the emphasis from actual learning to the discussion of politically correct [NOTE: This terms was less laden at the time] issues, which has ensured that schoolchildren are incapable of critical thought as they approach adolescence. Fact has been replaced by fiction as museums host exhibitions of creationism.
This is, in part, due to the very nature of American culture. It has always been focused on consumerism. The country that invented mass production has always been heading down this path. Mass production means that consumers have choice which is influenced by advertising and advertising is now one of the driving forces behind American culture.
Consumers do not make intelligent choices based on the relative merits of goods, they buy the advertisements.
Advertising is now what makes up American Culture. It is exemplified by the insidious informercial, an advertisement disguised as a program. It has led to films such as The Flintstones being two hour commercials for marketing products. Magazines and newspapers are held in the thrall of powerful advertisers.
The only way for the publishers to increase revenues without increasing the price, or adding more ad space, is to increase their circulation. Thus they will tend to self-censor to provide a bland mixture of material in an attempt to maximize profit. Newspapers automatically dumb down in order to increase their readership. This has happened to an obvious and incredible extent but is happening here too. We forget that we [the UK] even had a culture beyond the mimicking of American trends. What culture remains is being dumbed down by the dread influence of the media, in particular the namesake of Dennis Potter’s pancreatic cancer, Rupert Murdoch.
Resisting the temptation to launch into a rant about the terrible effects of television or the lack of quality in English newspapers, it is however impossible to ignore the relationship between our declining culture and the media.
In the USA it was evident decades ago that newspaper were simply vehicles for advertising. Here we have clung to the delusion that our quality papers are driven by a political or moral viewpoint. Upon opening The Times, or any other broadsheet, you are now presented with factoids and stories once considered to be solely for the tabloids. The media appeal to the lowest common denominator to ensure that more people buy the product. English culture is becoming increasingly like that of our transatlantic cousins. The principle that no one ever lost a penny underestimating the intelligence of the American public has now been applied to us and it seems to be working, if the wealth of media moguls is any indications of success.
British culture is becoming impoverished and dumb. The symptoms I mentioned apply in our culture when we consider it to be a passively received statement of our collective intelligence. They do not apply to the culture being produced. Whilst popular culture has appealed to the lowest level of intelligence to increase its marketability, their are writers and artists out there producing new designs for our culture.
Culture is built up over centuries and cannot be defined at any one moment because it is constantly evolving. Perhaps rather than classifying art as either high or low we should accept that the culture of the English speaking world is a fusion of myriad influences from altitudes. Dumb culture is just one aspect of a culture that is thriving in many more arenas than was feasible in the past.
At present so many choose to glorify ignorance and this comes to mind because of its popularity. Hopefully this trend will soon pass away and allow other more sensible ideas to take its place.
[Narrator’s Voice: IT DIDN’T]
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