The Decline of the English Major, and the Readership of Literary Classics

According to a poll of some years ago some 31 percent of Britons have lied about reading Lev Tolstoy's War and Peace.

I would be shocked if anything close to 0.31 percent of Britain, or any other population in the world (perhaps excepting Russia--I'd be very curious to know if anyone has any information on this), really began and finished that book with any meaningful level of attentiveness.

If one goes by that logic that means that there are at least a hundred people who lie about having read War and Peace for every person who actually has read War and Peace.

Now, War and Peace is an exceptional case given the book's particular fame, reputation and, if not "difficulty" in the sense of difficulty of technique in the way we have become familiar with from the Modernists forward, then at least difficulty due to the demands the book makes on the attention and patience of the reader by virtue of its great length and structure (its looseness, crowdedness, digressiveness, etc.). But it is a reminder that in reality (as opposed to bad TV and movies where intellectual super-people are the norm) literary classics comprise a very limited part of the limited and declining amount of discretionary long-form fiction reading the public does.

Indeed, as previously remarked, the consumption of classics is small enough that it is conceivable that, where actual reading is concerned, few but students of Literature are doing very much of it. With the number of such students apparently in collapse at the college level I suspect this will translate to a significant contraction in such consumption--which in turn will have negative effects on the readiness of publishers to keep such work in print, and the prospects of such books coming to the attention of the general public.

Does that seem plausible to you?

Comic Book Superheroes in a Post-Comics World

In this day and age I suspect that, recognizable as the great Golden and Silver Age superheroes are, even the middle-aged of today (who grew up in the '80s, or later) know them more from adaptations of the comics than the comics themselves.

After all, there were so many alternative distractions that prior generations did not have, like video games.

There was the way that comics were increasingly accessed in specialty shops, so that you went out of your way to get them rather than happening upon them in a department store the way Frank Miller recounts having done when he was young.

And there was the fact that by that stage of things--the "Dark Age" of Comics--comics were less than ever for kids. The more objectionable "adult" content apart, the more exciting, cutting-edge, stuff was being written for a more hardcore, more literate audience (as with the work of an Alan Moore).

The result was that I encountered pretty much every major comic book character in TV or film form before I ever got around to reading a single page of their comics, and indeed in many a case those adaptations remain the standard by which all others are judged. While I did, for instance, get around to reading the earlier decades of the X-Men in those handy Marvel Essentials volumes, with particular attentiveness to Chris Claremont's justly celebrated run--to say nothing of seeing the million or so X-Men movies made to date--all these years on the FOX X-Men cartoon remains for me definitive, such that, great as Patrick Stewart was as Charles Xavier and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, it is still Cedric Smith and Cal Dodd's voices I hear when I imagine the characters speaking when I am not actually watching their movies.

Has the Popularity of the English Major Declined Because English is Actually Too Hard a Subject for Today's Student?

Recently writing about the decline of the English major I took it for a response to the anti-humanities, pro-STEM propganda.

But I also wonder if, in contrast with the "soft major" image that English has that makes it such an object of disdain from the standpoint of intellectual accomplishment as well as employability, it is not a factor that many students are finding that major too hard.

Simply put, is it possible they eschew this course of education because they are not up to the demands of the reading? In an age of declining literacy the possibility seems to me to be well worth considering.

Remember When David Hasselhoff was Nick Fury?

Back in 1998 FOX was considering a Nick Fury TV series.

The show never happened, but a pilot did get filmed and aired on the channel, and in the years afterward was rerun quite a bit on various cable channels--Syfy, the ENCORE Channels, and so on, which was where I happened to catch it.

It starred David Hasselhoff as Fury, Lisa Rinna as Contessa De Fontaine, Sandra Hess as the Hydra leader Baroness Von Strucker.

The film was, of course, a '90s-era TV movie, not a $400 million Avengers production in an age of "If you can picture it, they can realize it for you in CGI" visual effects, but I remember it being reasonably effective within its technical and budgetary limitations, and striking an appealing tone--not taking itself too seriously, but not getting irritatingly goofy, either, as Fury and friends saved the world yet again.

Oppenheimer: A Few Thoughts

As the situation stands we know very little about Christopher Nolan's upcoming film Oppenheimer, while what we are told is confusing. It is supposed to be a period piece about the actual Robert Oppenheimer--but apparently a thriller as well that will somehow benefit from being presented on colossal I-MAX screens.

One can't but suspect some stretching of historical fact here.

I also have to admit that, in taking up this highly complex and political subject I suspect Christopher Nolan is "in over his head." After all, watching the Batman films, watching Inception, it was clear Nolan loved psycho-babble, and while sometimes his playing with it fell flat (as in Inception), there were times when it worked well (The Dark Knight seeming to me at its most compelling when the Batman-Joker duel was a Jungian psychodrama).

However, when he was trying to "say something" about society and its current problems I found myself not taking the results seriously--until the absolutely appalling The Dark Knight Rises left me with no choice. Subsequently Dunkirk was, especially coming in a moment when Britain's relationship to the world was so contentious, a historical, political film "without history or politics"--the fall of France was just an occasion for giant-screen spectacle held together by postmodernist blatherings.

But of course the claqueurs of the media, who loved that movie the same way they love everything Nolan does (arguably because of its weaknesses rather than in spite of them, with all that says about them), are clapping already for Oppenheimer, and saying the word "Oscar."

It's always possible that Nolan might surprise us--to use an admittedly tired phrase, "subvert our expectations" by actually "making it good." But I see no reason to expect that from someone who has enjoyed such fulsome praise so consistently for so long, and over the past two decades shown not the slightest indication of a capacity for seriously assessing his own work, let alone questioning anything outside of that--such that my expectations are not high for this one.

Why is the Silicon Valley Elite So Terrified By AI?

Douglas Rushkoff has long struck me as an interesting, if limited, social critic--at the least, willing and able to point out things that few others with even his level of access to the mainstream do. Thus has it gone with his remarks about the dread of artificial intelligence expressed by so many of the Silicon Valley elite about "AI" becoming independent and powerful and hostile. Where the mainstream media has, in line with its normal mode of operation , tended to do little but provide members of the elite and their favored spokespersons a colossal megaphone for their view, especially insofar as that view is sensationalist (rather than attempting to represent a genuine range of views), he at least seems to be on the right track when he quips that the powerful are afraid that, where they have for so long fancied themselves the demi-god masters of the universe, they are anxious that "the AIs are going to be as mean to them as they’ve been to us."

"The Dog-stealers"

I recall years ago reading of the 1851 Crystal Palace exhibition and how on its "special shilling days" when admission was discounted so that it was made affordable to the broader public the big Sommerophone organ was silent.

I also read Benjamin Disraeli's remark in a piece of private correspondence that he thought this a shame because of the "humanising effect" it might have "on the dog-stealers, cabmen and coalheavers" who came in.

While I do not want to diminish the complexity of Disraeli's political history it seems to me impossible to not take from this statement an extreme disdain for the "lower orders"--and indeed the term "dog-stealers," which I encountered here for the first time, struck me as a monument to the Victorian upper class' view of those whose toil in the conditions a Charles Dickens described so well made possible their luxury. ("'Dog-stealers?' Is that how they think of them?")

This did not change when I discovered that dog stealing (specifically, targeting the exotic and expensive status symbol-type pet dogs of the rich) for such purposes as ransom seems to have been a not insignificant species of Victorian-era crime--the more in as Disraeli so casually lumped in honest toilers as cabmen and coal heavers with criminals.

All the same, horrid as the Victorians were in such ways others have been no better--and the essential attitude remained the same even as the language changed (and I dare say, grew so much coarser that "dog-stealer" can seem genteel by comparison).

Why Have American Moviegoers Become Such Tough Sells on Period Pieces?

Not long ago here I remarked how popular historical period pieces were at the movies in the '50s and '60s (and even after), and how that has changed since.

What happened?

It seems to me that the popularity of the period piece then was largely a matter of the popularity of a few very particular genres--the Western, the old Biblical-Roman epic, the World War II movie, the lavishly costumed musical that was so often set in the Old West or World War II (like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, or White Christmas, or South Pacific).

Those genres were all in decline by the late '60s, and in spite of brief efflorescences later (like the early '90s revival of the Western with Dances With Wolves and Unforgiven, or the World War II movie with Saving Private Ryan), never wholly recovered, while never being replaced by some new period fascination.

Instead the action movie replaced dance routines and historical pageantry as the favored form of spectacle key to them; while those who had always enjoyed scenes of gunplay and stuff blowing up previously and got it from period pieces of various kinds, like Westerns and war movies, got those satisfactions from adventures set in the contemporary world from the James Bond movies forward; or later, more blatant science fiction (this, not the genre's cerebral uses, what made it a popular success).

It seems telling that where science fiction was concerned the genre material tended to be handled in a particular fashion. While Star Wars led the way, space operas, if now and then shooting to the top of the box office, have not been the big staple they might seem--successful examples of the type rather fewer in number than sci-fi tales set on contemporary Earth. Exemplary of this has been the superhero films, whose great virtue commercially has been their bringing sci-fi action-adventure down to Earth from the heavens. This may not suffice to make them very successful as absorbing personal dramas, but that this keeps the Brechtian "alienation effects" to a minimum--that the audience doesn't have to cope with a complex different world or process lots of other information, just come to terms with the now very, very familiar "concept' of super-powered people flying about and smashing things--still helps them get into the spectacle much more easily than they would a story set in some exotic galactic empire, which may be even less daunting for them than another historical period. (If you think otherwise, trying teaching college students about a piece of nineteenth century literature sometime.)

Has the Word "Sorry" Lost All Meaning?

Has the word "Sorry" lost all meaning?

In asking the question I do not suggest that the concept of apology has lost all meaning--just that the word we most associate with the act of apologizing may have ceased to actually convey any sense of an actual apology because of its association with expressions of attitudes that are quite the opposite of apologetic.

Often the usage of the term indicates, rather than genuine contrition, an awareness that others are bothered by what they are doing, but their also having no intention of doing anything whatsoever about it, the utterance all they are going to offer. ("Sorry, but I'm going to persist in my obnoxious behavior and you will just have to deal with that, and consider yourself lucky that I've even said the word.") Sometimes the use of the word is an expression of their feeling that they have nothing to be "sorry" for. ("I'm sorry you feel that way.") Sometimes the utterance of "Sorry" is even a taunt. ("Sorry/Not sorry.")

Indeed, it may be that in situations where we might expect an apology we probably hear "Sorry" used in these ways much, much more often than for the purposes of actually apologizing--so much so that the word's use is enough to set on edge the teeth of a person actually sensitive to words and their meanings (some of whom must still exist).

This seems to me another instance of the corruption of the language--and what has often underlain that, the brutalization of daily life in a society less and less functional (when life expectancy is officially going down, you have pretty inarguable evidence that things are getting worse for people on the whole), and plain and simple illiteracy (with language so little understood, and treated with so little respect).

"What can we do?" some people say faced with such things. As is the case with most of the Big Problems, the answer is "If you mean 'What can we do individually about this large societal problem?' the answer is 'Not much.'" But it may help a little bit if we took some care to use words properly. If we tried to only say "Sorry" when we actually felt "Sorry."

Why Are the Things That "Go Viral" Usually So Stupid?

I have in the past stressed that very little in the way of online content has ever truly gone viral--much, much less than commonly supposed; and that the odds of anything doing so have shrunk with the evolution of our Internet use (and in particular our increasing tendency to seal ourselves up into cozy social media spaces rather than wander the Web).

Still, we are constantly told that things do go viral.

It happens that the vast majority of such things are extremely stupid. Indeed, I refrain from giving specific examples precisely because the garbage I have in mind deserves to be as little seen and as quickly forgotten as possible, and I will not slow down their deserved descent into oblivion by a single second if I can help it.

And I wonder why this is so consistently the case. The easy, lazy, answer, especially to those whose thoughts derive from the media mainstream, is that the stupidity of what goes viral is simply indicative of the stupidity of the swinish multitude. However, I suggest the reality is a bit more complicated. People are generally online for more than is good for their physical and mental health simply because of the demands of their jobs, and their seeing to other necessities. (This is how they access essential goods and services, for example, as a review of the most searched-for keywords indicates.)

When they are not doing what they must they are apt to be tired--and frivolous--and unfocused--and susceptible to "clickbaiting." The garbage-generators baiting the web's users for those clicks take full advantage of the fact, and when they do so successfully the media dutifully tells us that the click-baiter's content has "gone viral," which contributes to the effect in the manner that telling us a book is a bestseller helps it to actually become so by bringing it to the attention of the public, such that this may help in intriguing some members of that public sufficiently to make them buy copies. Indeed, it does not seem unreasonable to suspect that, apart from simply misreading what is widely seen as something necessarily having "gone viral," some of what is supposedly going viral is the beneficiary of pre-arranged clicking.

Is there a lesson in all this?

I think there are at least two.

The first is that if someone tells you to look at something on the grounds that it has gone viral it is probably best not to bother. What has gone viral probably shouldn't have, and you don't want to help the people who put the garbage up there rack up the click count.

The second is that if you are failing to follow the first piece of advice you are, again like most of us, probably online too much, and should stop looking at a screen. Stare at something else. And if you want to read something, try something printed on paper. It would be a mistake to disregard the advantages of electronic media, but I have found again and again that paper is easier on the eyes--and reading something on paper balm for a mind shredded by an excess of screen time.

Will James Mangold's Star Wars Film Survive Indiana Jones' Reception?

I recently discussed Disney's pattern of hiring fashionable directors to make Star Wars movies, and then discarding them when they stopped being fashionable--as with a Josh Trank, or a Patty Jenkins. After James Mangold's stock rose on the basis of a favorable response to his X-Men film Logan, and he was enlisted to helm Indiana Jones 5, Disney also announced that he would be directing a Star Wars film. However, following the decay of expectations regarding the film's reception (a Solo-like flop looks increasingly probable) I suspect that a James Mangold Star Wars film will also be a casualty--the Dawn of the Jedi project be either abandoned, or handed over to someone else who in their turn may or may not finish it as Disney-Lucasfilm goes about its business of not making Star Wars movies (at which it has succeeded brilliantly).

What Might the Reported Production Delays Mean for the MCU?

Before we go any further let us acknowledge that, whatever else anyone can say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is still just about the biggest moneymaker around in Hollywood these days, creating plenty of reason for "Marvel envy" among the other major studios.

Still, the franchise's best days appear to be behind it, with Phase Four less than the sum of its often underperforming parts, and Phase Five not off to the start hoped for (with Ant-Man 3 a flop; Guardians of the Galaxy 3, if doing better, lagging its predecessors; and Captain Marvel 2 bumped from July to November to uncertain results).

Now, as if that were not enough, the movies of the next summer, and after, have been subject to delay--with Captain America 4 bumped from the first-weekend-in-May traditionally launching Marvel's more prestigious releases (like the original The Avengers) to an almost-in-the-dump-month-of-August late July date, as that weekend instead goes to the second-stringer Deadpool 3, with the subsequent releases correspondingly bumped down the road.

Moreover, all of this seems tentative given its apparent connection with the ongoing Writer's Guild of America strike that is not over yet--and whose disruptive effect may not yet be fully appreciated, especially given the film industry's already much-shaken condition (amid pandemic, inflationary and interest shocks, and now decreasing access to the hugely important Chinese market).

Granted, all this is unlikely to be fatal, of course. Still, a franchise on a downward trajectory and already facing plenty of headwinds may nonetheless suffer for it as the Marvel hit machine slows down.

The "Aspiring Author"

The phrase "aspiring author" is much used--and like a great many much-used phrases, unhelpfully vague.

Putting it bluntly, at what point does the "aspiring" author come to be recognized as a just plain "author?"

Admittedly there are professional organizations that have criteria for membership that imply a particular bar of achievement for no longer being seen as "aspiring," but often these are debatable, precisely because they emerged in another time--like back when people could eke out a marginal living selling short stories. Today, for all practical purposes, a very successful short story writer--even a novelist--would still be only aspiring from the standpoint of trying to make a living at what they do.

On "Falsehoods"

Few things are more alien to the mentality of those who staff the upper tiers of the mainstream of our media as equality, few things more ingrained than deference to elites.

The use of the word "falsehood" has long seemed to me emblematic of that.

An "ordinary" person's false statement would be flatly called a lie. It might even be called a "[expletive deleted] lie." And as a speaker of such they would be regarded as a "liar."

However, a person in a position of power is considered by them to have spoken a "falsehood," not a "lie," and to be no more than a person who uttered such, rather than anything so low as a "liar."

It is a truly pathetic display of servility indeed.

Of "Armchair Movie Executives": Further Thoughts

Recently taking up the topic of the "armchair movie executive" my focus was on the ways in which, apart from the relevant information having become much more widely available, the way movies are made and promoted ceaselessly encourages those with any such inclinations to think about that information in a quasi-movie executive-like way. (Indeed, I was struck by how the New Yorker's recent epic-length recounting of the Marvel Cinematic Universe basically asked us to be in awe of what was in the end a marketing achievement rather than an artistic one.)

However, it also seems to me that this is partly motivated by the way that those interested in the subject may not be entirely satisfied with the ways that the "pros" to whom those whining about the "armchair executives" would like to see the job left. The fact that the entertainment press is basically a pack of claqueurs (and the ways in which Hollywood has so consistently disappointed or annoyed the public) means that there is plenty of room for other views--which they express themselves, and which find an audience.