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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.

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Speaker 1: My guest today is David Marks, author of the new

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Speaker 1: book Status and Culture. There's a subtitle which really kind

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Speaker 1: of explains it how our desire for social rank creates taste, identity, art, fashion,

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Speaker 1: and constant change. But David explained the theory a little

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Speaker 1: bit more deeply. All right, hey, Bob, it's an honor

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Speaker 1: to be here. I happy to explain this. So status,

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Speaker 1: first of all, I think this word is used in

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Speaker 1: many different ways, and I want to be really clear

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Speaker 1: about what I mean. So status is often thought to

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Speaker 1: be one upsmanship, luxury goods, trying to be better than

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Speaker 1: your peers, and especially among you know, middle class people.

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Speaker 1: If everyone owns a Toyota camera, buying in Mercedes Bens,

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Speaker 1: that's all about status. What I am talking about is

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Speaker 1: status in a broader sense of every single person is

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Speaker 1: in a group. All those groups have some sort of hierarchy.

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Speaker 1: There's also a hierarchy of hierarchies in society, and so

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Speaker 1: different groups kind of battle it out, and your position

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Speaker 1: in that hierarchy and your group's position determine quite a

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Speaker 1: bit about your identity and the taste that you have

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Speaker 1: and the preferences that you have. And so status can

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Speaker 1: be everything from the desire for luxury goods to being

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Speaker 1: marginalized and being outside of the status hierarchy and creating

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Speaker 1: your own culture on the outside of it. It can

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Speaker 1: be everything from uh, minorities being oppressed and um, you know,

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Speaker 1: people fighting for dignity. So status is a much broader

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Speaker 1: thing than simply just trying to outdo each other. But

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Speaker 1: what I was looking at I was interested in how

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Speaker 1: culture works. I think culture is often seen as this chaotic,

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Speaker 1: irrational part of of our lives. And the more I

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Speaker 1: looked at it, I did kind of see these patterns

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Speaker 1: over time of how fashion changes, um spe s, if

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Speaker 1: you look at music, how musical changes over time, how

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Speaker 1: sounds and different genres rise and fall. And if you

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Speaker 1: look at this, there are these laws almost like scientific laws,

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Speaker 1: almost like gravity. And the more I looked at that,

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Speaker 1: the more I found that status was the best way

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Speaker 1: to explain those And so in writing a book about culture,

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Speaker 1: you had to, you know, also look at how status

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Speaker 1: works at a micro level to explain the macro patterns

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Speaker 1: of culture. So happy to talk more about the specifics

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Speaker 1: of that, but that's more or less how status and

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Speaker 1: culture intertwined. Okay, can one say that in society at large,

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Speaker 1: both in a specific country and in the world, that

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Speaker 1: there is one status hierarchy, because you talk about many hierarchies,

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Speaker 1: and certainly we live in a world that is all wired,

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Speaker 1: but there are many little cultures. But is there one

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Speaker 1: overwhelming status hierarchy in the world today? No, And they're

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Speaker 1: also are not really concrete numbers on your status position.

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Speaker 1: It's all vague, it's all perceived. Um. People have a

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Speaker 1: general sense of the status that they have based on

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Speaker 1: their treatment. And while there is not one single hierarchy,

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Speaker 1: I do believe people are very concerned about the groups

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Speaker 1: they associate with and how those groups are treated. And

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Speaker 1: so if you think about sub cultures, subcultures seem like

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Speaker 1: a great way to escape the main hierarchy of society

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Speaker 1: that cares much more about money than probably anything else.

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Speaker 1: And so you see, Okay, you can kind of go

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Speaker 1: to this other group and get all this esteem from

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Speaker 1: people like you who are interested in weird things. But

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Speaker 1: many of those groups still care a lot about how

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Speaker 1: their groups are treated and and do fight for more

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Speaker 1: status for the things they are interested in. So if

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Speaker 1: you're an in cell, for example, and you're on the

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Speaker 1: internet talking with other in cells, the in cells are

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Speaker 1: not happy being in cells. They're quite angry about it,

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Speaker 1: and they they want their position to rise in society.

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Speaker 1: And so UM it is. It's very abstract and it's

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Speaker 1: very vague, but I do believe people are aware of

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Speaker 1: both their position in their certain group, and that could

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Speaker 1: be a school community, but also the group they associate

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Speaker 1: most with, whether that is a subculture or a class

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Speaker 1: or a specific ethnic group, how that how that group

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Speaker 1: is treated in society. And so um we live in

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Speaker 1: a world in which there are probably more status groups

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Speaker 1: than ever before. But the idea that everybody has stopped

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Speaker 1: jocking for position and is happy to be in their

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Speaker 1: own small group, I think that's a little premature. Let's

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Speaker 1: just talk about one concept, which um goes across all

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Speaker 1: income levels, which is wealth breakdown, status relative to wealth

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Speaker 1: and society today. So if you go back to a

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Speaker 1: feudal era in in the feudal times, you have a

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Speaker 1: status high key that's not based on wealth, and you

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Speaker 1: have a king at the top, and you have aristocrats.

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Speaker 1: And the reason that system fell apart is because the

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Speaker 1: bourgeoisie are making so much money, but they don't have

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Speaker 1: the titles, so they start buying the titles, and then

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Speaker 1: the whole thing gets messed up, and then you have

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Speaker 1: the French Revolution, and since that time, in a capitalist world,

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Speaker 1: money is the main criteria in which we provide status.

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Speaker 1: So somebody can be No. One, make a lot of

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Speaker 1: money and then move up the status rankings really quickly.

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Speaker 1: Now there's still a battle between new money and old money,

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Speaker 1: often where old money knows how to be rich in

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Speaker 1: the right way and they try to keep new money out.

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Speaker 1: But over time that wealth is quite powerful. And money

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Speaker 1: is not only something valuable in its own right. Because

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Speaker 1: we live in a capitalist society, we we just value

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Speaker 1: wealth itself. But it's a sign of intelligence, it's a

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Speaker 1: sign of skill. It also is a way to purchase

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Speaker 1: the benefits that you get from esteem otherwise, So if

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Speaker 1: you're a very well respected person, maybe people treat you

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Speaker 1: well and you get access to all these va ap

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Speaker 1: events or places. But if you are rich, you can

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Speaker 1: just buy your way into them. And so money is

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Speaker 1: both a sign of status and the way we determine status,

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Speaker 1: but it's also a way to purchase status. If if

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Speaker 1: you're not respected, and so it's quite difficult to get

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Speaker 1: around status as sorry, it's it's quite difficult to get

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Speaker 1: around wealth as being the main determinant of status today.

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Speaker 1: And so you know, if you look at all the

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Speaker 1: different classes, obviously you know in the in the way

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Speaker 1: I think about it is you've got new money, and

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Speaker 1: you have old money, and you have the professional classes

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Speaker 1: which have a bit of money but really want to

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Speaker 1: make the status competition all about education and culture and

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Speaker 1: knowledge and things like that. UM. And then people who

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Speaker 1: were born without capital and and UM want to move

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Speaker 1: up tend to really focus on economic capital and be

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Speaker 1: seduced by the power of wealth because that that's their

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Speaker 1: easiest ticket up. So UM, as much as status is

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Speaker 1: a separate concept from wealth, we definitely live in a

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Speaker 1: society which wealth is the main determinant. Okay, So in

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Speaker 1: your book, it's really sort of three groups. You have

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Speaker 1: the economic outcasts, the people with nose status who you

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Speaker 1: referenced in this paradigm are looking for wealth. At the top,

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Speaker 1: you have those with wealth new money, old money. Let's

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Speaker 1: park that for a second. But in the middle, which

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Speaker 1: you reference just now, you have a professional class and

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Speaker 1: you have some people who are not professionals. But you

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Speaker 1: have people who want to ascend to the upper class,

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Speaker 1: the rich class, and you point out in your book

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Speaker 1: in many ways that if you pretend or you're too

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Speaker 1: much of a sick ethant, it'll work against that. So

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Speaker 1: there is a principle of detachment, which is that everyone

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Speaker 1: is signaling for status because you can't get status without

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Speaker 1: getting it from other people, and you need to show

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Speaker 1: that you have the reason forgetting that status. If you

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Speaker 1: are already wealthy and famous, you have a reputation and

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Speaker 1: you don't have to signal because people just know that

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Speaker 1: you're important and treat you that way. So the act

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Speaker 1: of signaling itself, when it's too obvious, is a low

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Speaker 1: status act. So people need to be detached from the

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Speaker 1: signaling process and be very subtle about it. And New

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Speaker 1: money gets this wrong, which is that they have, you know,

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Speaker 1: let's say a normal car. They go out and buy

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Speaker 1: a Rolls Royce and it's so obvious that they're trying

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Speaker 1: to signal that those signals fail and they just look

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Speaker 1: like they must not have status because they're trying so

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Speaker 1: hard to have it. So what is difficult about this

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Speaker 1: whole thing is that status in general is a taboo.

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Speaker 1: Talking about it is a taboo, and so you have

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Speaker 1: to try right to get it without showing that you're

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Speaker 1: trying to get it. Um. That being said, if you

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Speaker 1: go onto Instagram and you look today at especially you know,

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Speaker 1: people under let's say thirty, that taboo seems to be disappearing.

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Speaker 1: There seems to be quite a lot of kids, Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, sixteen year old kids who have made a

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Speaker 1: fortune drop shipping or some kind of obscure gray market activity,

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Speaker 1: and they're sitting on top of four binses and and

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Speaker 1: talking about, you know, providing for their parents and all

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Speaker 1: sorts of things. Um, that to me feels a bit uncouth.

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Speaker 1: But that that may be changing. But traditionally, you know,

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Speaker 1: and you know, in previous centuries, the idea was that

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Speaker 1: you're you're not supposed to show off too much or

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Speaker 1: it's too obvious that you don't have status to start with. Okay,

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Speaker 1: let's just focus on social media for a second. If

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Speaker 1: I'm on social media and I have a great number

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Speaker 1: of followers, does that instantly give me status or does

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Speaker 1: the same rule apply that it looks like I'm trying

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Speaker 1: to get followers and therefore people rebel against that. So

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Speaker 1: before I talked about status being quite vague and these

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Speaker 1: tears that we're in are undefined and when one of

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Speaker 1: the big developments of the Internet has been the ability

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Speaker 1: to quantify your status position because on Twitter or Instagram

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Speaker 1: or these platforms, you have a follower account, and yes,

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Speaker 1: the numbers can be faked, but to get up into

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Speaker 1: a hundred thousand or these big numbers, you need to be,

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Speaker 1: you know, quite have a quite uh big following, in

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Speaker 1: big presence, and be well known. And I don't think

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Speaker 1: the numbers themselves signal that you're trying too hard. I

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Speaker 1: think it's in the content or not. But you know,

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Speaker 1: Instagram in particular, I remember being on it, let's say

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Speaker 1: a decade ago, and it did seem to be mostly

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Speaker 1: creative class people showing abstract photos. It was often called

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Speaker 1: the happiest place on the Internet because it did seem

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Speaker 1: to be not about status signaling at all. And then

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Speaker 1: the next wave of people using it were more or

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Speaker 1: less strivers who were trying to become influencers on their

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Speaker 1: own and make influence their entire profession. And with that

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Speaker 1: you started getting a real fetishization of that follower account.

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Speaker 1: Because the more followers you have, you can then take

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Speaker 1: that to a brand and turn that into actual payments

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Speaker 1: for posts, So that status is directly related to some

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Speaker 1: sort of economic outcome. So UM brands obviously don't look

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Speaker 1: at those follower accounts and I think it's anything bad.

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Speaker 1: And I don't think the culture of those strivers and

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Speaker 1: the people who follow them, I don't think they necessarily

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Speaker 1: see trying to get a lot of followers is bad.

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Speaker 1: But it may be surprising to older people who grew

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Speaker 1: up in a more detached world to see that and think, um, oh,

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Speaker 1: is this is this okay? Now? Is it okay to

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Speaker 1: so openly try to win followers and fame without necessarily

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Speaker 1: doing it because you have talent, but just because you're

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Speaker 1: really good at the influence game itself. Let's stay on

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Speaker 1: the same point, but go a little bit deeper. If

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Speaker 1: you speak to boomers and you get into social media,

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Speaker 1: there are many people who are unfamiliar with the platforms,

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Speaker 1: but certainly unfamiliar with those who are stars on the platform.

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Speaker 1: So is this just a result of internet culture We're

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Speaker 1: going to go this far or generational change, or are

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Speaker 1: we going to have parallel status situations where the young

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Speaker 1: people say, I don't care what the parents do. This

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Speaker 1: is what we do. And the parents say, well, you know,

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Speaker 1: we grew up in a different era prior to the

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Speaker 1: Internet was more homogeneous. Yeah, it's it's difficult, and I

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Speaker 1: think there is a real split at the moment they

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Speaker 1: think about TikTok massively popular with teenagers. There are stars

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Speaker 1: on TikTok that anyone who is not a teenager has

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Speaker 1: never heard of. At the same time, those teenagers all

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Speaker 1: know Brad Pitt and they all know Lady Gaga, and

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Speaker 1: so there's kind of a two tier system in which

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Speaker 1: there are stars that everybody knows and there's ones that

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Speaker 1: are only on these platforms. And what I think about,

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Speaker 1: let's say culture in the sixties or seventies, you may

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Speaker 1: have someone who was subcultural. So you have the sex

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Speaker 1: pistols who start out very subcultural, but they take over

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Speaker 1: the music charts quite quickly, or you know, college rock

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Speaker 1: in the eighties going into alternative in the nineties, they

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Speaker 1: make that leap, and and so far these stars on

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Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram have not quite made the leap yet.

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Speaker 1: And it's interesting that there's that difference. Now. I think

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Speaker 1: it will happen. I think there will be more of

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Speaker 1: a merger. And at the met Gala, you know, a

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Speaker 1: couple of these TikTok stars are starting to show up,

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Speaker 1: but they may be the people with the least amount

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Speaker 1: of status at the met Gala, so it's not necessarily

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Speaker 1: like they go on the same footing as a quote

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Speaker 1: unquote real celebrity. But if teenagers are all looking at Instagram,

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Speaker 1: they're all looking at TikTok, and TikTok becomes the dominant

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Speaker 1: media that they're consuming, and the stars that own that

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Speaker 1: are these specific people. And then especially if the uh

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Speaker 1: real celebrities are more well known celebrities start going on

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Speaker 1: to TikTok and start collaborating with these people. Um, it's

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Speaker 1: quite possible to be a crossover, but you are right

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Speaker 1: at the moment, there does seem to be a wall

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Speaker 1: between these two worlds. And because you know, it depends

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Speaker 1: on whether Hollywood movies and um big studio music and

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Speaker 1: television continue to be as important as they are as

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Speaker 1: the centralizing media and society that those former celebrities celebrities

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Speaker 1: keep their position. If everything switches to TikTok, that's quite

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Speaker 1: likely that we'll just live in a world where TikTok

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Speaker 1: celebrities are the the most famous celebrities. But I think

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Speaker 1: there is a difference in the sense that to be

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Speaker 1: a Hollywood star, to be a big music star, there

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Speaker 1: has to be some general sense of talents at a

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Speaker 1: specific thing. You have to be an actor who can

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Speaker 1: carry a movie. You have to be able to make

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Speaker 1: a song that you know is on top forty radio.

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Speaker 1: Maybe the quality that's not always the best, but there's

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Speaker 1: some bar that have to pass. I do think many

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Speaker 1: of the stars on these social media platforms are really

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Speaker 1: good at hacking into what makes a social media video

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Speaker 1: go viral and quite good at it, and those skills

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Speaker 1: don't necessarily transfer out, and so that's one of the

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Speaker 1: other barriers we're seeing why people can't make the switch.

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Speaker 1: Because you can get very very good at doing a

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Speaker 1: silly video with a silly face and be the number

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Speaker 1: one star on TikTok for the year, but it doesn't

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Speaker 1: mean that you can be a movie a movie star,

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Speaker 1: or a music star. Let's go back to the met Gala.

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Speaker 1: Certainly in the nineties, I was an award shows like

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Speaker 1: the MTV Video Music Awards and all the peripheral people.

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Speaker 1: They were lapping it up. Think you know, whether they

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Speaker 1: be somebody on an MTV show for some other reason,

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Speaker 1: they were there. Now, if someone's at the MET gala,

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Speaker 1: they could just be kissing as saying I'm thrilled to

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Speaker 1: be here. But if they were for whatever reason there,

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Speaker 1: how would you tell them to act to increase their status?

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Speaker 1: You're saying one of these TikTok stars or one of

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Speaker 1: the peripheral celebrities. I don't I mean, this is probably

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Speaker 1: my lack of cultural capital, but I don't know how

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Speaker 1: you're supposed to act at the MET gala. And um,

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Speaker 1: you know what I would say is they there does

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Speaker 1: need to be a humility and there does need to

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Speaker 1: be uh somewhat of an invitation of trying to get

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Speaker 1: main celebrities into your world. It can't just be that

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Speaker 1: you go into mainstream celebrity world, because you're not going

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Speaker 1: to make that leap. They've got to come to you

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Speaker 1: and to try to get your influence to reach gen

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Speaker 1: z or you know, whatever it is their marketing goal.

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Speaker 1: They're going to come to you and start working with you,

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Speaker 1: and that's what's gonna bring you up. It's not going

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Speaker 1: to be that you were nice two major celebrities, and

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Speaker 1: this isn't a niceness game as you as you may know.

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Speaker 1: So I think the hope would be more or less

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Speaker 1: that you can just prove that the future of social

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Speaker 1: media or the future of media itself is on these platforms,

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Speaker 1: and if the major celebrities don't cross over to you,

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Speaker 1: then they're going to be the ones who are irrelevant

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Speaker 1: in five years. Okay, but let me just you know, extrapolate. Certainly,

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Speaker 1: when we lived in the last century without the Internet

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Speaker 1: exploding everything into a million stars, there were people just

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Speaker 1: had charisma in were cool and they were stand offish

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Speaker 1: and that drew people to them. Couldn't a social media

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Speaker 1: star when intersecting with mainstream do the same thing like, well,

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Speaker 1: I'm here reluctantly, I'm just checking out. I don't care

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Speaker 1: about you, my dad work, as opposed to I mean,

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Speaker 1: you talk about the people were saying I made some money,

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Speaker 1: I got a Mercedes, I got this. Okay, this is

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Speaker 1: kind of the This isn't a perfect example, but uh,

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Speaker 1: Bezos's ex wife wants no publicity and is giving away

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Speaker 1: all the money and that's giving her an amazing Mackenzie

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Speaker 1: Beazos has an amazing status now whereas before, uh, she

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Speaker 1: did not have this. That's right. And so go back

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Speaker 1: to this idea of cool in the twentieth century, and

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Speaker 1: cool was a form of detachment. It was a quiet rebellion,

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Speaker 1: and that was what was so powerful about that emotion

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Speaker 1: is the seeming detachment from social norms. And you know,

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Speaker 1: if everyone else is after status, I don't care and

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Speaker 1: I'm just gonna take a step back. And that really,

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Speaker 1: that ethos really defined everything up until probably the end

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Speaker 1: of the twentieth century with in gen X most definitely

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Speaker 1: kind of grew up with that idea of cool as well.

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Speaker 1: I think millennials, uh, it may have been a specific

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Speaker 1: rebellion against the aesthetic because it wasn't theirs. And if

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Speaker 1: they thought, you know, alternative music is trying so hard

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Speaker 1: to be uncool. You know, the every singer and an

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Speaker 1: alternative band is trying to pretend like they've never thought

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Speaker 1: about singing before. Why can't we go back to having

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Speaker 1: songs that are fun? Why can't we go back to

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Speaker 1: singers that are singers? And you get a sense that

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Speaker 1: millennials were fighting that version of cool. And then with

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Speaker 1: the rise of online video, you have people talking to

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Speaker 1: cameras directly being you know, emoting directly in front of

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Speaker 1: the camera, showing to complete strangers their emotional breakdowns and

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Speaker 1: crying and all of these things that are incredibly uncool,

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Speaker 1: and that is what became really appealing is the idea

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Speaker 1: of sharing these deep emotions with people in a way that, again,

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Speaker 1: I think for for previous generations, would be quite surprising.

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Speaker 1: So there has been a move away from this detachment

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Speaker 1: on an aesthetic level, I think with millennials and now

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Speaker 1: with gen z which it's just like show your success,

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Speaker 1: don't be shy about it. When you go back to

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Speaker 1: talking about Mackenzie Scott, they're at the same time is

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Speaker 1: this professional class who have become billionaires from tech, and

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Speaker 1: they're taking a lot of their professional class, upper middle

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Speaker 1: class values with them. So they're not going to brag.

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Speaker 1: They're going to give their money to sharity. There's there's

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Speaker 1: been a lot of articles recently about how old money

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Speaker 1: families are starting to give a lot of their money away.

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Speaker 1: So there you're getting this kind of bifurcation of people

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Speaker 1: who are previously wealthy or are suspicious of wealth itself.

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Speaker 1: As soon as they get billions, they're going to give

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Speaker 1: them away and that's going to be their path to

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Speaker 1: some higher form of status. But then young people, Um,

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Speaker 1: you don't want to stereotype so many young people, but

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Speaker 1: the ones who are really rising up on these platforms

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Speaker 1: seem to be unabashed le materialist, and that is the

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Speaker 1: way they're showing to everybody their success. And honestly, I

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Speaker 1: don't know how else you would do it. These days,

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Speaker 1: everything is about money, and if you can show that

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Speaker 1: you have luxury cars, that is an easy way to

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Speaker 1: show that you're a success at gaming these platforms too. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, turn it into a business, which is not

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Speaker 1: not always obvious that you can do. Okay, let's just

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Speaker 1: go segue back to the old money new money. I

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Speaker 1: grew up in Connecticut in the last century, and you

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Speaker 1: knew who you know. You describe it very well in

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Speaker 1: the book. You know, they're wearing topsiders, which your canvas shoes,

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Speaker 1: leather shoes. Actually they're wearing chinos. They're driving around in

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Speaker 1: an old Ford country squire. Okay, they inherited the money

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Speaker 1: in most cases. Also, there were no billionaires. There was

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Speaker 1: nobody that wealthy in America and Europe. Different. So now

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Speaker 1: as a result of tech and lowering of taxes. We

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Speaker 1: have these people who literally are billionaires have more money

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Speaker 1: than the old money people ever had, even in real dollars.

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Speaker 1: So is old money a lost paradigm? Does anybody even

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Speaker 1: care about old money anymore other than the people who

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Speaker 1: are old money. It's quite interesting because my argument is

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Speaker 1: that true old money aesthetics of modesty and detachment and

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Speaker 1: all the things we associate with that preppy style of

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Speaker 1: New England, those that ethos is most definitely dead. And

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Speaker 1: if you're a young person trying to think about moving

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Speaker 1: up in the world, you don't think about that group

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Speaker 1: as your model that I want to dress preppy and

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Speaker 1: my dream is to have a trust fund that that is,

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Speaker 1: I think in in something that is dead. At the

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Speaker 1: same time, on TikTok, there is a hashtag that's quite

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Speaker 1: popular that is hashtag old money, and it's a misunderstanding

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Speaker 1: of old money, believing that old money is just even

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Speaker 1: more ostentatious the new money. They have bigger boats and

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Speaker 1: bigger houses, and dress even and even more crisp clothing,

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Speaker 1: without knowing that true old money in New England used to,

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Speaker 1: you know, intentionally wear dirty, choose to show off, how

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Speaker 1: how much they didn't care about dressing well. So I

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Speaker 1: think that the old true old money is dead. I

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Speaker 1: don't know why anyone would aspire towards it. I think

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Speaker 1: some of those principles exist within the men's fashion world,

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Speaker 1: in particular, that you know, preppy style is still very popular,

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Speaker 1: but it doesn't quite have the connotations that used to.

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00:23:43,920 --> 00:23:47,080
Speaker 1: And then with you know, any kind of old money

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Speaker 1: fetishism that happens at the moment is just the complete

404
00:23:49,680 --> 00:23:53,280
Speaker 1: misunderstanding of it. It's quite possible that we went through

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Speaker 1: a boom where the billionaires made their fortunes just like

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Speaker 1: the robber barons made their fortunes, and then their kids

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Speaker 1: and their grandkids settle into a more old money pattern.

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00:24:02,480 --> 00:24:06,399
Speaker 1: The economy is so dynamic, though, and you believe it

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Speaker 1: will continue to be that way that globally, I don't

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Speaker 1: think that old money will ever be something that has

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Speaker 1: the same position. Because the other thing I think about

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Speaker 1: a lot is and that we don't necessarily think about

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Speaker 1: in the US that much. But the Internet is globalizing

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Speaker 1: the world, and the people who are participating in the

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Speaker 1: Internet outside of the United States tend to mostly be

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Speaker 1: the extreme new vote reach of all these places that

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Speaker 1: we don't think about. So, you know, the all these

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Speaker 1: oil rich nations, or you know people who just have

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Speaker 1: some sort of construction fortune and Serbia or whatever. So

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Speaker 1: these people are sending a lot of the paradigms for

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Speaker 1: taste and style in their particular countries, which everyone is imitating.

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Speaker 1: As and as the Internet gets more and more global,

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Speaker 1: this new vote reache aesthetic will will you know, spread

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Speaker 1: throughout the the world and become kind of the baseline

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Speaker 1: grammar of how people behave on these social media platforms.

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Speaker 1: So that that's even further punishing against kind of American

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Speaker 1: old money detachment. The Internet is just not a good

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Speaker 1: place for modesty and detachment to start with. So as

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Speaker 1: much as an old money could develop as an economic

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Speaker 1: class again if the economy settles down and you have

431
00:25:21,600 --> 00:25:25,720
Speaker 1: less boom, uh, it's it was very much of a

432
00:25:25,760 --> 00:25:30,320
Speaker 1: specific time and place where you know, people knew their

433
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:34,440
Speaker 1: neighbors and uh, you know, there was four channels on television,

434
00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:38,280
Speaker 1: one of which was PBS, and that professional class really

435
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:43,400
Speaker 1: aspired towards going to an ivy League university, meeting all

436
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:46,080
Speaker 1: the old money people, stealing their style and aesthetic, and

437
00:25:46,119 --> 00:25:48,159
Speaker 1: then going back and trying to do lots of things

438
00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:50,480
Speaker 1: to impress them, uh, taste wise, for the rest of

439
00:25:50,480 --> 00:26:00,679
Speaker 1: their life, and that that era is probably over. Okay,

440
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:05,760
Speaker 1: you talked about the professional class. These are the wealthy,

441
00:26:06,080 --> 00:26:08,240
Speaker 1: and I remember a story in the New York Times

442
00:26:08,240 --> 00:26:13,159
Speaker 1: about five years ago about concierge doctors and the people

443
00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:17,400
Speaker 1: who thought that they were the movers and shakers upper class,

444
00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:23,199
Speaker 1: the college professors, the lawyers, etcetera. They couldn't afford the

445
00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:27,720
Speaker 1: conciergs doctors in New York. Okay, so what about all

446
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:31,840
Speaker 1: these people who believe, well, I went to a good college.

447
00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: I you know, I my kids go to good schools.

448
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:39,119
Speaker 1: Are they just thinking, well, I'm too low on the

449
00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:43,920
Speaker 1: status ladder and I have to move up? Or am

450
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:48,879
Speaker 1: I satisfied where I am? What goes on there? What

451
00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:53,520
Speaker 1: social psychology experiments have found is there's no level of

452
00:26:53,600 --> 00:26:56,720
Speaker 1: status that is enough. The more you move up, the

453
00:26:56,720 --> 00:26:59,560
Speaker 1: more you want, and even the people at the very

454
00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:04,320
Speaker 1: top keep trying to push forward. So based on that,

455
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:08,920
Speaker 1: if you're very successful and you have all the material

456
00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 1: comfort that you need, but then you realize there's a

457
00:27:12,600 --> 00:27:15,960
Speaker 1: new symbol of status that you don't have and you

458
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:20,080
Speaker 1: can't get access to. I believe that that that group

459
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:24,320
Speaker 1: will be disappointed or try to find new ways to

460
00:27:24,359 --> 00:27:28,160
Speaker 1: move up and to afford those things. Um it has

461
00:27:29,080 --> 00:27:32,240
Speaker 1: the amount, the sheer amount of money has distorted everything.

462
00:27:32,800 --> 00:27:37,359
Speaker 1: And the degree to which just being a normal, successful

463
00:27:37,359 --> 00:27:39,240
Speaker 1: professional person in New York and not being able to

464
00:27:39,280 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 1: afford to buy an apartment or being priced out, um

465
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:46,920
Speaker 1: that that's also a sign of this. The other part

466
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:51,320
Speaker 1: of it is the degree to which the super duper rich,

467
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:55,000
Speaker 1: let's say, if you know, used to be first class,

468
00:27:55,040 --> 00:27:58,840
Speaker 1: so you would think about first class, business class economy

469
00:27:59,040 --> 00:28:03,160
Speaker 1: as your way of thinking about status groupings. Now there's

470
00:28:03,160 --> 00:28:08,040
Speaker 1: private jets, or now there's the private terminal l a airport,

471
00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:13,760
Speaker 1: and so things like having to walk to a gate,

472
00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:17,280
Speaker 1: which used to be something everyone had to do. Maybe

473
00:28:17,280 --> 00:28:18,680
Speaker 1: you got to go to the lounge, but you had

474
00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:21,639
Speaker 1: to walk to your gate through the airport. Now that

475
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:26,639
Speaker 1: is a middle status activity. So this money has taken

476
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 1: all these things that used to be normal and made

477
00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:35,600
Speaker 1: people feel like their inferior. And it's probably not a

478
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:38,000
Speaker 1: good thing that's happened to the United States in particular.

479
00:28:38,560 --> 00:28:42,520
Speaker 1: And I forgot who it was, but um, I believe

480
00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:44,760
Speaker 1: it is maybe one of the Granddaughters of Disney saying,

481
00:28:44,800 --> 00:28:48,680
Speaker 1: you know, the main the thing I realize, the big

482
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:51,480
Speaker 1: difference between being sort of rich and being ultra rich

483
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:53,720
Speaker 1: is private jets. Once you start taking private jets, you

484
00:28:53,760 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 1: can't go back. And so there has been with this

485
00:28:58,080 --> 00:29:02,120
Speaker 1: whole new group of status symbols that have made doctors

486
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:04,480
Speaker 1: and lawyers and professions that used to be seemed like

487
00:29:04,520 --> 00:29:09,000
Speaker 1: the top of society, um, really take a step down relatively.

488
00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:14,160
Speaker 1: And I don't think. I don't think that group looks

489
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 1: at their material comforts and says, oh, we're good. I

490
00:29:16,560 --> 00:29:19,880
Speaker 1: think they do resent it to a certain degree. Or um,

491
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:23,440
Speaker 1: I feel like they've got to work harder. Now, Okay,

492
00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 1: let's talk about artists. From reading the book, it seems

493
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:31,760
Speaker 1: artists exists outside the sphere. Let's talk pre Internet, because

494
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:35,080
Speaker 1: another focus your book is post Internet. Is they exist

495
00:29:35,160 --> 00:29:41,400
Speaker 1: outside the sphere, and then the professional intellectual classes to

496
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:47,480
Speaker 1: be hip become fans of those artists, and then ultimately

497
00:29:47,520 --> 00:29:50,920
Speaker 1: the product is dumbed down for the public and consumed

498
00:29:51,040 --> 00:29:56,160
Speaker 1: at mass. Go deeper what's going on there? Yes, So

499
00:29:57,200 --> 00:30:00,360
Speaker 1: to understand how artists works, you have to understand the

500
00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:02,760
Speaker 1: principle of convention, and we use the word convention all

501
00:30:02,800 --> 00:30:06,760
Speaker 1: the time, and it has a very specific technical meaning

502
00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:11,240
Speaker 1: within sociology and linguistics. But conventions are where people have

503
00:30:11,840 --> 00:30:15,680
Speaker 1: a mutual expectation of certain behavior. And so, you know,

504
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:17,840
Speaker 1: the example using the book is black tie. If you

505
00:30:17,920 --> 00:30:21,480
Speaker 1: get a invitation something that says formal, you know, you

506
00:30:21,520 --> 00:30:23,840
Speaker 1: have to wear black tie. That is expected to view.

507
00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:26,280
Speaker 1: And if you show up in black tie, people are happy.

508
00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 1: If you don't show up in black tie, you show

509
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:31,720
Speaker 1: up in shorts, people will be angry. And so these

510
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:35,200
Speaker 1: conventions form and they're kind of the backbone of culture.

511
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:38,520
Speaker 1: The the atomic form of culture is these conventions. And

512
00:30:38,520 --> 00:30:41,000
Speaker 1: and art itself is full of conventions. If you think

513
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:43,360
Speaker 1: about what makes a hip hop song different than a

514
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:46,480
Speaker 1: than a rock song, it is you know, the use

515
00:30:46,480 --> 00:30:49,560
Speaker 1: of beats or the use of instrumentation. These are all conventional.

516
00:30:50,040 --> 00:30:55,360
Speaker 1: So what artists do is very intentionally break these conventions

517
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:59,640
Speaker 1: in the kind of aesthetic world. So if art is

518
00:30:59,680 --> 00:31:03,920
Speaker 1: figure wative in the sense that um, every painting is

519
00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:07,840
Speaker 1: showing real people, then a true artist of the nineteenth

520
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:10,400
Speaker 1: century says, I'm going to make art that is non figurative.

521
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:13,840
Speaker 1: That that um, I guess that would be the twentieth century.

522
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: But I'm going to do something else. I'm gonna break

523
00:31:17,720 --> 00:31:22,040
Speaker 1: that convention, and over time those inventions then become conventional,

524
00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:25,400
Speaker 1: and then other people follow those patterns, and audiences themselves

525
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:29,000
Speaker 1: start to understand those conventions, and it changes and expands

526
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:31,680
Speaker 1: the way they can perceive art and the world. So

527
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:36,600
Speaker 1: artists have played a giant role in our perception and

528
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:39,040
Speaker 1: expanding it over time and the things we consider to

529
00:31:39,080 --> 00:31:41,440
Speaker 1: be art to start with. So that if you think

530
00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:46,000
Speaker 1: about that process, it's obvious that an artist, by breaking

531
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:48,840
Speaker 1: convention is going to make people angry, and any art

532
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:51,920
Speaker 1: that shows up and follows convention, it doesn't make people angry.

533
00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:55,240
Speaker 1: We can be relatively suspicious of that. Is it true art?

534
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: But also is it going to do anything for us?

535
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:01,760
Speaker 1: If if we like, you know, Trapp music, and we

536
00:32:01,840 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 1: like that beat and an artist comes out with the

537
00:32:03,280 --> 00:32:07,600
Speaker 1: exact same trap beat, then it doesn't expand the genre

538
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:09,960
Speaker 1: at all, It doesn't expand our understanding at all, and

539
00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 1: it's it just kind of tickles the things already in

540
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:17,000
Speaker 1: our brain. And So what I what I was thinking

541
00:32:17,040 --> 00:32:20,640
Speaker 1: about with status, because I think it's been misunderstood a

542
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:22,680
Speaker 1: little bit in this sense. I don't think artists create

543
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 1: art in order to get socioeconomic status. Maybe some of

544
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:27,800
Speaker 1: them do, and definitely, you know pop musicians, many of

545
00:32:27,800 --> 00:32:30,920
Speaker 1: them do. But you can create art for the purest reason.

546
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:34,720
Speaker 1: You can believe simply that painting is wrong and the

547
00:32:34,760 --> 00:32:36,760
Speaker 1: way it is now, and you need to make different

548
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:40,400
Speaker 1: kinds of painting. But the process in which those inventions

549
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:43,320
Speaker 1: become conventional has a lot to do with status, which

550
00:32:43,360 --> 00:32:46,120
Speaker 1: is that first and foremost you have to get status

551
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:49,800
Speaker 1: from the art world itself for people to say this

552
00:32:49,920 --> 00:32:53,560
Speaker 1: invention is not just some crazy idio idiosyncrency, it is

553
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:56,400
Speaker 1: actually very important and we should treat it as some

554
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 1: sort of genius move. And once that happens in this person,

555
00:32:59,680 --> 00:33:03,240
Speaker 1: this person, even as an artist, there are becomes uh

556
00:33:03,360 --> 00:33:05,360
Speaker 1: perceived in a different way. People can have a sthetic

557
00:33:05,400 --> 00:33:08,560
Speaker 1: experiences with it, and as that happens, then more and

558
00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:11,080
Speaker 1: more people copy it, and then it kind of diffuses

559
00:33:11,120 --> 00:33:15,560
Speaker 1: through society from there. So that is the classic model

560
00:33:15,600 --> 00:33:18,800
Speaker 1: of avant garde art until let's say, maybe the seventies

561
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:21,880
Speaker 1: or eighties, and it probably does not describe a lot

562
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:23,600
Speaker 1: of what's going on now. And I think that's maybe

563
00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:26,200
Speaker 1: one of art disappointments with art these days is that

564
00:33:26,280 --> 00:33:29,120
Speaker 1: we don't feel like it's pushing our brains. If you

565
00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:32,400
Speaker 1: see a Jeff Khon's sculpture and it's and the whole

566
00:33:32,400 --> 00:33:35,440
Speaker 1: point of it is, you're going to fuse art and

567
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:37,800
Speaker 1: commerce together so much that you can't tell which is which.

568
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:40,520
Speaker 1: We already know that art and commerce are fused. There's

569
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:43,040
Speaker 1: nothing that we're learning from that in a way where

570
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:47,000
Speaker 1: if you take a John Cage uh performance and it

571
00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:50,320
Speaker 1: was all created through random chance, that does change the

572
00:33:50,320 --> 00:33:52,280
Speaker 1: way we think about performance in the sense of until

573
00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:55,400
Speaker 1: that point, all music was created by the hand of

574
00:33:55,480 --> 00:34:01,880
Speaker 1: somebody intentionally making it. And so these ideas push forward

575
00:34:02,120 --> 00:34:05,400
Speaker 1: our perception of the world. And if people stopped doing that,

576
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:08,479
Speaker 1: then things get quite boring pretty quickly. Okay, let's stay

577
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 1: with visual hard for a second. You say, in order

578
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:18,120
Speaker 1: to gain newfound status, it has to solve a problem.

579
00:34:18,280 --> 00:34:21,839
Speaker 1: Expand on that, and why is that the case? So

580
00:34:21,880 --> 00:34:25,040
Speaker 1: it has to solve a problem in the art world

581
00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:33,440
Speaker 1: itself in the sense that, um, if you're if your

582
00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:39,239
Speaker 1: procasso and art is two dimensional, and you start understanding

583
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:43,640
Speaker 1: that the world physically is more complicated, and you start

584
00:34:43,680 --> 00:34:46,440
Speaker 1: thinking about how could you paint in three three dimensions,

585
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:49,480
Speaker 1: not just two, and everybody's trying to in some ways

586
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:53,200
Speaker 1: figure out where painting is going. And suddenly you do

587
00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 1: these Cubist paintings that that say, here is a way

588
00:34:56,480 --> 00:35:00,560
Speaker 1: to do three dimensions on a two dimensional canvas. That

589
00:35:00,719 --> 00:35:04,640
Speaker 1: is a solution, and the art world then says, oh,

590
00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:07,520
Speaker 1: that is that's a genius solution. These people are great,

591
00:35:08,080 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 1: and it maybe it starts with some more rebellious galerists

592
00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:14,480
Speaker 1: or buyers, and then it spreads from there, and then

593
00:35:14,520 --> 00:35:17,399
Speaker 1: obviously museums included in the history of art, and then

594
00:35:17,440 --> 00:35:20,120
Speaker 1: from Cubism you get things like futurism, which you know

595
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:22,600
Speaker 1: takes the ideas of Cubism, but you know, adds from

596
00:35:22,600 --> 00:35:24,960
Speaker 1: the third dimension to the fourth dimension as time into it.

597
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:28,600
Speaker 1: And so over over time you get these solutions, and

598
00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:33,160
Speaker 1: then you get another group who, once those ideas become established,

599
00:35:33,160 --> 00:35:36,600
Speaker 1: just trying to push the art form even further and

600
00:35:36,640 --> 00:35:39,600
Speaker 1: has to find its own solutions, and over time you

601
00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:42,680
Speaker 1: get this narrative of one artist showing up and then

602
00:35:42,760 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 1: the next artist negating the person's style or taking it further,

603
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:49,319
Speaker 1: and then that person gets established and and onward, and

604
00:35:49,560 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 1: your place in art history determines your overall status of

605
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:57,680
Speaker 1: your work. And you know, I I talked about Henri

606
00:35:57,840 --> 00:36:01,400
Speaker 1: Rousseau in the book, who was a naive painter. Everyone

607
00:36:01,440 --> 00:36:04,920
Speaker 1: made fun of him. He really wasn't um, you know,

608
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:07,200
Speaker 1: particularly sharp thinker, and a lot of his paintings aren't

609
00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:10,920
Speaker 1: aren't maybe technically great, but he solved the problem for

610
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:13,560
Speaker 1: avant artists at the time because they were trying to

611
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:18,800
Speaker 1: figure out again how to push art beyond academic figurative work,

612
00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:21,600
Speaker 1: and Rousseau, in his naive style, came up with these

613
00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:24,799
Speaker 1: very dreamy canvases. And you can understand why, you know,

614
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:29,319
Speaker 1: surrealists or all these other artists being avant garde could

615
00:36:29,320 --> 00:36:31,360
Speaker 1: look at that and say, if people can accept a

616
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:33,960
Speaker 1: russo they'll accept our work as well. And he solved

617
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:36,799
Speaker 1: a problem for them, and in his last two years

618
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:39,400
Speaker 1: of life was rewarded by them as being you know,

619
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:43,480
Speaker 1: a fellow compatriot. And then in writing the History of

620
00:36:43,520 --> 00:36:46,520
Speaker 1: post Impressionism, they bring in Rousseau as one of the

621
00:36:46,520 --> 00:36:49,280
Speaker 1: main artists and he's forever, you know, part of the canon,

622
00:36:49,600 --> 00:36:51,600
Speaker 1: despite the fact that he if he had died two

623
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:54,879
Speaker 1: years earlier, he probably wouldn't have been so Um, this

624
00:36:55,280 --> 00:36:59,280
Speaker 1: this art history, the way it's created, and the story.

625
00:37:00,080 --> 00:37:02,160
Speaker 1: It comes down to a narrative, and I think this

626
00:37:02,239 --> 00:37:03,959
Speaker 1: is this is important, and it kind of loops to

627
00:37:03,960 --> 00:37:07,479
Speaker 1: to why today things feel that art is a little

628
00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:10,000
Speaker 1: bit less interesting is because that narrative has become quite

629
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:13,440
Speaker 1: confused in a postmodern era where it's not clear the

630
00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:16,239
Speaker 1: progression of this art came out and then this art

631
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:17,920
Speaker 1: came out, and then this art came out. And we

632
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:22,279
Speaker 1: used that quite a bit to understand our world and

633
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:25,440
Speaker 1: to understand the culture that we're in in any moment.

634
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:27,319
Speaker 1: And when you have too many things going on at

635
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:29,360
Speaker 1: once and nothing seems dominant, and nothing seems to be

636
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:31,759
Speaker 1: responding to the previous thing, it just gets hard for

637
00:37:31,840 --> 00:37:35,000
Speaker 1: us to keep pays. Okay, let's talk about music. In

638
00:37:35,040 --> 00:37:38,480
Speaker 1: the fifties, we had rock and roll. We can debate

639
00:37:38,520 --> 00:37:41,520
Speaker 1: what the original song was, rocket eight eight or whatever.

640
00:37:41,840 --> 00:37:48,239
Speaker 1: There was a huge burst of creativity which ultimately became static.

641
00:37:49,040 --> 00:37:52,560
Speaker 1: Then in the early sixties you have the man you

642
00:37:52,719 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 1: factured singers there might be a little roll rock and

643
00:37:55,800 --> 00:37:59,880
Speaker 1: roll uh element to their music. The Beatles come a

644
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:03,560
Speaker 1: long and it's a revolution. I lived through this. You're

645
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:06,480
Speaker 1: not old enough too, but it was literally night and day.

646
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:09,120
Speaker 1: So if we look at the Beatles, the Beatles were

647
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:14,000
Speaker 1: cleaned up for general consumption, which fits with your theory.

648
00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:19,399
Speaker 1: But they could have just been a novelty. Why did

649
00:38:19,440 --> 00:38:22,720
Speaker 1: they continue to be at the forefront of the culture.

650
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 1: So there's a great book on the Beatles that I

651
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:29,840
Speaker 1: recommend any Beatles fan reads, which is Ian McDonald's Revolution

652
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:33,000
Speaker 1: in the Head, and his idea is more or less

653
00:38:33,040 --> 00:38:35,920
Speaker 1: that the Beatles very early they had written a lot

654
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 1: of songs. I think they'd written something like a hundred

655
00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:41,399
Speaker 1: songs before it Love Me Do and with especially Please

656
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:45,600
Speaker 1: Squeez Me, tried to do something unique in every song.

657
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:48,239
Speaker 1: They knew what the convention was, and they would break

658
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:50,320
Speaker 1: the convention a little bit, and they started getting rewarded

659
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:53,879
Speaker 1: for it. And John and Paul both wanted to kind

660
00:38:53,880 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 1: of outdo each other and the rest of these other

661
00:38:56,719 --> 00:39:00,879
Speaker 1: bands by always adding one non convinced an all bit

662
00:39:01,160 --> 00:39:03,480
Speaker 1: into the songs. And because they were so successful, they

663
00:39:03,520 --> 00:39:06,240
Speaker 1: just kept going in that direction and pushing and pushing

664
00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:09,880
Speaker 1: and pushing, and that maybe just that was kind of

665
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:12,520
Speaker 1: a quirk of their genius, I think, but also because

666
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:16,319
Speaker 1: they were rewarded for it, never stopped doing it. They

667
00:39:16,440 --> 00:39:20,480
Speaker 1: also because they were imitated so quickly, because the machine

668
00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:23,319
Speaker 1: moved in to make a bunch of Beatles clones. I

669
00:39:23,360 --> 00:39:25,640
Speaker 1: think they felt pressured to always be one step ahead

670
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:30,040
Speaker 1: as well. And so you know, if everybody's doing the

671
00:39:30,760 --> 00:39:34,040
Speaker 1: kind of Liverpool sound and then they listen to Dylan,

672
00:39:34,200 --> 00:39:35,880
Speaker 1: what would what would it be like to put it

673
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:39,840
Speaker 1: a little Dylan in this? Or you know there's an Indian, uh,

674
00:39:39,960 --> 00:39:43,319
Speaker 1: you know, George find here's the guitar. Let's put guitar

675
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:45,400
Speaker 1: in this. No one said no, they said yeah, absolutely.

676
00:39:45,640 --> 00:39:50,640
Speaker 1: So I think they personally, uh, they were they did

677
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:54,600
Speaker 1: not like to be imitated, and that imitation itself really

678
00:39:54,640 --> 00:39:57,680
Speaker 1: pushed them forward, which I think is key. And even

679
00:39:57,680 --> 00:39:59,400
Speaker 1: the Beatles haircut, I mean I think that you know

680
00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:02,880
Speaker 1: the mop top up, uh, John and Paul hated it

681
00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:05,160
Speaker 1: the first time they saw it on on Stu when

682
00:40:05,160 --> 00:40:08,000
Speaker 1: he was the Bassis. And then they realized if they

683
00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:11,440
Speaker 1: went back to the UK with that mop top from Germany,

684
00:40:11,760 --> 00:40:14,239
Speaker 1: they would be the only band that had that look.

685
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:17,759
Speaker 1: Then they would feel kind of superior in their understanding

686
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:21,439
Speaker 1: of continental culture. And they got there and they were

687
00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:24,080
Speaker 1: they were different, and and their their fans loved it,

688
00:40:24,160 --> 00:40:26,160
Speaker 1: and then of course everybody else gets the mop top.

689
00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:29,799
Speaker 1: So I think from the very beginning that they themselves

690
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:34,160
Speaker 1: were just obsessed with not novelty in the sense of

691
00:40:34,280 --> 00:40:37,160
Speaker 1: they were obsessed with invention. And you know what's interesting

692
00:40:37,200 --> 00:40:39,520
Speaker 1: about their music from the seventies or even you know,

693
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 1: kind of let it be, is that the degree which

694
00:40:42,200 --> 00:40:44,520
Speaker 1: they just go backwards and they really stopped trying to

695
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:47,160
Speaker 1: be innovative and they go back to just roots sound.

696
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:48,920
Speaker 1: And maybe that was at the time where people just

697
00:40:48,920 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 1: felt like innovation itself and fashion itself was a little

698
00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:55,120
Speaker 1: bit done. But at least through the sixties, you know

699
00:40:55,200 --> 00:40:58,560
Speaker 1: that whole era was every single year there was the

700
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:01,759
Speaker 1: idea that you can keep pushing things forward, and you

701
00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:05,200
Speaker 1: can see that across music, art and fashion. Okay, so

702
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:09,960
Speaker 1: is this something innate or if you look at history,

703
00:41:10,080 --> 00:41:15,560
Speaker 1: can people adapt this formula to their advantage? I think

704
00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:19,920
Speaker 1: the sixties was a very particular case, and in some

705
00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:23,440
Speaker 1: ways it's quite damaging to us that we keep looking

706
00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:25,719
Speaker 1: back to it and comparing ourselves to the sixties. I

707
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:29,000
Speaker 1: think that was at once in a lifetime sort of

708
00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:33,560
Speaker 1: situation in terms of commerce and media and all these

709
00:41:33,560 --> 00:41:37,040
Speaker 1: things coming together and then obviously the youth boom and

710
00:41:37,320 --> 00:41:40,480
Speaker 1: the post war ethos and the economy changing, and also

711
00:41:40,520 --> 00:41:44,000
Speaker 1: the economy was good, and people worried less about, you know,

712
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:46,520
Speaker 1: how to make money because everything seemed to make money.

713
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:50,359
Speaker 1: So all that came together to make this very revolutionary

714
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:54,359
Speaker 1: era that doesn't necessarily describe the seventies. The seventies had

715
00:41:54,360 --> 00:41:58,319
Speaker 1: its own charms, doesn't describe the eighties. And now you know,

716
00:41:58,640 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 1: we are living in a time of asis, but stasis

717
00:42:01,200 --> 00:42:05,879
Speaker 1: is probably much more common. And it's only because we're

718
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:09,560
Speaker 1: still obsessed with Dylan and the Beatles and that whole

719
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:14,200
Speaker 1: sixties culture that we look back at it and say,

720
00:42:14,239 --> 00:42:16,440
Speaker 1: why is our culture not like this now? But I

721
00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:18,360
Speaker 1: don't I don't know if you can replicate it anymore.

722
00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:20,600
Speaker 1: I think that it was just a specific time because

723
00:42:20,960 --> 00:42:22,560
Speaker 1: you know, and and the point I'm trying to get

724
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:26,000
Speaker 1: at the book is not that artistic invention is over.

725
00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:28,279
Speaker 1: That you know, there's probably still people out there doing

726
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:32,600
Speaker 1: really an interesting, genius level things. It's the genius is

727
00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:36,880
Speaker 1: proven by your influence of society. When you create some

728
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:39,560
Speaker 1: idea and then it becomes conventional and then everyone else

729
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:41,960
Speaker 1: does it. That's when you become a genius. The Beatles

730
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:46,759
Speaker 1: were a genius band because everyone imitated the Beatles and

731
00:42:46,840 --> 00:42:49,799
Speaker 1: all the pop music the year after they release something

732
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:51,799
Speaker 1: sounded like rip offs of the thing they had done.

733
00:42:52,280 --> 00:42:55,400
Speaker 1: And today it's just very, very difficult for that that

734
00:42:55,600 --> 00:42:58,080
Speaker 1: artist who has the potential to be genius to influence

735
00:42:58,120 --> 00:43:00,600
Speaker 1: the whole market because things are too chaotic, or to

736
00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:05,239
Speaker 1: think things are too static. So um, it's it is

737
00:43:05,239 --> 00:43:07,400
Speaker 1: difficult just because we remember the sixties too well. And

738
00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:11,400
Speaker 1: you know, you can watch Get Back and and you know, Spend.

739
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:15,960
Speaker 1: That was probably one of the most interesting cultural experiences

740
00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:18,480
Speaker 1: I had in the last year's watching that rather than

741
00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 1: anything new. Okay, let's talk about the Beatles. They were experimenting.

742
00:43:27,200 --> 00:43:32,719
Speaker 1: Other acts experimented. Why were the Beatles accepted and the

743
00:43:32,800 --> 00:43:36,440
Speaker 1: other acts were not? So give me the example of

744
00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:39,040
Speaker 1: another act. Okay, I mean you're probably not going to

745
00:43:39,120 --> 00:43:43,520
Speaker 1: know these records. Uh, you know, there's Donovan had the

746
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:45,920
Speaker 1: two records in a box. What was it? Message from

747
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:49,640
Speaker 1: a flower to a guard Okay, and then of course

748
00:43:49,680 --> 00:43:54,120
Speaker 1: these stones it did imitate Sergeant Pepper's with their Satanic

749
00:43:54,200 --> 00:43:59,239
Speaker 1: Majesty's request. Odden's Nut Gone Flake, many people say was

750
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:04,840
Speaker 1: by the Small Aces was the first, uh concept album?

751
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:09,279
Speaker 1: But or you know, the who get more credit for

752
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:12,120
Speaker 1: doing like a rock opera. So how much does your

753
00:44:12,160 --> 00:44:16,560
Speaker 1: inherent status affect whether people accept you? So if your first,

754
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:20,200
Speaker 1: but you don't have history, does that mean you probably

755
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:24,960
Speaker 1: won't make it? Yes, I mean the Beatles were relatively

756
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:27,080
Speaker 1: early on all these things. I mean I think Donovan,

757
00:44:28,480 --> 00:44:33,120
Speaker 1: if you look at the timeline, he's probably lagging the

758
00:44:33,160 --> 00:44:36,280
Speaker 1: Beatles on all of the records. Who did Harpsichord first?

759
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:38,520
Speaker 1: Probably the Beatles and then Donovan, although we'll have to

760
00:44:38,520 --> 00:44:42,000
Speaker 1: go look at the look at the chronology. Um, you

761
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:45,320
Speaker 1: know the Stones, you know, the first Stones hit was

762
00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 1: written by the Beatles, and then yeah, Satanic Majesty's is

763
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:51,200
Speaker 1: is kind of a poor man's Starry de Peppers. Uh.

764
00:44:51,239 --> 00:44:53,200
Speaker 1: And then you know the Stones really found their sound

765
00:44:53,280 --> 00:44:55,880
Speaker 1: by getting far away from that. And and you know

766
00:44:55,920 --> 00:44:59,839
Speaker 1: Exile is probably the marquee record rather than than trying

767
00:44:59,840 --> 00:45:03,359
Speaker 1: to be a Beatles rip off. Uh. Yeah, I think

768
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:06,680
Speaker 1: the Beatles were fast enough where even if maybe there

769
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:11,960
Speaker 1: was a concept record before Sergeant Pepper, the they were

770
00:45:11,960 --> 00:45:14,480
Speaker 1: still the main band everyone was looking at just to

771
00:45:14,520 --> 00:45:16,960
Speaker 1: set the direction of the market. And so somebody may

772
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:18,880
Speaker 1: be on the fringes doing it, but for them to

773
00:45:18,920 --> 00:45:25,320
Speaker 1: do it meant everything. And you know, rock opera seems

774
00:45:25,400 --> 00:45:28,680
Speaker 1: like almost a bit of a step backwards in the

775
00:45:28,719 --> 00:45:30,960
Speaker 1: sense that all they're doing is fusing this kind of

776
00:45:30,960 --> 00:45:34,120
Speaker 1: previous form with rock and trying to say, like, oh,

777
00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:36,279
Speaker 1: rock is important because you can make an opera out

778
00:45:36,280 --> 00:45:40,160
Speaker 1: of it. Um, you know, E l O was a

779
00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:43,960
Speaker 1: bunch of kind of Beatles rip off ideas. Plus let's

780
00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:46,719
Speaker 1: added a full orchestra, you know, to make it seem

781
00:45:46,760 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 1: more serious. So I do think, um, the Beatles, because

782
00:45:53,719 --> 00:45:56,920
Speaker 1: they were just far and away the you know, the

783
00:45:56,960 --> 00:45:59,920
Speaker 1: Kings of em I like, they were just the at

784
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:04,960
Speaker 1: so superstar status. Anything they did legitimize any practice that

785
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:06,840
Speaker 1: they did. And that is one of the benefits of

786
00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:09,640
Speaker 1: high status is any strange thing you do then suddenly

787
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:13,520
Speaker 1: becomes not strange, whereas if the small faces do it,

788
00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:23,560
Speaker 1: it just doesn't take on that same cachet. Well, that's

789
00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:25,759
Speaker 1: another point in your book that if you're at the

790
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:29,279
Speaker 1: very top, to signal that you have the status is

791
00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:33,480
Speaker 1: to break convention by doing whatever you want. Let's say,

792
00:46:33,520 --> 00:46:36,080
Speaker 1: if you're a billionaire and you show up at the

793
00:46:36,120 --> 00:46:43,040
Speaker 1: black tie event and some tidied outfit people might say, well,

794
00:46:43,080 --> 00:46:48,720
Speaker 1: maybe he's onto something, maybe he's breaking convention, and uh

795
00:46:49,360 --> 00:46:53,719
Speaker 1: so tell us about the people at the top status level,

796
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:58,319
Speaker 1: which was all the beatles about feeling free, that other

797
00:46:58,360 --> 00:47:02,360
Speaker 1: people envious the every their freedom and how it changes convention.

798
00:47:03,880 --> 00:47:06,239
Speaker 1: So one of the benefits as you move up, and

799
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:10,280
Speaker 1: again it's good to remember that your status position comes

800
00:47:10,280 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 1: with more and more benefits the more you move up.

801
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:14,400
Speaker 1: And one of the benefits you get his difference. And

802
00:47:14,520 --> 00:47:18,000
Speaker 1: you think about if you're a boss, you can put

803
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:20,960
Speaker 1: your feet up on the desk and your subordinates come

804
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:22,600
Speaker 1: in and they have to deal with it. The subordinates

805
00:47:22,640 --> 00:47:24,759
Speaker 1: can't put their feet on their desk when you walk in,

806
00:47:25,239 --> 00:47:30,359
Speaker 1: So you get deference. Two, behave the way you want.

807
00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:33,399
Speaker 1: At the same time, as you move up, you've got

808
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:37,240
Speaker 1: to demarcate yourself from people lower on the status hierarchy,

809
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:39,239
Speaker 1: and which means you have to do things differently. So

810
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:42,480
Speaker 1: you both have the power and the right to break convention,

811
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:46,160
Speaker 1: but you also have the responsibility to break convention in

812
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: order to show that you're different. And so you know,

813
00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:52,239
Speaker 1: if you show up at a black tie event in

814
00:47:52,320 --> 00:47:57,959
Speaker 1: a loony tunes Tasmanian Devil, Cumberbun and your Elon Musk.

815
00:47:58,200 --> 00:47:59,880
Speaker 1: People would just think it's a joke or they'll have

816
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:02,080
Speaker 1: fun with it. But you'r Elon Musk, and your status

817
00:48:02,120 --> 00:48:05,799
Speaker 1: is not damaged. If you're somebody who almost didn't get

818
00:48:05,800 --> 00:48:08,360
Speaker 1: invited and you show up that way, it's quite like

819
00:48:08,520 --> 00:48:12,200
Speaker 1: you won't be invited back, and so that deference becomes

820
00:48:12,239 --> 00:48:15,600
Speaker 1: a power. But then also if everybody's talking about the

821
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:18,400
Speaker 1: outrageous thing that Elon Musk war, then that only adds

822
00:48:18,440 --> 00:48:21,239
Speaker 1: to his mystique and makes him more iconic. So, you know,

823
00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:23,640
Speaker 1: going back to the Beatles again, I do think they

824
00:48:23,640 --> 00:48:27,279
Speaker 1: were quite maybe it was unconscious and maybe it was

825
00:48:27,280 --> 00:48:30,280
Speaker 1: conscious and many times, but they were quite sensitive about

826
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:32,680
Speaker 1: doing things that they had already done before and that

827
00:48:32,800 --> 00:48:36,279
Speaker 1: other people were doing. And the fact that you know,

828
00:48:36,320 --> 00:48:40,160
Speaker 1: Sergeant Peppers comes out, everyone else then starts making psychedelic records. Well,

829
00:48:40,160 --> 00:48:42,239
Speaker 1: they didn't really want to go back to making psychedelic

830
00:48:42,280 --> 00:48:45,319
Speaker 1: records because you know, it was just a trend to

831
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:47,160
Speaker 1: that point and they would have been repeating themselves. So

832
00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:49,520
Speaker 1: they go, you know, one eight and do the White Album,

833
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:51,839
Speaker 1: which is you know, going back to the root their

834
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:55,680
Speaker 1: their roots and and roots music in general. So you

835
00:48:55,719 --> 00:48:58,160
Speaker 1: know they had the right to make those changes. But

836
00:48:58,280 --> 00:49:00,719
Speaker 1: I think they were also quite sensitive about if we

837
00:49:00,760 --> 00:49:04,239
Speaker 1: make another psychedelic record, we're just gonna be another one

838
00:49:04,280 --> 00:49:07,640
Speaker 1: of these middling bands that makes psychedelic records. Well, needless say,

839
00:49:08,120 --> 00:49:10,160
Speaker 1: two members of the Beatles are dead, they're not going

840
00:49:10,239 --> 00:49:14,120
Speaker 1: to reform. But the so called dinosaurs who still exist,

841
00:49:14,760 --> 00:49:20,520
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney, uh, the Stones, the who they go out

842
00:49:20,640 --> 00:49:27,000
Speaker 1: and play relatively faithful versions of their hits. Bob Dylan

843
00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:33,560
Speaker 1: starting thirties, around thirty years ago, he started totally redoing

844
00:49:33,600 --> 00:49:36,560
Speaker 1: his hits such that I remember going literally sitting in

845
00:49:36,560 --> 00:49:42,440
Speaker 1: the front row and having no idea what the song was. Okay,

846
00:49:42,480 --> 00:49:45,880
Speaker 1: and this is, if anything, he's pushed the envelope further.

847
00:49:46,640 --> 00:49:49,000
Speaker 1: So what do I say? I say, I have to

848
00:49:49,120 --> 00:49:53,200
Speaker 1: give this guy credit for pushing the envelope, but I

849
00:49:53,239 --> 00:49:56,600
Speaker 1: don't want to go so is he gaining status or

850
00:49:56,640 --> 00:49:59,719
Speaker 1: losing status? And then, you know, and no other time

851
00:49:59,760 --> 00:50:02,840
Speaker 1: thinking about their people saying how greed he is and

852
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:05,399
Speaker 1: how great these shows are. And I'm saying and I've

853
00:50:05,400 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 1: seen it and I don't get it at all, But

854
00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:10,680
Speaker 1: are they doing that for status, and of course the

855
00:50:10,719 --> 00:50:13,880
Speaker 1: other factor these people rage They're not gonna live forever,

856
00:50:13,960 --> 00:50:17,200
Speaker 1: so people want to go for the last go round.

857
00:50:17,920 --> 00:50:20,360
Speaker 1: But what is going on with Dylan as opposed to

858
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:26,080
Speaker 1: the other old acts. When you achieve success as an artist,

859
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:28,440
Speaker 1: you have a choice, which is either to repeat yourself

860
00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:32,799
Speaker 1: forever and cash in because people will just want the

861
00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:36,560
Speaker 1: thing you've done before, or to keep breaking your own forms.

862
00:50:36,600 --> 00:50:40,000
Speaker 1: So if your inventions become conventional, and you're an artist

863
00:50:40,560 --> 00:50:43,760
Speaker 1: who really believes in breaking convention, then you have this dilemma,

864
00:50:43,760 --> 00:50:46,680
Speaker 1: should I break my own conventions or not? And most

865
00:50:46,760 --> 00:50:50,560
Speaker 1: artists for financial reasons or they only had one invention

866
00:50:50,640 --> 00:50:54,239
Speaker 1: in them basically stop and just repeat themselves forever. I

867
00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:56,680
Speaker 1: think Dylan is quite interesting and fits into more of

868
00:50:56,680 --> 00:50:58,839
Speaker 1: a model of Eric Satti or you know, all these

869
00:50:59,160 --> 00:51:03,440
Speaker 1: past artistic geniuses of someone who as soon as they

870
00:51:03,480 --> 00:51:06,239
Speaker 1: do something, hates it and moves forward. And you see

871
00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:08,239
Speaker 1: that throughout his career and and you know, I was

872
00:51:08,239 --> 00:51:10,080
Speaker 1: just talking about the Beatles being like this, but Dylan's

873
00:51:10,080 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 1: even more so, which is um does folk than everybody

874
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:16,360
Speaker 1: that's folks. Okay, I'm doing folk, I'm doing rock, and

875
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:19,480
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make everybody angry. Then everyone's doing that, and uh,

876
00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:21,839
Speaker 1: you know disappears, and you know, at some point he's

877
00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:24,960
Speaker 1: making gospel records, are becoming born again Christian or whatever.

878
00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:27,560
Speaker 1: So he is always on the edge of trying to

879
00:51:27,600 --> 00:51:32,080
Speaker 1: break the conventions that he himself sets. And um, he

880
00:51:32,200 --> 00:51:34,560
Speaker 1: is Dylan. He's got the status to pull that off.

881
00:51:34,680 --> 00:51:38,520
Speaker 1: Whereas if you go see I don't know, Bad Company

882
00:51:38,600 --> 00:51:40,560
Speaker 1: or some some you know band that had one hit

883
00:51:41,080 --> 00:51:44,120
Speaker 1: in the seventies, everyone's there to see the hit. They're

884
00:51:44,160 --> 00:51:46,160
Speaker 1: not there to see you experiment. You don't quite have

885
00:51:46,239 --> 00:51:50,120
Speaker 1: that status. Um, there's the there's that joke on The

886
00:51:50,160 --> 00:51:55,120
Speaker 1: Simpsons where uh, Homer goes to see Bachman Turner Overdrive

887
00:51:55,680 --> 00:51:58,040
Speaker 1: and they're like, let's play some new materials, like get

888
00:51:58,160 --> 00:52:00,799
Speaker 1: play taking care of Business, and then they start playing it.

889
00:52:00,800 --> 00:52:02,640
Speaker 1: It's like get to the chorus and then they start

890
00:52:02,680 --> 00:52:04,640
Speaker 1: playing the chorus. He says, get to work and working

891
00:52:04,719 --> 00:52:07,040
Speaker 1: over time, you know. And so you know, that's what

892
00:52:07,080 --> 00:52:09,680
Speaker 1: your audience wants. They just want the double encore of

893
00:52:10,520 --> 00:52:13,439
Speaker 1: taking care of business. Then that's what you provide. That's

894
00:52:13,600 --> 00:52:17,080
Speaker 1: that's at that point, it's just commerse. You're really outside

895
00:52:17,120 --> 00:52:19,239
Speaker 1: of the realm of art. But you know, kudos to

896
00:52:19,280 --> 00:52:22,399
Speaker 1: Dylan for trying to keep it artistic after all these years. Well,

897
00:52:22,440 --> 00:52:27,040
Speaker 1: as I say, intellectually fantastic, but I'm experienced it enough

898
00:52:27,080 --> 00:52:31,120
Speaker 1: to know it's not something palatable. So the people who

899
00:52:31,160 --> 00:52:34,600
Speaker 1: are going, and they're going again and again, is that

900
00:52:35,200 --> 00:52:38,719
Speaker 1: status why they're going? And to tell you, well, you

901
00:52:38,800 --> 00:52:42,680
Speaker 1: just don't get it. I can't speak for every person,

902
00:52:42,760 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 1: but they're Dylan fans who think you can't do wrong.

903
00:52:46,080 --> 00:52:49,280
Speaker 1: And I mean again, that's that's Dylan status. Not everybody

904
00:52:49,280 --> 00:52:52,879
Speaker 1: has that. Okay, let's talk about the modern era, the

905
00:52:52,920 --> 00:52:55,759
Speaker 1: Internet era. Let's just focus on this century or they'll

906
00:52:55,760 --> 00:52:58,440
Speaker 1: really start to get traction in the last century. But

907
00:52:58,480 --> 00:53:00,920
Speaker 1: it was in this century we you know, high speed

908
00:53:00,960 --> 00:53:05,040
Speaker 1: connections and things really started to develop. So prior to

909
00:53:05,080 --> 00:53:09,440
Speaker 1: the year. Staying with music, if you wrote a great song,

910
00:53:10,480 --> 00:53:14,120
Speaker 1: it would rise to the surface. Now there's so much

911
00:53:14,160 --> 00:53:17,319
Speaker 1: in the channel. You can write a great song and

912
00:53:17,400 --> 00:53:21,799
Speaker 1: it without either luck or marketing, it goes nowhere. So

913
00:53:22,640 --> 00:53:26,719
Speaker 1: the other thing is in let's call it mainstream music.

914
00:53:26,800 --> 00:53:29,479
Speaker 1: Mainstream has such a bad connotation. But I'm gonna stay

915
00:53:29,520 --> 00:53:32,799
Speaker 1: with this, you know, because there's music made at home.

916
00:53:32,880 --> 00:53:36,320
Speaker 1: There's always been in there's music purveyed to the masses

917
00:53:36,680 --> 00:53:41,040
Speaker 1: with wanting to catch fire and have success. In that world,

918
00:53:41,239 --> 00:53:45,160
Speaker 1: every three or four years we had a new sound. Okay,

919
00:53:45,239 --> 00:53:49,760
Speaker 1: the hair bands were eliminated by the Seattle sound, and

920
00:53:50,000 --> 00:53:54,400
Speaker 1: I could go on. Before the last twenty years it

921
00:53:54,480 --> 00:53:57,359
Speaker 1: has been hip hop. We have not had a new

922
00:53:57,480 --> 00:54:02,160
Speaker 1: sound with any strength, with any dominant. Why is that?

923
00:54:03,440 --> 00:54:06,600
Speaker 1: Although I would argue that hip hop the sound has changed,

924
00:54:06,760 --> 00:54:09,719
Speaker 1: that the beat has changed, the beat there was in

925
00:54:09,719 --> 00:54:14,319
Speaker 1: the hip hop world has been pretty consistent about not

926
00:54:14,440 --> 00:54:17,600
Speaker 1: getting stuck too much into convention in the long run,

927
00:54:17,719 --> 00:54:20,040
Speaker 1: in the sense that you have beats that were drum machine,

928
00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:22,160
Speaker 1: then you had beats that were sampler, then you had

929
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:24,320
Speaker 1: some live beats, then you had a mix. And now

930
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:28,520
Speaker 1: most hip hop is using trapp or drill beats that

931
00:54:28,560 --> 00:54:31,280
Speaker 1: sound nothing like nineties hip hop. So hip hop itself

932
00:54:31,320 --> 00:54:33,160
Speaker 1: has had enough innovation that I think it keeps it

933
00:54:33,200 --> 00:54:38,320
Speaker 1: fresh and keeps it moving. The number of artists has changed, um,

934
00:54:38,360 --> 00:54:41,200
Speaker 1: so that that is why I think hip hop is

935
00:54:41,239 --> 00:54:46,000
Speaker 1: dominated itself. But you are right, which is that there

936
00:54:46,080 --> 00:54:49,040
Speaker 1: has not been something that kind of knocks hip hop

937
00:54:49,080 --> 00:54:54,200
Speaker 1: off the pedestal as being the main news form of sound. Now,

938
00:54:54,400 --> 00:54:58,000
Speaker 1: you could argue that throughout the twentieth century, black artists

939
00:54:58,960 --> 00:55:02,840
Speaker 1: were the innovators. White artists ripped them off, created the

940
00:55:02,880 --> 00:55:06,840
Speaker 1: more palatable version that sold, which only pushed black artists

941
00:55:06,840 --> 00:55:09,480
Speaker 1: to create new forms, which then were ripped off again.

942
00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:11,840
Speaker 1: And so you can think about rock and roll, R

943
00:55:11,880 --> 00:55:14,680
Speaker 1: and B to rock and roll, funk to disco, all

944
00:55:14,760 --> 00:55:19,480
Speaker 1: that um and you know, uh dick he did. She

945
00:55:19,480 --> 00:55:21,360
Speaker 1: wrote a book called sub Culture. His argument as the

946
00:55:21,400 --> 00:55:25,000
Speaker 1: punk itself was white kids who were into reggae, but

947
00:55:25,040 --> 00:55:28,319
Speaker 1: reggae got so into black nationalism and it could not

948
00:55:28,400 --> 00:55:30,680
Speaker 1: be done by a white artist. That they made punk

949
00:55:30,719 --> 00:55:34,319
Speaker 1: as a kind of their their own uh taking of

950
00:55:34,360 --> 00:55:36,880
Speaker 1: the spirit, but putting, putting in their own direction. And

951
00:55:36,960 --> 00:55:40,120
Speaker 1: so with the rise of hip hop and reggae, these

952
00:55:40,120 --> 00:55:43,120
Speaker 1: were both forms that white artists were more or less

953
00:55:43,120 --> 00:55:47,080
Speaker 1: excluded from. And eminem is a rare case. He's not

954
00:55:47,280 --> 00:55:50,000
Speaker 1: he's not the rule. And so black artists were able

955
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:54,160
Speaker 1: to control their sound and their genre better. It has

956
00:55:54,160 --> 00:55:57,040
Speaker 1: not been ripped off by white audiences to force them

957
00:55:57,080 --> 00:56:00,520
Speaker 1: to make something else. So so that six tests and

958
00:56:00,560 --> 00:56:06,120
Speaker 1: they're there control of it to Uh, at least an artistically,

959
00:56:06,239 --> 00:56:11,439
Speaker 1: I think is meant that, um, where there's innovation, it's

960
00:56:11,440 --> 00:56:13,960
Speaker 1: coming inside the hip hop world rather than outside of it,

961
00:56:14,040 --> 00:56:16,200
Speaker 1: So that that maybe is one explanation for hip hop

962
00:56:16,239 --> 00:56:19,959
Speaker 1: in general. Then there's just the broader question of why

963
00:56:20,040 --> 00:56:23,160
Speaker 1: is there such stagnancy in the artists themselves? Why are

964
00:56:23,200 --> 00:56:27,919
Speaker 1: you know we live in this world of incredible diversity,

965
00:56:28,200 --> 00:56:33,279
Speaker 1: an incredible ah ability for anyone to create something on

966
00:56:33,320 --> 00:56:36,239
Speaker 1: the computer, to put it, to distribute it, to get

967
00:56:36,239 --> 00:56:38,600
Speaker 1: it out there. Why is it that we're really focused

968
00:56:38,600 --> 00:56:41,640
Speaker 1: on this this set of artists that I almost call

969
00:56:41,840 --> 00:56:45,000
Speaker 1: like a monopoly artists. I mean, Beyonce is a monopoly

970
00:56:45,080 --> 00:56:47,160
Speaker 1: artist at this point in the sense of does anyone

971
00:56:47,200 --> 00:56:49,239
Speaker 1: believe that she can be dislodged from the position that

972
00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:51,759
Speaker 1: she's in. It's she's kind of too big to fail

973
00:56:51,800 --> 00:56:55,480
Speaker 1: at this point. So, um, how do you why is

974
00:56:55,520 --> 00:57:00,360
Speaker 1: it that these artists are not demoded and devo valu'd

975
00:57:00,440 --> 00:57:03,000
Speaker 1: first of all, so you don't have a new generation

976
00:57:03,040 --> 00:57:05,920
Speaker 1: of artists who are trying to take down Guns and

977
00:57:06,000 --> 00:57:08,080
Speaker 1: Roses the way Nirvana. Did you know, Guns and Roses

978
00:57:08,080 --> 00:57:11,160
Speaker 1: came to Nirvana and said open for us on our

979
00:57:11,200 --> 00:57:15,359
Speaker 1: tour and Kurt I think, you know, Kirk Cobain was

980
00:57:16,240 --> 00:57:19,400
Speaker 1: against some of the homophobic and racist things that Axel

981
00:57:19,480 --> 00:57:21,960
Speaker 1: Rose said or didn't like guns roses or whatever, but

982
00:57:22,040 --> 00:57:25,440
Speaker 1: rejected that and instead of grunge becoming kind of a

983
00:57:25,720 --> 00:57:29,040
Speaker 1: offshoot of heavy metal, just completely replaced heavy metal. So

984
00:57:29,080 --> 00:57:30,800
Speaker 1: you don't see that right now. You don't see people

985
00:57:30,840 --> 00:57:34,760
Speaker 1: coming out and saying these top artists, um need to

986
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:37,360
Speaker 1: get buried and we need to move forward from there.

987
00:57:37,760 --> 00:57:41,040
Speaker 1: The economics are such that you can be on the margins,

988
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:46,640
Speaker 1: make a really cool sound and have that sucked into

989
00:57:47,120 --> 00:57:51,240
Speaker 1: a Kanye Drake song, and then that's financially the best

990
00:57:51,320 --> 00:57:52,840
Speaker 1: thing for you to do and the way for you

991
00:57:52,880 --> 00:57:55,080
Speaker 1: to move forward, rather than to say I'm going to

992
00:57:55,160 --> 00:57:57,560
Speaker 1: take down Drake that you know, we're going to make

993
00:57:57,560 --> 00:58:01,640
Speaker 1: a sound that completely makes every Drake albums ridiculous and

994
00:58:02,360 --> 00:58:04,040
Speaker 1: we're going to do that instead, and then we're gonna

995
00:58:04,080 --> 00:58:06,360
Speaker 1: shift the whole market. And so everyone is kind of

996
00:58:06,360 --> 00:58:10,280
Speaker 1: working with the monopoly artists rather than trying to overtake them.

997
00:58:10,800 --> 00:58:12,840
Speaker 1: And maybe the economics are just that they have to

998
00:58:13,000 --> 00:58:16,080
Speaker 1: and maybe that the fact that the Internet has made

999
00:58:16,120 --> 00:58:18,280
Speaker 1: it so hard to break through that the only way

1000
00:58:18,360 --> 00:58:21,520
Speaker 1: is to wait for one of these giant stars to

1001
00:58:21,560 --> 00:58:24,080
Speaker 1: kind of anoint you and to go forward. But those

1002
00:58:24,160 --> 00:58:28,360
Speaker 1: dynamics are making things feel stagnant. So even if there's

1003
00:58:28,400 --> 00:58:31,800
Speaker 1: some marginal cool idea on the sideline, like you know,

1004
00:58:31,880 --> 00:58:35,840
Speaker 1: drill or something, and it gets sucked into the mainstream,

1005
00:58:36,080 --> 00:58:38,480
Speaker 1: it doesn't take over the mainstream. It's just it's used

1006
00:58:38,520 --> 00:58:41,680
Speaker 1: at a certain moment and then the mainstream moves on. Okay,

1007
00:58:41,760 --> 00:58:43,840
Speaker 1: in your book, you delineate how it used to be

1008
00:58:43,920 --> 00:58:46,680
Speaker 1: an art and how it's not that way today, and

1009
00:58:46,720 --> 00:58:49,160
Speaker 1: I'd like you to talk a little bit about that. Specifically,

1010
00:58:49,160 --> 00:58:54,240
Speaker 1: you would say, Okay, you have a creative class that

1011
00:58:54,480 --> 00:58:59,040
Speaker 1: might watch the Bear on television, would be following the

1012
00:58:59,040 --> 00:59:03,240
Speaker 1: new acts. They would go to the shows of the

1013
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:06,959
Speaker 1: new acts, and then the acts would grow because they

1014
00:59:06,960 --> 00:59:10,680
Speaker 1: would have status, other people want to emulate them, it's cool, etcetera.

1015
00:59:11,160 --> 00:59:20,160
Speaker 1: Whereas that really doesn't work anymore. Explain why. So it

1016
00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:24,800
Speaker 1: is not necessarily that the creative class always started every

1017
00:59:24,840 --> 00:59:28,240
Speaker 1: trend or that everything they liked became mainstream culture. There's

1018
00:59:28,240 --> 00:59:31,800
Speaker 1: certainly a lot of things that just stopped with the

1019
00:59:31,800 --> 00:59:36,520
Speaker 1: creative class or stopped with art, art school, kids. What

1020
00:59:36,720 --> 00:59:41,200
Speaker 1: has happened now is that it used to be that

1021
00:59:41,560 --> 00:59:43,720
Speaker 1: there's so few media channels, and those media channels were

1022
00:59:43,800 --> 00:59:47,040
Speaker 1: run by art school kids and creative class kids. So

1023
00:59:47,040 --> 00:59:49,680
Speaker 1: if you think about MTV and the eighties, these are

1024
00:59:49,760 --> 00:59:53,240
Speaker 1: probably a lot of n y U grads and they're

1025
00:59:53,280 --> 00:59:57,720
Speaker 1: personally into relatively underground or or indie things, and they're

1026
00:59:57,960 --> 01:00:01,240
Speaker 1: creating a whole network for young people across the country

1027
01:00:01,280 --> 01:00:03,000
Speaker 1: that's trying to pick up as many of those things

1028
01:00:03,000 --> 01:00:04,960
Speaker 1: as possible. So, yes, you have like head Banger's Ball,

1029
01:00:05,160 --> 01:00:07,480
Speaker 1: but it's you know, put it's like a heavy metal show,

1030
01:00:07,520 --> 01:00:10,600
Speaker 1: but it's put late at night so that normal people

1031
01:00:10,640 --> 01:00:12,600
Speaker 1: don't see it. But you know, you know MTV wraps.

1032
01:00:13,160 --> 01:00:15,280
Speaker 1: I think it was what Ted DeMier, one of the

1033
01:00:15,320 --> 01:00:18,520
Speaker 1: demmis you did that with five Freddie. You know, that

1034
01:00:18,640 --> 01:00:23,280
Speaker 1: was straight out of downtown arts appreciation of hip hop,

1035
01:00:23,760 --> 01:00:26,200
Speaker 1: and they put that on the air. Hip hop becomes

1036
01:00:26,200 --> 01:00:30,920
Speaker 1: this national phenomenon. But there's this real desire among the

1037
01:00:31,000 --> 01:00:33,840
Speaker 1: people who work there to take what they think is

1038
01:00:33,880 --> 01:00:35,800
Speaker 1: cool and kind of downtown New York and put it

1039
01:00:35,960 --> 01:00:38,440
Speaker 1: on TV and put it on and make it national.

1040
01:00:39,800 --> 01:00:42,960
Speaker 1: And today, not only are there too many media channels

1041
01:00:43,000 --> 01:00:46,080
Speaker 1: for one media channel to really do that. But there's

1042
01:00:46,160 --> 01:00:50,439
Speaker 1: also this omnivore culture in which people like high and low,

1043
01:00:50,480 --> 01:00:54,160
Speaker 1: they like mainstream in indie, and so the group of

1044
01:00:54,240 --> 01:00:57,800
Speaker 1: people who are the gatekeepers in a certain degree, I mean,

1045
01:00:57,840 --> 01:01:00,800
Speaker 1: maybe they're weaker gatekeepers, but still making the decisions on

1046
01:01:00,840 --> 01:01:04,400
Speaker 1: what to cover and what youth culture is going to

1047
01:01:04,400 --> 01:01:08,320
Speaker 1: to be and what people are going to see there.

1048
01:01:08,360 --> 01:01:12,760
Speaker 1: They are not necessarily able to number one, just only

1049
01:01:12,760 --> 01:01:15,160
Speaker 1: focus on indie culture because of the economics of it.

1050
01:01:15,400 --> 01:01:18,160
Speaker 1: But second is that there's some sort of principle where

1051
01:01:18,200 --> 01:01:21,040
Speaker 1: they just don't think they should focus on only the strange,

1052
01:01:21,240 --> 01:01:24,000
Speaker 1: marginal things. They need to review the big albums, they

1053
01:01:24,040 --> 01:01:26,800
Speaker 1: need to praise the big albums, they need to praise

1054
01:01:26,840 --> 01:01:29,240
Speaker 1: the big TV shows or talk about the big TV shows,

1055
01:01:29,720 --> 01:01:35,480
Speaker 1: and so you crowd out some of that space or

1056
01:01:35,520 --> 01:01:38,840
Speaker 1: some of that dialogue that used to go in some

1057
01:01:38,880 --> 01:01:40,680
Speaker 1: ways by it was a bias, but it was a

1058
01:01:40,680 --> 01:01:43,680
Speaker 1: bias towards the indie and the emerging and the underground,

1059
01:01:44,040 --> 01:01:45,760
Speaker 1: and that has been crowded out by the sense that

1060
01:01:45,760 --> 01:01:49,560
Speaker 1: we have to cover everything now. And so the creative

1061
01:01:49,600 --> 01:01:52,800
Speaker 1: class to use that term, or just people who are

1062
01:01:52,880 --> 01:01:55,480
Speaker 1: artistically minded did have a lot of power to shift

1063
01:01:55,520 --> 01:02:01,439
Speaker 1: taste towards their specific kind of strange, pisticated sounds or

1064
01:02:01,800 --> 01:02:05,840
Speaker 1: or ideas, and that group itself has taken a step

1065
01:02:05,840 --> 01:02:07,760
Speaker 1: back from that. So it's not you know, it wasn't

1066
01:02:07,800 --> 01:02:11,560
Speaker 1: necessary that mainstream consumers ever liked that that those things

1067
01:02:11,720 --> 01:02:14,280
Speaker 1: could they could just push it on mainstream consumers because

1068
01:02:14,320 --> 01:02:17,200
Speaker 1: they had the monopoly, And now they don't have the monopoly,

1069
01:02:17,280 --> 01:02:22,120
Speaker 1: and they themselves are not that interested in only being

1070
01:02:22,120 --> 01:02:27,200
Speaker 1: interested Sorry, they're not that interested only looking into things

1071
01:02:27,240 --> 01:02:29,840
Speaker 1: that are marginal. Because the other thing, too is there

1072
01:02:30,200 --> 01:02:32,400
Speaker 1: aren't things that are marginal the way that Downtown New

1073
01:02:32,480 --> 01:02:35,840
Speaker 1: York was. Uh, you know, you were in downtown New

1074
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:38,120
Speaker 1: York and there's some new wave band or no wave

1075
01:02:38,160 --> 01:02:40,360
Speaker 1: band or something that you were particularly interested in that

1076
01:02:40,400 --> 01:02:43,560
Speaker 1: you could see getting big because a major label just

1077
01:02:43,600 --> 01:02:45,560
Speaker 1: signed them or something. I think that whole that whole

1078
01:02:45,600 --> 01:02:48,840
Speaker 1: system is also gone. So there's not an obvious source

1079
01:02:49,000 --> 01:02:51,120
Speaker 1: for where you're gonna pick things up and bring them

1080
01:02:51,200 --> 01:02:54,080
Speaker 1: bring them along. What about the concept of poptimism. He

1081
01:02:54,240 --> 01:02:57,760
Speaker 1: used to be the critic in his black leather jacket

1082
01:02:57,880 --> 01:03:02,520
Speaker 1: jeans boots would say it sucks, but now it's reversed,

1083
01:03:02,560 --> 01:03:05,760
Speaker 1: all people saying, oh, the mainstream is great and you're

1084
01:03:05,800 --> 01:03:09,240
Speaker 1: just too harsh on it. M what's going on there?

1085
01:03:09,880 --> 01:03:13,080
Speaker 1: So I think the original incarnation of optimism was a

1086
01:03:13,160 --> 01:03:19,120
Speaker 1: really important corrective because that black leather jacket critic who

1087
01:03:19,160 --> 01:03:22,840
Speaker 1: thinks everything sucks unless you sound like the Stooges, that

1088
01:03:22,960 --> 01:03:26,080
Speaker 1: was not helpful. And the idea that sounding like the

1089
01:03:26,120 --> 01:03:30,080
Speaker 1: Stooges was somehow innovative in makes no sense. So the

1090
01:03:30,360 --> 01:03:36,080
Speaker 1: the original poptimism idea came out of trying to correct

1091
01:03:36,920 --> 01:03:39,560
Speaker 1: the over emphasis on saying the Strokes are the most

1092
01:03:39,560 --> 01:03:43,280
Speaker 1: innovative band in America, where you look at how Missy

1093
01:03:43,320 --> 01:03:46,200
Speaker 1: Elliott is producing all these mainstream are R and B hits,

1094
01:03:46,240 --> 01:03:49,080
Speaker 1: and they're just so much more interesting that they're bringing

1095
01:03:49,080 --> 01:03:51,880
Speaker 1: in all these new influences, And so that bias was

1096
01:03:51,920 --> 01:03:54,680
Speaker 1: blinding people. And so the original poptimism is great. It's

1097
01:03:54,720 --> 01:03:57,600
Speaker 1: just saying there can be innovation across the spectrum. It

1098
01:03:57,600 --> 01:03:59,960
Speaker 1: can be in a Christina Christina Aguilera song. It doesn't

1099
01:04:00,120 --> 01:04:03,680
Speaker 1: to only be um the recycling of these rock cliches.

1100
01:04:04,880 --> 01:04:07,880
Speaker 1: We've now moved into what I would call an ultra poptimism,

1101
01:04:07,920 --> 01:04:10,760
Speaker 1: which is to say, the more things are popular, the

1102
01:04:10,840 --> 01:04:13,600
Speaker 1: better they must be because they mean so many things

1103
01:04:13,760 --> 01:04:16,880
Speaker 1: to different people. And if you think about art simply

1104
01:04:17,080 --> 01:04:21,560
Speaker 1: as a vehicle for meaning that or a vehicle for entertainment.

1105
01:04:21,760 --> 01:04:25,080
Speaker 1: And if more people like Taylor Swift than another artist,

1106
01:04:25,160 --> 01:04:27,720
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift must be more important, then you've kind of

1107
01:04:28,040 --> 01:04:30,120
Speaker 1: lost one of the main points of art. If I

1108
01:04:30,160 --> 01:04:32,560
Speaker 1: go back to the thing I was saying earlier, which

1109
01:04:32,600 --> 01:04:35,360
Speaker 1: is invention, which is to take a convention and break it.

1110
01:04:35,840 --> 01:04:39,000
Speaker 1: And the original poptimism was saying, there is invention happening

1111
01:04:39,120 --> 01:04:42,080
Speaker 1: in pop and we shouldn't ignore it, where now it's

1112
01:04:42,120 --> 01:04:46,680
Speaker 1: more invention itself is pretension and we shouldn't. We don't

1113
01:04:46,680 --> 01:04:48,920
Speaker 1: really need to worry about that. What's most important is

1114
01:04:49,000 --> 01:04:51,440
Speaker 1: that Taylor Swift has lots of fans, and so she

1115
01:04:51,560 --> 01:04:54,680
Speaker 1: must be important, and we need to take Taylor Swift very,

1116
01:04:54,760 --> 01:04:58,520
Speaker 1: very seriously. Now, Taylor Swift could be innovative, and that

1117
01:04:58,560 --> 01:05:01,360
Speaker 1: could be where innovation comes from, but there isn't. There's

1118
01:05:01,400 --> 01:05:07,200
Speaker 1: an incredible deference paid to these monopoly artists because uh,

1119
01:05:07,240 --> 01:05:10,640
Speaker 1: they are popular, and it's seen that that popularity itself

1120
01:05:10,760 --> 01:05:12,920
Speaker 1: is some is a virtue in a way that I

1121
01:05:12,920 --> 01:05:15,720
Speaker 1: think for older critics that definitely was not true, and

1122
01:05:15,840 --> 01:05:22,240
Speaker 1: and maybe there was a bias against anything popular, that

1123
01:05:22,320 --> 01:05:25,440
Speaker 1: anything popular must be conventional and wrong. And I do

1124
01:05:25,480 --> 01:05:30,800
Speaker 1: think poptimism moved us out of that. But uh, it

1125
01:05:30,840 --> 01:05:33,120
Speaker 1: has gone too far. Not not the same critics, but

1126
01:05:33,160 --> 01:05:34,800
Speaker 1: I think that ethos has maybe gone too far with

1127
01:05:34,840 --> 01:05:38,160
Speaker 1: other people. Okay, you know we were talking earlier about

1128
01:05:38,160 --> 01:05:41,720
Speaker 1: social media as opposed to mainstream media. Let's use a

1129
01:05:41,800 --> 01:05:46,720
Speaker 1: case of Beyonce. She comes out with new work. It's

1130
01:05:46,800 --> 01:05:50,720
Speaker 1: like God delivering tablets in the mainstream media. She is

1131
01:05:50,800 --> 01:05:56,439
Speaker 1: everywhere the josianas. All this information is now visible. All

1132
01:05:56,480 --> 01:06:00,120
Speaker 1: the statistics are right there for anybody to see. If

1133
01:06:00,160 --> 01:06:02,520
Speaker 1: you look at the Spotify top fifty, they the album

1134
01:06:02,520 --> 01:06:09,080
Speaker 1: comes out, everybody's listening. But the album fell very very fast.

1135
01:06:10,000 --> 01:06:13,320
Speaker 1: One could argue it was a stiff So is this

1136
01:06:13,480 --> 01:06:18,680
Speaker 1: the disconnection between old and new? What's going on here?

1137
01:06:20,120 --> 01:06:22,600
Speaker 1: I saw this also with two other things, which is

1138
01:06:22,840 --> 01:06:27,040
Speaker 1: Fiona Apples Fetch the Bolt Cutters got a ten on Pitchfork,

1139
01:06:27,080 --> 01:06:29,280
Speaker 1: and it's a great album and I still listen to it.

1140
01:06:29,840 --> 01:06:32,480
Speaker 1: But within about a month I didn't hear anyone talk

1141
01:06:32,520 --> 01:06:34,800
Speaker 1: about that record at all, it just completely fallen off

1142
01:06:34,840 --> 01:06:36,400
Speaker 1: the map. And maybe that's I don't talk to the

1143
01:06:36,440 --> 01:06:39,680
Speaker 1: right people, but it did seem like there was a

1144
01:06:39,720 --> 01:06:41,760
Speaker 1: burst of activity and interest in it, and then it

1145
01:06:41,840 --> 01:06:45,720
Speaker 1: just faded out. And then with don'ta the Kanye West

1146
01:06:45,800 --> 01:06:51,360
Speaker 1: album that also it's Uh, there was more hype for

1147
01:06:51,480 --> 01:06:52,840
Speaker 1: it and more interest in it. And I looked at

1148
01:06:52,840 --> 01:06:55,080
Speaker 1: Google searches and there are more Google searches for it

1149
01:06:55,120 --> 01:06:57,440
Speaker 1: before it came out, and then the day it dropped,

1150
01:06:57,480 --> 01:06:58,880
Speaker 1: there was a big spike, and then no one ever

1151
01:06:58,880 --> 01:07:02,959
Speaker 1: talked about it again. So the media spectacle of these

1152
01:07:03,000 --> 01:07:07,360
Speaker 1: albums is quite powerful, but the sense that you're going

1153
01:07:07,400 --> 01:07:10,040
Speaker 1: to spend time with it and absorb it and love

1154
01:07:10,080 --> 01:07:12,120
Speaker 1: it and make it part of your identity seems to

1155
01:07:12,160 --> 01:07:14,880
Speaker 1: be gone. And and that is one of the things

1156
01:07:14,920 --> 01:07:18,720
Speaker 1: that is really hurting culture at the moment. And the

1157
01:07:18,760 --> 01:07:20,880
Speaker 1: way we thought about culture in the twentieth century is

1158
01:07:20,920 --> 01:07:23,960
Speaker 1: that there's lots of entertainment. Every day, there's something new,

1159
01:07:24,000 --> 01:07:27,040
Speaker 1: there's a new meme to follow, there's a new album

1160
01:07:27,120 --> 01:07:29,800
Speaker 1: that has dropped, or there's something there's a new you know,

1161
01:07:30,240 --> 01:07:34,120
Speaker 1: five thousand new TikTok videos to watch. But culture was

1162
01:07:34,200 --> 01:07:36,880
Speaker 1: not just entertainment. It wasn't just consumption. It was people

1163
01:07:38,600 --> 01:07:43,919
Speaker 1: taking a piece of art, a film or an album,

1164
01:07:43,920 --> 01:07:46,640
Speaker 1: consuming it, reconsuming it and making it part of their

1165
01:07:46,640 --> 01:07:51,160
Speaker 1: identity and telling other people about it, and creating friendships

1166
01:07:51,200 --> 01:07:55,120
Speaker 1: based on the appreciation of these things, and having a

1167
01:07:55,160 --> 01:07:59,640
Speaker 1: group whose entire uh identity is based in the appreciation

1168
01:07:59,640 --> 01:08:03,360
Speaker 1: of these things. And so what you're seeing is one

1169
01:08:03,400 --> 01:08:06,680
Speaker 1: time consumption and then everyone moving on and not making

1170
01:08:06,680 --> 01:08:09,320
Speaker 1: it part of their identities. And this is this is

1171
01:08:09,360 --> 01:08:12,960
Speaker 1: the difference between viral culture and you know, twentieth century

1172
01:08:12,960 --> 01:08:15,080
Speaker 1: culture is the viral culture moves so fast that you

1173
01:08:15,200 --> 01:08:18,400
Speaker 1: have this big spurt and then everyone moves on. Um,

1174
01:08:18,479 --> 01:08:23,000
Speaker 1: there was this kind of meme I don't know, three

1175
01:08:23,040 --> 01:08:25,200
Speaker 1: weeks ago or something or a month ago about Amtrak

1176
01:08:25,320 --> 01:08:28,479
Speaker 1: just wrote trains, and so then everyone was just writing

1177
01:08:28,479 --> 01:08:31,160
Speaker 1: one word and literally twenty four hours later, if you

1178
01:08:31,200 --> 01:08:33,800
Speaker 1: made the same joke, it was just lame like that, Yeah,

1179
01:08:33,840 --> 01:08:36,519
Speaker 1: that was yesterday. And the speed of which that happens

1180
01:08:37,160 --> 01:08:40,000
Speaker 1: means these things can't carry on and they can't really

1181
01:08:40,000 --> 01:08:43,360
Speaker 1: be the way we think about culture. So culture is

1182
01:08:43,400 --> 01:08:46,599
Speaker 1: moving so fast it's kind of not fulfilling one of

1183
01:08:46,640 --> 01:08:50,599
Speaker 1: its basic needs or one of the things we looked

1184
01:08:50,640 --> 01:08:53,280
Speaker 1: to it for in the twentieth century, which is identity formation.

1185
01:08:53,760 --> 01:08:56,120
Speaker 1: And so if people were listening to Beyonce and say

1186
01:08:56,160 --> 01:08:57,760
Speaker 1: that was nice and not going back to it and

1187
01:08:57,800 --> 01:09:01,120
Speaker 1: not making her work part of the identity, then it's

1188
01:09:01,200 --> 01:09:03,880
Speaker 1: lost a huge amount of social value that he used

1189
01:09:03,880 --> 01:09:09,080
Speaker 1: to have. Well, let's stay on that topic. Uh Taylor Swift,

1190
01:09:09,680 --> 01:09:13,320
Speaker 1: and this is a very dicey subject for me. Um

1191
01:09:13,560 --> 01:09:17,160
Speaker 1: she appeared on the Grammys and saying unbelievably off key

1192
01:09:18,920 --> 01:09:22,040
Speaker 1: prior to Taylor Swift, if you did that, killed your

1193
01:09:22,080 --> 01:09:25,400
Speaker 1: career overnight. Certainly in the history of rock, there are

1194
01:09:25,400 --> 01:09:28,880
Speaker 1: a number of accident fell all the way to the bottom.

1195
01:09:28,920 --> 01:09:32,840
Speaker 1: Based on one act. Uh Billy Squire put out a

1196
01:09:32,920 --> 01:09:36,479
Speaker 1: video where he's dancing in pink on bent literally killed

1197
01:09:36,520 --> 01:09:40,360
Speaker 1: his career. Peter Frampton played to his younger demo with

1198
01:09:40,479 --> 01:09:43,600
Speaker 1: am and you couldn't sell records for years, maybe not

1199
01:09:43,720 --> 01:09:46,920
Speaker 1: even since, although he put out some good records. But

1200
01:09:47,080 --> 01:09:52,120
Speaker 1: you have somebody like Taylor Swift does this in front

1201
01:09:52,160 --> 01:09:56,679
Speaker 1: of worldwide audience, there's no effect. Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga

1202
01:09:56,760 --> 01:10:00,960
Speaker 1: had a number of hits, then had one stiff after another.

1203
01:10:01,800 --> 01:10:05,759
Speaker 1: She was a media darling. She's singing with Tony Bennett,

1204
01:10:05,800 --> 01:10:08,920
Speaker 1: She's doing all this stuff. But in the record world,

1205
01:10:09,520 --> 01:10:14,160
Speaker 1: no success, certainly no hits. Ultimately, she had another hit

1206
01:10:14,280 --> 01:10:18,639
Speaker 1: with Stars Born, but she didn't lose status whatsoever. People

1207
01:10:18,680 --> 01:10:21,360
Speaker 1: continue to go to her shows in the same number.

1208
01:10:21,600 --> 01:10:26,479
Speaker 1: This is something that never happened previously. They are too

1209
01:10:26,479 --> 01:10:30,040
Speaker 1: big to fail, is the conclusion I would take from it.

1210
01:10:30,080 --> 01:10:33,680
Speaker 1: But it's it's obviously because it transcends music. And you know,

1211
01:10:33,720 --> 01:10:38,480
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift, her fans, she can't do wrong. The Pitchfork

1212
01:10:38,600 --> 01:10:42,599
Speaker 1: writer who gave her album a mediocre, not even a mediocre.

1213
01:10:42,680 --> 01:10:45,920
Speaker 1: She got a good review in Pitchfork and it wasn't great,

1214
01:10:46,080 --> 01:10:48,799
Speaker 1: and so the fans all, you know, sent death threats

1215
01:10:48,800 --> 01:10:52,240
Speaker 1: to the writer. So these fan communities are huge. They're

1216
01:10:52,280 --> 01:10:57,200
Speaker 1: never going to you know, abandoned their stars because of

1217
01:10:57,240 --> 01:11:01,160
Speaker 1: one misstep. And then the celebrity compl ux is not

1218
01:11:01,200 --> 01:11:05,120
Speaker 1: going to abandon these people because they're they're gold and

1219
01:11:05,160 --> 01:11:08,360
Speaker 1: they're there. They make a lot of money from being celebrities.

1220
01:11:08,360 --> 01:11:10,080
Speaker 1: So once you get someone up there, you're not going

1221
01:11:10,120 --> 01:11:13,920
Speaker 1: to necessarily try to take them down. So that's a

1222
01:11:13,920 --> 01:11:15,200
Speaker 1: lot of it, I mean a lot of it's just

1223
01:11:15,280 --> 01:11:17,880
Speaker 1: that it's moved out of the realm of music. People

1224
01:11:17,880 --> 01:11:22,759
Speaker 1: are not looking at these people as contingent music stars

1225
01:11:22,800 --> 01:11:25,639
Speaker 1: who I like as long as they're providing the music

1226
01:11:25,680 --> 01:11:29,800
Speaker 1: that I like. They're being treated like royalty and and

1227
01:11:30,240 --> 01:11:33,240
Speaker 1: you know, celebrities and almost utility is like, you know,

1228
01:11:33,479 --> 01:11:35,240
Speaker 1: what would what would it be like to live in

1229
01:11:35,240 --> 01:11:37,599
Speaker 1: a world without Lady Gaga? Nobody can imagine it, So

1230
01:11:37,680 --> 01:11:39,800
Speaker 1: everyone just keeps him moving forward no matter what she does.

1231
01:11:47,000 --> 01:11:52,840
Speaker 1: Let's talked about moving pictures, visual entertainment. So we have

1232
01:11:52,880 --> 01:11:57,960
Speaker 1: a conventional cable world, conventional movie world. Netflix moves to

1233
01:11:58,080 --> 01:12:02,879
Speaker 1: streaming their streaming old sit arms. They air House of Cards.

1234
01:12:04,360 --> 01:12:07,000
Speaker 1: It's just the Sopranos. A little bit different for HBO

1235
01:12:07,000 --> 01:12:10,719
Speaker 1: because there were some shows before that. They air House

1236
01:12:10,840 --> 01:12:16,200
Speaker 1: of Cards. The whole paradigm shifts. He made for an

1237
01:12:16,240 --> 01:12:22,280
Speaker 1: adult audience, intelligent, not talking down to the audience. They

1238
01:12:22,360 --> 01:12:28,479
Speaker 1: continue to make work like this. Then the movie business,

1239
01:12:28,720 --> 01:12:30,400
Speaker 1: there's a few things to go on the movie business.

1240
01:12:30,439 --> 01:12:35,559
Speaker 1: They were playing for worldwide hits, etcetera. But suddenly that

1241
01:12:35,640 --> 01:12:39,720
Speaker 1: type of work becomes streaming television. It's not movies, and

1242
01:12:39,840 --> 01:12:46,400
Speaker 1: movies are these tent bowl hopeful blockbusters based on superhero characters.

1243
01:12:46,800 --> 01:12:52,000
Speaker 1: Now the latest thing is these streaming companies are cutting

1244
01:12:52,040 --> 01:12:55,559
Speaker 1: off the edges, even though they were built by these edges.

1245
01:12:56,479 --> 01:13:00,600
Speaker 1: And of course it's the completely left field that resonate,

1246
01:13:02,120 --> 01:13:06,680
Speaker 1: the Korean TV hits being the number one example of that.

1247
01:13:06,760 --> 01:13:13,400
Speaker 1: So what is happening now? So obviously, these platforms start

1248
01:13:14,520 --> 01:13:17,840
Speaker 1: with a relatively sophisticated consumer, because who's gonna, you know,

1249
01:13:18,160 --> 01:13:23,040
Speaker 1: purchase a Netflix description so early, and so you start

1250
01:13:23,120 --> 01:13:25,400
Speaker 1: with some tastes that are going to appeal to adults

1251
01:13:25,400 --> 01:13:29,360
Speaker 1: and cetificate sophisticated adults and people with education and in

1252
01:13:29,400 --> 01:13:32,599
Speaker 1: the professional creative classes. At some point you have to

1253
01:13:32,800 --> 01:13:36,320
Speaker 1: start making programming that's gonna appeal to everybody, and it's

1254
01:13:36,320 --> 01:13:39,439
Speaker 1: going to be less challenging. At the same time, you know,

1255
01:13:39,479 --> 01:13:44,040
Speaker 1: Netflix in particular has such an incredibly gigantic catalog, almost

1256
01:13:44,120 --> 01:13:47,200
Speaker 1: you know, too large sometimes where I feel like I

1257
01:13:47,240 --> 01:13:48,960
Speaker 1: spend a night just looking at what to watch on

1258
01:13:48,960 --> 01:13:53,479
Speaker 1: Netflix rather than actually watching anything on Netflix. But uh so,

1259
01:13:53,520 --> 01:13:56,559
Speaker 1: then they also have all these Korean dramas, and what's

1260
01:13:56,600 --> 01:14:02,240
Speaker 1: interesting is the degree in which these ramas were made

1261
01:14:02,280 --> 01:14:04,720
Speaker 1: for an audience that was not I mean, they were

1262
01:14:04,760 --> 01:14:08,720
Speaker 1: not made for Netflix's gigantic American audience as far as

1263
01:14:08,760 --> 01:14:10,799
Speaker 1: I know, they were just made for a Korean audience.

1264
01:14:10,800 --> 01:14:13,920
Speaker 1: But there's something actually innovative and interesting about them, even

1265
01:14:13,960 --> 01:14:16,559
Speaker 1: even if they're they're conventional for Korea, those conventions are

1266
01:14:16,600 --> 01:14:19,920
Speaker 1: not known to us, and we enjoy it. And you know,

1267
01:14:20,040 --> 01:14:22,519
Speaker 1: if you go back to Gotenham Style too. I saw

1268
01:14:22,600 --> 01:14:24,800
Speaker 1: the video for Gottenam Style recently. I hadn't seen it

1269
01:14:24,800 --> 01:14:27,719
Speaker 1: in a while, and I was just struck by It's

1270
01:14:27,840 --> 01:14:30,880
Speaker 1: so many inside jokes that you only know if you

1271
01:14:30,920 --> 01:14:32,840
Speaker 1: live in Korea, and yet that was such a big

1272
01:14:32,880 --> 01:14:35,519
Speaker 1: song because there was something about it that just felt

1273
01:14:35,560 --> 01:14:39,759
Speaker 1: fresh because we're not exposed to so many of those things,

1274
01:14:40,320 --> 01:14:42,559
Speaker 1: and even if we don't get at all, it just

1275
01:14:42,600 --> 01:14:46,759
Speaker 1: feels like something new. And so if your Choices are

1276
01:14:47,200 --> 01:14:50,280
Speaker 1: another reality show that follows the exact same conventions of

1277
01:14:50,280 --> 01:14:53,639
Speaker 1: every reality show just with a twist or this new

1278
01:14:53,680 --> 01:14:57,080
Speaker 1: thing that feels, uh, it's just like something you've never

1279
01:14:57,080 --> 01:15:01,839
Speaker 1: seen before, then you know people people still do want novelty,

1280
01:15:02,120 --> 01:15:04,840
Speaker 1: and that that that can't be denied. I think that

1281
01:15:04,920 --> 01:15:09,280
Speaker 1: they just want novelty that is not too not too different,

1282
01:15:09,360 --> 01:15:12,840
Speaker 1: not to pretends not to um difficult. I mean, these

1283
01:15:12,840 --> 01:15:16,160
Speaker 1: creative shows are often very melodramatic. It's not like they're

1284
01:15:16,600 --> 01:15:19,439
Speaker 1: you know, some higher form of avant garde art. But

1285
01:15:19,479 --> 01:15:23,479
Speaker 1: they're just different enough that people are willing to watch them.

1286
01:15:23,479 --> 01:15:25,200
Speaker 1: And then if they hear somebody say it's good, I'm

1287
01:15:25,200 --> 01:15:27,759
Speaker 1: sure that word of mouth has been really really important

1288
01:15:27,760 --> 01:15:30,599
Speaker 1: for them as well. Um, but it's interesting. It's interesting

1289
01:15:30,680 --> 01:15:33,280
Speaker 1: lesson that Netflix has tried to make things on the

1290
01:15:33,360 --> 01:15:36,519
Speaker 1: high end is trying to make things very some you know,

1291
01:15:36,600 --> 01:15:40,719
Speaker 1: really unintelligent programs as well, and then it's maybe stuff

1292
01:15:40,720 --> 01:15:43,360
Speaker 1: in the middle that's doing the best. Let's talk about

1293
01:15:43,360 --> 01:15:46,200
Speaker 1: this stagnation. Let me give you an approach it from

1294
01:15:46,240 --> 01:15:51,719
Speaker 1: a different angle. I am someone with musical talent. Used

1295
01:15:51,760 --> 01:15:57,640
Speaker 1: to be sixties and seventies. You have these acts predicated

1296
01:15:57,680 --> 01:16:01,240
Speaker 1: on something completely different. They this is what we're gonna do.

1297
01:16:01,400 --> 01:16:04,400
Speaker 1: We're gonna stick with it until it broke through. Great

1298
01:16:04,439 --> 01:16:09,000
Speaker 1: example being Roxy Music Queen not being a bad example either.

1299
01:16:09,439 --> 01:16:12,360
Speaker 1: They stuck it out, they stuck to their guns and

1300
01:16:12,479 --> 01:16:18,360
Speaker 1: it worked. Whereas today someone might say that's not gonna

1301
01:16:18,400 --> 01:16:20,080
Speaker 1: work at all. I just have to imitate what other

1302
01:16:20,120 --> 01:16:22,679
Speaker 1: people are doing. What advice would you have for those people.

1303
01:16:29,160 --> 01:16:32,639
Speaker 1: It does seem bleak if you're going to do something

1304
01:16:33,880 --> 01:16:37,479
Speaker 1: that is not immediately understood, and it does just seem

1305
01:16:37,560 --> 01:16:41,040
Speaker 1: like consumers of media have less patience than they used to.

1306
01:16:41,680 --> 01:16:46,960
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about as a kid, I saw

1307
01:16:47,240 --> 01:16:50,320
Speaker 1: Here Comes Your Man by the Pixies on MTV. I

1308
01:16:50,320 --> 01:16:52,559
Speaker 1: told my brother to get the record. He's older than me,

1309
01:16:53,320 --> 01:16:55,519
Speaker 1: and then and that record do a little is weird.

1310
01:16:55,560 --> 01:16:57,200
Speaker 1: I mean, as a nine year old or ten year old,

1311
01:16:57,200 --> 01:16:59,800
Speaker 1: that was a really strange record. I did not understand it.

1312
01:17:00,160 --> 01:17:02,559
Speaker 1: But after hearing at once and saying that was really strange,

1313
01:17:02,600 --> 01:17:04,679
Speaker 1: I don't understand it. I just listen to it again

1314
01:17:05,280 --> 01:17:08,479
Speaker 1: and listen to it again, and probably the tenth time

1315
01:17:08,479 --> 01:17:10,640
Speaker 1: did not understand that record and still listen to it.

1316
01:17:11,080 --> 01:17:14,120
Speaker 1: I just can't imagine anyone these days being surrounded by

1317
01:17:14,160 --> 01:17:16,880
Speaker 1: so many things they immediately understand that they're going to

1318
01:17:16,960 --> 01:17:20,000
Speaker 1: keep going back to something they don't, and nothing has

1319
01:17:20,000 --> 01:17:23,280
Speaker 1: the legitimacy to force you also to say you have

1320
01:17:23,320 --> 01:17:24,720
Speaker 1: to listen to this even if you don't get it

1321
01:17:24,800 --> 01:17:28,360
Speaker 1: the first time. UM. Maybe The Wire. I I felt

1322
01:17:28,360 --> 01:17:30,880
Speaker 1: like The Wire the first couple episodes were quite slow,

1323
01:17:30,960 --> 01:17:32,479
Speaker 1: and you had to really push through and then I

1324
01:17:32,520 --> 01:17:34,479
Speaker 1: got good. And but you had a million people telling

1325
01:17:34,520 --> 01:17:36,360
Speaker 1: you got to believe that The Wire is the greatest

1326
01:17:36,400 --> 01:17:39,200
Speaker 1: television show of all time. Keep going. And so for

1327
01:17:39,280 --> 01:17:41,519
Speaker 1: a new band, if you don't have a bunch of

1328
01:17:41,560 --> 01:17:45,040
Speaker 1: critics telling listeners, you may not get roxy music, but

1329
01:17:45,160 --> 01:17:47,479
Speaker 1: keep listening because you're gonna get it at some point.

1330
01:17:48,280 --> 01:17:51,000
Speaker 1: And you have so many other distractions, and you have

1331
01:17:51,040 --> 01:17:55,799
Speaker 1: so many other other um options, and on Spotify it's literally,

1332
01:17:55,920 --> 01:17:58,559
Speaker 1: you know, a million albums or click away. I don't

1333
01:17:58,600 --> 01:18:02,080
Speaker 1: know how you keep going. Uh So, the only advice

1334
01:18:02,160 --> 01:18:03,800
Speaker 1: I would give somebody is, you know, you would have

1335
01:18:03,840 --> 01:18:06,559
Speaker 1: to find the community that really believes in that sound

1336
01:18:07,000 --> 01:18:09,880
Speaker 1: and then hope that that community grows and that community

1337
01:18:09,960 --> 01:18:17,280
Speaker 1: becomes influential on the rest of society. But it's really difficult.

1338
01:18:17,640 --> 01:18:21,880
Speaker 1: And uh we we had so much cultural progress in

1339
01:18:21,880 --> 01:18:25,680
Speaker 1: the twentieth century because people were patient, and there's just

1340
01:18:25,760 --> 01:18:27,960
Speaker 1: no structure at the moment that makes us more patient.

1341
01:18:28,160 --> 01:18:30,800
Speaker 1: And we all we're all have this kind of take

1342
01:18:31,200 --> 01:18:35,599
Speaker 1: a step back from the Internet to regain our attention spans.

1343
01:18:36,280 --> 01:18:38,720
Speaker 1: And I've heard from so many people that when they

1344
01:18:38,720 --> 01:18:40,439
Speaker 1: watch a movie, they just look at the clock and

1345
01:18:40,479 --> 01:18:44,599
Speaker 1: say how many minutes left? Uh um. And I love

1346
01:18:44,640 --> 01:18:46,800
Speaker 1: reading books because it forces me to, you know, take

1347
01:18:46,840 --> 01:18:49,240
Speaker 1: a step back and and really push through on something.

1348
01:18:49,680 --> 01:18:53,920
Speaker 1: But it it takes discipline, and I don't remember having

1349
01:18:53,920 --> 01:18:56,360
Speaker 1: to have a sense of discipline as a nine year

1350
01:18:56,360 --> 01:19:00,360
Speaker 1: old listening to a bunch of weird records I didn't understand. Okay,

1351
01:19:00,520 --> 01:19:05,920
Speaker 1: and let's go back to the fast cycle on the internet,

1352
01:19:06,320 --> 01:19:10,080
Speaker 1: with memes and things being burned out so fast that

1353
01:19:10,120 --> 01:19:14,840
Speaker 1: there's no traction on new things. That is correct. I mean, so,

1354
01:19:14,920 --> 01:19:17,679
Speaker 1: as I said before, you have culture. You have things

1355
01:19:17,680 --> 01:19:19,680
Speaker 1: that feel like culture that happened every day, like a

1356
01:19:19,840 --> 01:19:22,639
Speaker 1: meme feels like a cultural moment. But you're not going

1357
01:19:22,680 --> 01:19:25,000
Speaker 1: to take that meme and make your identity about it,

1358
01:19:25,400 --> 01:19:29,000
Speaker 1: because number one, it's pretty silly to start with, it's

1359
01:19:29,000 --> 01:19:32,559
Speaker 1: pretty lowest common denominator to start with. But also because

1360
01:19:32,760 --> 01:19:34,720
Speaker 1: the whole point of a meme is to be in

1361
01:19:34,800 --> 01:19:38,839
Speaker 1: and out of it, to get in on it's first,

1362
01:19:40,040 --> 01:19:43,599
Speaker 1: you know, our or day, but then to not linger

1363
01:19:43,680 --> 01:19:45,880
Speaker 1: on it. And then that's not true for music or films.

1364
01:19:45,880 --> 01:19:48,680
Speaker 1: And the whole point of being into pulp fiction was

1365
01:19:48,760 --> 01:19:50,880
Speaker 1: that you watched it once and then you went around

1366
01:19:50,880 --> 01:19:53,519
Speaker 1: for years talking about how pulp Fiction was your favorite movie,

1367
01:19:53,600 --> 01:19:57,080
Speaker 1: so you know, and it's it feels silly comparing a

1368
01:19:57,160 --> 01:19:59,160
Speaker 1: meme to a motion picture. I mean, these are also

1369
01:19:59,280 --> 01:20:01,640
Speaker 1: just different things. But if if we are entertained on

1370
01:20:01,680 --> 01:20:05,679
Speaker 1: a daily basis through ten memes, you know, ten great

1371
01:20:05,720 --> 01:20:10,600
Speaker 1: tweets for videos, you can get through the day entertained.

1372
01:20:10,800 --> 01:20:13,400
Speaker 1: You don't need much more than that. And that also

1373
01:20:13,439 --> 01:20:15,559
Speaker 1: crowds out the time you may have used, you know,

1374
01:20:15,600 --> 01:20:19,400
Speaker 1: reading a book or watching a film, or if it's

1375
01:20:19,439 --> 01:20:21,680
Speaker 1: just a TV show that's you know, set up the

1376
01:20:21,720 --> 01:20:25,960
Speaker 1: thirty minute episodes that are basically created so that when

1377
01:20:25,960 --> 01:20:27,880
Speaker 1: you reach the end of the thirty minutes, you just

1378
01:20:27,880 --> 01:20:31,600
Speaker 1: want to watch the next one and you binge watch it. Um,

1379
01:20:31,600 --> 01:20:33,880
Speaker 1: maybe that TV show is something you you put as

1380
01:20:33,880 --> 01:20:35,640
Speaker 1: your identity, but it's much more likely you just go

1381
01:20:35,680 --> 01:20:37,120
Speaker 1: to a friend and say, oh, you gotta watch the show.

1382
01:20:37,120 --> 01:20:39,080
Speaker 1: It's great, and then you don't really think about it again.

1383
01:20:39,560 --> 01:20:44,639
Speaker 1: So the it's the overabundance and the speed of all

1384
01:20:44,720 --> 01:20:48,400
Speaker 1: of this culture means we're less likely to bring it

1385
01:20:48,439 --> 01:20:51,360
Speaker 1: into our identities and think about it as an authentic

1386
01:20:51,439 --> 01:20:55,759
Speaker 1: part of our lives. And that was so critical for culture,

1387
01:20:55,760 --> 01:20:59,240
Speaker 1: and that's what gives culture the weight to make it

1388
01:20:59,240 --> 01:21:05,439
Speaker 1: seem like a important, iconic, historic event. That's the reason

1389
01:21:06,439 --> 01:21:09,519
Speaker 1: Nirvana is not just a bunch of great albums. It

1390
01:21:09,600 --> 01:21:12,839
Speaker 1: was some sort of social movement where everyone started dressing

1391
01:21:12,840 --> 01:21:18,439
Speaker 1: in a different way and everybody had different values and uh,

1392
01:21:18,600 --> 01:21:21,799
Speaker 1: you know believe that corporate music sucks, and were shirts

1393
01:21:21,840 --> 01:21:24,280
Speaker 1: that said loser. And you know, it wasn't just the shirt,

1394
01:21:24,360 --> 01:21:28,160
Speaker 1: it was a whole ethos. I don't think any culture

1395
01:21:28,200 --> 01:21:32,400
Speaker 1: at the moment is quite changing our values or making

1396
01:21:32,439 --> 01:21:36,439
Speaker 1: people associate themselves with some sort of new movement in

1397
01:21:36,479 --> 01:21:39,639
Speaker 1: the way that culture used to. You live in Japan,

1398
01:21:39,840 --> 01:21:44,280
Speaker 1: how come I studied Japanese in college. Um I had

1399
01:21:44,280 --> 01:21:48,840
Speaker 1: spent two summers here, which was weird. I had studied Japanese,

1400
01:21:48,880 --> 01:21:52,760
Speaker 1: I did East Asian Studies at Harvard College and spent

1401
01:21:52,840 --> 01:22:00,360
Speaker 1: two summers in Tokyo. Discovered Japanese consumer is him and

1402
01:22:00,520 --> 01:22:02,840
Speaker 1: especially street fashion, which at the time, you know, this

1403
01:22:03,000 --> 01:22:04,880
Speaker 1: this idea of waiting three hours to buy a T

1404
01:22:05,000 --> 01:22:07,360
Speaker 1: shirt and then you know, for seventy dollars and then

1405
01:22:07,400 --> 01:22:10,280
Speaker 1: reselling the T shirt a year later for three that

1406
01:22:10,320 --> 01:22:12,640
Speaker 1: has now become a global phenomenon at the time is

1407
01:22:12,680 --> 01:22:16,360
Speaker 1: really Japan only. I ended up writing my senior thesis

1408
01:22:16,400 --> 01:22:22,920
Speaker 1: about that the whole world and how to market that

1409
01:22:23,120 --> 01:22:26,760
Speaker 1: kind of scarce good that it really isn't scarce, it's

1410
01:22:26,800 --> 01:22:29,600
Speaker 1: kind of fake scarcity. I came back to get a

1411
01:22:29,640 --> 01:22:34,439
Speaker 1: master's degree in UH consumer behavior marketing, wanting to look

1412
01:22:34,479 --> 01:22:38,479
Speaker 1: more into this, like why did Japanese consumers respond to

1413
01:22:38,520 --> 01:22:42,240
Speaker 1: this kind of marketing, and ended up studying the pop

1414
01:22:42,320 --> 01:22:47,360
Speaker 1: music world instead, because there weren't very good numbers in

1415
01:22:47,400 --> 01:22:49,559
Speaker 1: the fashion world, but the pop music world. There had

1416
01:22:49,600 --> 01:22:52,040
Speaker 1: been the stream of research in the seventies where people

1417
01:22:52,080 --> 01:22:54,040
Speaker 1: looked at the billboard charts and tried to figure out

1418
01:22:54,120 --> 01:22:57,560
Speaker 1: whether the industrial organization of the music industry, what the

1419
01:22:58,000 --> 01:23:02,680
Speaker 1: concentration of companies, whether that had an effect on the

1420
01:23:02,680 --> 01:23:05,040
Speaker 1: innovation in the marketplace. And there's all these different papers

1421
01:23:05,080 --> 01:23:07,599
Speaker 1: from the seventies and eighties about this. They're quite interesting.

1422
01:23:07,600 --> 01:23:09,559
Speaker 1: And I took that research and applied it to Japan

1423
01:23:10,080 --> 01:23:13,599
Speaker 1: to show that these artists, these artists management companies, many

1424
01:23:13,640 --> 01:23:17,720
Speaker 1: of whom are associated with organized crime UH and just

1425
01:23:18,320 --> 01:23:22,719
Speaker 1: have basically this octopus like grip on the entertainment complex

1426
01:23:22,760 --> 01:23:25,240
Speaker 1: and they make it where you really can't have new

1427
01:23:25,320 --> 01:23:27,280
Speaker 1: artists come out or the only new artists can come

1428
01:23:27,280 --> 01:23:31,160
Speaker 1: out of these companies. And so that that link between

1429
01:23:31,520 --> 01:23:35,040
Speaker 1: monopoly in the market and innovation was something I was

1430
01:23:35,120 --> 01:23:37,599
Speaker 1: quite interested in. And then I've just been in Japan

1431
01:23:37,640 --> 01:23:40,479
Speaker 1: since then because it's it's a great place to live

1432
01:23:40,520 --> 01:23:43,680
Speaker 1: and and for a while it was, you know, interesting

1433
01:23:43,720 --> 01:23:45,680
Speaker 1: to be here because it's not the United States, But

1434
01:23:45,840 --> 01:23:48,120
Speaker 1: these days it feels like a calmer alternative to the

1435
01:23:48,160 --> 01:23:52,360
Speaker 1: United States. Okay, Uh, there's a lot of people who

1436
01:23:52,400 --> 01:23:56,439
Speaker 1: say that the Japanese or racist. As an Anglo in Japan,

1437
01:23:56,600 --> 01:24:06,720
Speaker 1: do you feel that, um, Japan is very very focused

1438
01:24:06,800 --> 01:24:11,160
Speaker 1: on doing things the right way, and if you're an outsider,

1439
01:24:11,240 --> 01:24:12,639
Speaker 1: you don't know how to do things the right way

1440
01:24:12,640 --> 01:24:16,080
Speaker 1: and you're judge pretty harshly. There is a big difference though,

1441
01:24:16,160 --> 01:24:23,840
Speaker 1: in being a Western, especially male, especially white person, you're

1442
01:24:23,920 --> 01:24:28,080
Speaker 1: exempt from any of those things and you are treated

1443
01:24:28,160 --> 01:24:32,880
Speaker 1: relatively well. Um, if you are a Chinese immigrant, if

1444
01:24:32,880 --> 01:24:36,960
Speaker 1: you're an Indonesian immigrant, and you may look to a

1445
01:24:37,040 --> 01:24:39,240
Speaker 1: Japanese person like your Japanese and they won't know necessarily

1446
01:24:39,240 --> 01:24:41,320
Speaker 1: that you're an immigrant. The expectation on you is to

1447
01:24:41,360 --> 01:24:44,559
Speaker 1: perform perfectly like a Japanese person, and there is quite

1448
01:24:44,640 --> 01:24:51,680
Speaker 1: a lot of a marginalization of those communities, and it

1449
01:24:51,720 --> 01:24:53,880
Speaker 1: can be a much harder experience. So I can't I

1450
01:24:53,920 --> 01:24:58,200
Speaker 1: can't extrapolate my personal experience as a white male from

1451
01:24:58,240 --> 01:25:00,519
Speaker 1: the United States who learned Japanese and say that all

1452
01:25:00,560 --> 01:25:03,160
Speaker 1: foreigners are treated this way. I think for me in particular,

1453
01:25:03,680 --> 01:25:06,400
Speaker 1: it has been fine. I'm from Princical Florida, and I

1454
01:25:06,760 --> 01:25:10,479
Speaker 1: didn't feel like I was, uh, the same as everybody

1455
01:25:10,479 --> 01:25:12,800
Speaker 1: in princecal Florida. I'm pretty used to not feeling the

1456
01:25:12,880 --> 01:25:16,559
Speaker 1: same as people. But um, I think Japan also, in

1457
01:25:16,600 --> 01:25:21,200
Speaker 1: the last even five years, has really globalized where Tokyo

1458
01:25:21,240 --> 01:25:26,000
Speaker 1: and in particular, Uh, there's Englishman news everywhere, and there

1459
01:25:26,000 --> 01:25:28,160
Speaker 1: are lots and lots of people from all over the world,

1460
01:25:28,320 --> 01:25:30,880
Speaker 1: and it's just it's more of an international city than

1461
01:25:30,920 --> 01:25:34,160
Speaker 1: it's ever been. And so personally this isn't a problem

1462
01:25:34,200 --> 01:25:37,000
Speaker 1: for me, but I can't speak for everybody. And I

1463
01:25:37,040 --> 01:25:39,560
Speaker 1: see a wedding ring, Are you married to an American?

1464
01:25:39,640 --> 01:25:43,559
Speaker 1: Are you married to a Japanese person? Japanese? So how

1465
01:25:43,560 --> 01:25:47,400
Speaker 1: did you meet this Japanese person? Uh? We were both

1466
01:25:48,000 --> 01:25:54,240
Speaker 1: making music into music Okay, you wrote this book, you

1467
01:25:54,280 --> 01:25:57,000
Speaker 1: wrote a previous book. Is this how you make your

1468
01:25:57,000 --> 01:26:00,120
Speaker 1: living or you have to do other things? Okay, how

1469
01:26:00,120 --> 01:26:01,320
Speaker 1: do you make your life? I have to do I

1470
01:26:01,320 --> 01:26:03,600
Speaker 1: have to do many other things. So you may be

1471
01:26:03,680 --> 01:26:06,240
Speaker 1: surprised that writing a book about the history of men's

1472
01:26:06,240 --> 01:26:10,760
Speaker 1: fashion in Japan is not a career. So yeah, I

1473
01:26:10,760 --> 01:26:13,160
Speaker 1: mean my I've been writing for a really long time

1474
01:26:13,720 --> 01:26:16,439
Speaker 1: and quite passionate about it, but I do a lot

1475
01:26:16,479 --> 01:26:22,840
Speaker 1: of work in marketing and communications and branding and those areas. Okay,

1476
01:26:23,520 --> 01:26:27,280
Speaker 1: what motivated you to write this book? What expectations do

1477
01:26:27,360 --> 01:26:30,280
Speaker 1: you have of it? And how do you feel about

1478
01:26:30,400 --> 01:26:33,640
Speaker 1: some of the negative reviews. It's not like they're negative,

1479
01:26:34,200 --> 01:26:40,000
Speaker 1: but they want to argue with your theories. Is that jealousy? Well?

1480
01:26:40,200 --> 01:26:46,920
Speaker 1: And how do you metabolize all that? What motivated me was,

1481
01:26:48,280 --> 01:26:54,240
Speaker 1: I again have believed there are these principles or laws

1482
01:26:54,320 --> 01:26:56,519
Speaker 1: or however you want to explain them that guide culture

1483
01:26:56,520 --> 01:26:59,599
Speaker 1: and cultural change. And I've always been frustrated that there

1484
01:26:59,640 --> 01:27:01,400
Speaker 1: was not a single book you could just pick up

1485
01:27:01,479 --> 01:27:04,320
Speaker 1: and understand and and read and say this is what

1486
01:27:04,520 --> 01:27:07,280
Speaker 1: how people behave and this is why culture changes. And

1487
01:27:07,320 --> 01:27:11,080
Speaker 1: so I've been obsessed with that topic for twenty years,

1488
01:27:12,240 --> 01:27:17,160
Speaker 1: the interplay between consumers and media and brands and artists

1489
01:27:17,160 --> 01:27:18,920
Speaker 1: and how all these things work together. And I just

1490
01:27:18,960 --> 01:27:23,200
Speaker 1: wanted to put all of the theories that already exist,

1491
01:27:24,520 --> 01:27:28,320
Speaker 1: take them, synthesize them, and give them to someone in

1492
01:27:28,320 --> 01:27:31,000
Speaker 1: a digestible format. And that's where it came from. And

1493
01:27:31,840 --> 01:27:33,880
Speaker 1: I am very open to the idea that there are

1494
01:27:33,880 --> 01:27:36,400
Speaker 1: mistakes and that there are things that need to be adjusted.

1495
01:27:36,560 --> 01:27:38,559
Speaker 1: And for me, in some ways, we can't even have

1496
01:27:38,640 --> 01:27:42,320
Speaker 1: that discussion until you start with something. You need to

1497
01:27:42,360 --> 01:27:44,599
Speaker 1: start with. Here is the model that I think exists.

1498
01:27:45,000 --> 01:27:48,559
Speaker 1: And then there are critiques of saying, actually you miss this,

1499
01:27:48,840 --> 01:27:51,240
Speaker 1: or this effect maybe less than you think it is,

1500
01:27:51,360 --> 01:27:53,800
Speaker 1: or things have changed. So I agree with all that.

1501
01:27:54,240 --> 01:27:58,200
Speaker 1: I am very open to criticism in general. I'm very

1502
01:27:58,240 --> 01:28:02,240
Speaker 1: open to good faith criticism. I think what is always

1503
01:28:02,240 --> 01:28:08,439
Speaker 1: disappointing with um this kind of criticism. And and again,

1504
01:28:08,479 --> 01:28:10,960
Speaker 1: you know, my first book was about Japanese fashion and

1505
01:28:11,040 --> 01:28:13,639
Speaker 1: so niche that no one was going to say anything

1506
01:28:13,680 --> 01:28:15,280
Speaker 1: mean about it. They were just going to ignore it

1507
01:28:15,320 --> 01:28:17,639
Speaker 1: if they didn't have anything nice to say. So when

1508
01:28:17,640 --> 01:28:21,719
Speaker 1: you write a book big and called cultural culture, sorry

1509
01:28:21,920 --> 01:28:25,360
Speaker 1: called status and culture. You're just opening yourself up for attacks.

1510
01:28:25,400 --> 01:28:27,400
Speaker 1: So this is my fault. I I have no one

1511
01:28:27,400 --> 01:28:32,040
Speaker 1: to blame about myself, but so many of the critiques

1512
01:28:32,080 --> 01:28:35,639
Speaker 1: are in bad faith in that you have the classic

1513
01:28:35,680 --> 01:28:37,600
Speaker 1: critique of you did not write the book that I

1514
01:28:37,680 --> 01:28:40,360
Speaker 1: thought you should have written, and the critique it as

1515
01:28:40,360 --> 01:28:42,040
Speaker 1: if you should have read it that way, that this

1516
01:28:42,080 --> 01:28:44,760
Speaker 1: book is not a book about how rich people today live,

1517
01:28:44,880 --> 01:28:47,400
Speaker 1: which is not a book about you have. The critiques

1518
01:28:47,680 --> 01:28:51,960
Speaker 1: of this book is fine, but it didn't reference my book,

1519
01:28:52,000 --> 01:28:55,320
Speaker 1: and therefore it's suspect. I've gotten that from a pretty

1520
01:28:55,360 --> 01:28:59,639
Speaker 1: distinguished economists, which was quite annoying. And then you get

1521
01:28:59,680 --> 01:29:04,120
Speaker 1: things where there's just a disagreement. Um. Virginia Apostural, who

1522
01:29:04,160 --> 01:29:06,439
Speaker 1: I respect quite a quite a lot, just reviewed it

1523
01:29:06,479 --> 01:29:09,639
Speaker 1: for then the Wall Street Journal, and we just don't

1524
01:29:09,680 --> 01:29:13,679
Speaker 1: agree on, you know, the nature of aesthetics. She believes

1525
01:29:13,680 --> 01:29:17,120
Speaker 1: so much of aesthetics are about pleasure and joy. I

1526
01:29:17,200 --> 01:29:20,400
Speaker 1: totally agree. People love culture. The reason the culture proliferates

1527
01:29:20,400 --> 01:29:22,680
Speaker 1: this because we love it. I just I'm trying to

1528
01:29:22,720 --> 01:29:25,519
Speaker 1: look at why do we love certain aesthetics at all?

1529
01:29:25,840 --> 01:29:29,320
Speaker 1: Why do the Beatles hate the mop top? And then put,

1530
01:29:29,400 --> 01:29:31,240
Speaker 1: you know, then wear the mop top, and then everybody

1531
01:29:31,240 --> 01:29:33,320
Speaker 1: loves the mop top. You have to look at how

1532
01:29:33,320 --> 01:29:35,640
Speaker 1: aesthetics change over time, and status is the force that

1533
01:29:35,760 --> 01:29:39,240
Speaker 1: changes them. It doesn't mean that people are always status

1534
01:29:39,280 --> 01:29:42,759
Speaker 1: seeking everything they do, but status is this invisible grammar

1535
01:29:42,840 --> 01:29:46,160
Speaker 1: behind culture that we have to look at. So I

1536
01:29:46,200 --> 01:29:49,080
Speaker 1: think some of the critiques are are fine and fair.

1537
01:29:50,160 --> 01:29:52,760
Speaker 1: What's annoying just about how how this process works is

1538
01:29:52,800 --> 01:29:55,720
Speaker 1: that you're a very whiny author if somebody critiques you,

1539
01:29:55,760 --> 01:29:57,360
Speaker 1: and then you go on and say, well, you're wrong

1540
01:29:57,400 --> 01:29:59,240
Speaker 1: because of these things, and so you have to be,

1541
01:29:59,520 --> 01:30:02,559
Speaker 1: you know, pull light and mannered about the whole thing.

1542
01:30:02,840 --> 01:30:04,760
Speaker 1: But I think some of the critiques are just an

1543
01:30:04,760 --> 01:30:07,040
Speaker 1: invitation to dialogue. I mean, I would love to answer

1544
01:30:07,200 --> 01:30:10,559
Speaker 1: the criticisms because they're not gotcha, like, oh my gosh,

1545
01:30:10,560 --> 01:30:12,599
Speaker 1: I never consider this. I feel like I answer these

1546
01:30:12,600 --> 01:30:15,600
Speaker 1: in the book and people may not quite get the nuances.

1547
01:30:16,520 --> 01:30:19,599
Speaker 1: So for me, it's just it's frustrating because I want

1548
01:30:19,640 --> 01:30:21,960
Speaker 1: to speak with these people in that a conversation, but

1549
01:30:22,000 --> 01:30:24,160
Speaker 1: that's not the way it works. It's kind of forever.

1550
01:30:24,280 --> 01:30:26,160
Speaker 1: The New York Times says this, and that's what The

1551
01:30:26,160 --> 01:30:28,479
Speaker 1: New York Times said, but at the same time, you know,

1552
01:30:28,600 --> 01:30:31,439
Speaker 1: the revenge of authors and publishers is then we just

1553
01:30:31,640 --> 01:30:34,840
Speaker 1: edit out all the negative things from the review and

1554
01:30:34,880 --> 01:30:37,639
Speaker 1: then write fascinating Times and put it on the back

1555
01:30:37,680 --> 01:30:42,240
Speaker 1: of a book, so you know, authors laugh last maybe Okay.

1556
01:30:42,640 --> 01:30:45,800
Speaker 1: What most people don't know is the book business is

1557
01:30:45,880 --> 01:30:51,320
Speaker 1: really provincial. No, it's not not modernized in many ways.

1558
01:30:51,400 --> 01:30:53,920
Speaker 1: But what I really saying. You see the number one

1559
01:30:54,040 --> 01:30:57,880
Speaker 1: best seller, well, let's make it better number five. It

1560
01:30:58,000 --> 01:31:02,320
Speaker 1: is amazing how few books the books actually sell absolutely

1561
01:31:02,800 --> 01:31:07,000
Speaker 1: so has the book had more or less impact than

1562
01:31:07,120 --> 01:31:10,320
Speaker 1: you wanted it to have in terms of which relevantive

1563
01:31:10,360 --> 01:31:14,400
Speaker 1: positive or negative? It's still too early because it's only

1564
01:31:14,439 --> 01:31:19,360
Speaker 1: been out for a couple of weeks. Um the book

1565
01:31:19,400 --> 01:31:21,800
Speaker 1: needs to be read, is the problem. So a lot

1566
01:31:21,800 --> 01:31:26,639
Speaker 1: of nonfiction books literally will be one single idea. There's

1567
01:31:26,680 --> 01:31:30,400
Speaker 1: this theory of the minimally counterintuitive idea that these are sticky,

1568
01:31:30,439 --> 01:31:32,840
Speaker 1: that if things are too intuitive, it's not interesting. If

1569
01:31:32,880 --> 01:31:35,400
Speaker 1: things are too counterintuitive, they're not interesting. But if you

1570
01:31:35,439 --> 01:31:38,760
Speaker 1: have this minimally counterintuitive idea, like if I wrote a

1571
01:31:38,760 --> 01:31:41,720
Speaker 1: book that said, did you know that your gut bacteria

1572
01:31:41,920 --> 01:31:45,120
Speaker 1: determines your personality? You'd be like, well, that's I didn't

1573
01:31:45,360 --> 01:31:47,479
Speaker 1: think that, but okay, I'll read a book about it.

1574
01:31:47,520 --> 01:31:50,280
Speaker 1: But that book will then basically take that idea and

1575
01:31:50,840 --> 01:31:53,479
Speaker 1: you know, extrapolate it out for three under pages triple space.

1576
01:31:53,640 --> 01:31:56,040
Speaker 1: That's what a normal nonfiction book does. And so when

1577
01:31:56,080 --> 01:31:57,800
Speaker 1: you read about or hear about it, you basically the

1578
01:31:57,840 --> 01:31:59,439
Speaker 1: main idea and you can go to a cocktail party

1579
01:31:59,439 --> 01:32:01,679
Speaker 1: and say, oh, I just read this book about got

1580
01:32:01,720 --> 01:32:06,880
Speaker 1: bacteria determining your personality. Uh my, I did not follow

1581
01:32:06,920 --> 01:32:09,640
Speaker 1: the rules of this provincial book market. I wrote a

1582
01:32:09,640 --> 01:32:12,719
Speaker 1: book that has way too many things in it. And

1583
01:32:12,920 --> 01:32:15,040
Speaker 1: when I'm trying to again, I'm trying to make a

1584
01:32:15,080 --> 01:32:18,840
Speaker 1: field manual slash handbook for people to understand how status works,

1585
01:32:18,840 --> 01:32:22,240
Speaker 1: how culture works, and take those lessons with them. And

1586
01:32:23,200 --> 01:32:26,920
Speaker 1: the way it's summarized often doesn't quite explain my position

1587
01:32:27,040 --> 01:32:29,639
Speaker 1: or it simplifies it too much. And so what I'm

1588
01:32:29,640 --> 01:32:31,560
Speaker 1: hoping is people read it and they start using the

1589
01:32:31,640 --> 01:32:34,080
Speaker 1: language of the book to describe things. And again, even

1590
01:32:34,120 --> 01:32:37,000
Speaker 1: if people disagree with it and they have to clarify

1591
01:32:37,120 --> 01:32:39,200
Speaker 1: their position using the language of the book, I feel

1592
01:32:39,200 --> 01:32:40,720
Speaker 1: like that would be a great success, but it's going

1593
01:32:40,760 --> 01:32:43,479
Speaker 1: to take a little bit more time. It's not I

1594
01:32:43,520 --> 01:32:46,040
Speaker 1: didn't play the game the way I was supposed to do,

1595
01:32:46,320 --> 01:32:49,960
Speaker 1: in which I noticed in in hindsight. Um, I just

1596
01:32:50,120 --> 01:32:51,840
Speaker 1: I wrote the book that I thought needed to exist,

1597
01:32:51,920 --> 01:33:01,800
Speaker 1: and we'll see what happens. Okay, let's pull the lens

1598
01:33:01,880 --> 01:33:10,559
Speaker 1: way back. Can one say that music, even movies and

1599
01:33:10,680 --> 01:33:16,160
Speaker 1: TV have been eclipsed by politics because we all have

1600
01:33:16,280 --> 01:33:18,599
Speaker 1: a hand in it and are affected and we can

1601
01:33:18,640 --> 01:33:21,720
Speaker 1: take a side and we can argue about it. Or

1602
01:33:21,760 --> 01:33:25,559
Speaker 1: does politics just is that become the main dominant force

1603
01:33:25,600 --> 01:33:28,360
Speaker 1: in culture or is it just a constant on the side.

1604
01:33:29,600 --> 01:33:33,320
Speaker 1: I think in American culture, politics is everything, and and

1605
01:33:33,360 --> 01:33:37,519
Speaker 1: cultural politics is often used as a dismissive term that

1606
01:33:37,520 --> 01:33:42,479
Speaker 1: that's just cultural politics. But culture has become political because,

1607
01:33:43,000 --> 01:33:47,639
Speaker 1: especially in a world of mass culture and these huge

1608
01:33:47,680 --> 01:33:51,240
Speaker 1: cultural markets, who makes the money from the matters, and

1609
01:33:51,280 --> 01:33:56,960
Speaker 1: the ideas in the hit movies and books matter, and

1610
01:33:57,960 --> 01:34:02,280
Speaker 1: people are quite sensitive about it, and appropriation matters. You know,

1611
01:34:02,280 --> 01:34:06,800
Speaker 1: if if a marginalized group creates these forms out of

1612
01:34:06,840 --> 01:34:10,679
Speaker 1: their marginalization, and then the majority culture steals those ideas

1613
01:34:10,680 --> 01:34:14,400
Speaker 1: and profits from them, that is a political issue. Status

1614
01:34:14,920 --> 01:34:19,559
Speaker 1: comes with privileges. Status determines the quality of your life,

1615
01:34:20,360 --> 01:34:25,640
Speaker 1: and status determines how resources are distributed across society. So

1616
01:34:25,680 --> 01:34:28,360
Speaker 1: if culture plays a role in who gets status, which

1617
01:34:28,360 --> 01:34:33,120
Speaker 1: it does, then people really focus on culture and they

1618
01:34:33,120 --> 01:34:36,200
Speaker 1: think about it, and so it's inevitable the culture becomes

1619
01:34:36,200 --> 01:34:39,559
Speaker 1: political in this era. And also when you get to

1620
01:34:41,120 --> 01:34:46,000
Speaker 1: the dominant form of culture on the sophisticated side, being omnivorism,

1621
01:34:46,000 --> 01:34:49,760
Speaker 1: which says high and low are both equally valid, you

1622
01:34:50,000 --> 01:34:55,240
Speaker 1: stop having kind of avant garde battles between uh, abstract

1623
01:34:55,320 --> 01:34:59,400
Speaker 1: expressionism is the final form of art, no pop art

1624
01:34:59,520 --> 01:35:03,759
Speaker 1: is it's you know, successor you stop battling about the

1625
01:35:03,840 --> 01:35:08,439
Speaker 1: form of art and the ideas and you start focusing

1626
01:35:08,479 --> 01:35:12,000
Speaker 1: more on, well, everything is kind of equally good. So

1627
01:35:12,080 --> 01:35:15,679
Speaker 1: the only thing that we're against is these provincial people

1628
01:35:16,240 --> 01:35:18,559
Speaker 1: who do not believe that everything is good. So so

1629
01:35:18,680 --> 01:35:22,439
Speaker 1: you have cosmopolitanism of believing that everything is good take

1630
01:35:22,520 --> 01:35:24,639
Speaker 1: over so much that the only thing to be against

1631
01:35:24,640 --> 01:35:32,400
Speaker 1: is anti cosmopolitanism, and so the entire cultural marketplace becomes

1632
01:35:32,439 --> 01:35:40,719
Speaker 1: a battle between kind of this pro omnivorism versus very

1633
01:35:40,880 --> 01:35:45,120
Speaker 1: parochial or provincial. My culture is the only right culture,

1634
01:35:45,439 --> 01:35:48,360
Speaker 1: and that just splits across political lines in the United States.

1635
01:35:48,439 --> 01:35:51,599
Speaker 1: I mean, it's that is a very blue, red state

1636
01:35:52,040 --> 01:35:58,519
Speaker 1: type divide, and it's it's just inevitable that culture has

1637
01:35:58,600 --> 01:36:02,720
Speaker 1: gone that direction. So um, I don't know what we

1638
01:36:02,760 --> 01:36:05,600
Speaker 1: can do about that, but as long as somebody is

1639
01:36:05,640 --> 01:36:08,960
Speaker 1: reviewing culture with those questions in mind. And then you

1640
01:36:09,000 --> 01:36:11,919
Speaker 1: also get to this, this artist has done a genius

1641
01:36:11,960 --> 01:36:15,960
Speaker 1: invention of these forms. But as a person there they

1642
01:36:16,000 --> 01:36:18,080
Speaker 1: believe in bad politics, and I don't want money going

1643
01:36:18,080 --> 01:36:21,559
Speaker 1: to them. What's very difficult for them to uh for

1644
01:36:21,600 --> 01:36:25,640
Speaker 1: people to support that at this moment. Well, let me clarify,

1645
01:36:25,760 --> 01:36:29,880
Speaker 1: how about Washington, D C. Trump people focusing on that

1646
01:36:29,960 --> 01:36:33,800
Speaker 1: for their identity or common at least Biden somebody on

1647
01:36:33,840 --> 01:36:38,360
Speaker 1: the other side. To what degree is that usurpd cultural

1648
01:36:38,479 --> 01:36:44,200
Speaker 1: power from the traditional music, movies, and television. I mean,

1649
01:36:44,280 --> 01:36:46,200
Speaker 1: I I've heard you talk about this, and I know

1650
01:36:46,280 --> 01:36:48,120
Speaker 1: you agree with that, and I agree with you. I

1651
01:36:48,160 --> 01:36:51,400
Speaker 1: think that that is the dominant form of identity creation

1652
01:36:51,560 --> 01:36:53,559
Speaker 1: at the moment. And but that but that again, I

1653
01:36:53,600 --> 01:36:57,880
Speaker 1: think these two things are related, which is if America

1654
01:36:57,960 --> 01:37:01,160
Speaker 1: is a struggle between this state ethos and a red

1655
01:37:01,160 --> 01:37:05,520
Speaker 1: state ethos, and that is playing out in politics and economics,

1656
01:37:05,600 --> 01:37:09,080
Speaker 1: and in all of these questions, it is bleeding into culture.

1657
01:37:09,120 --> 01:37:12,440
Speaker 1: But because culture is set up as omnivore versus anti omnivore,

1658
01:37:12,479 --> 01:37:15,400
Speaker 1: and blue is the omnivore side and anti omnivore is

1659
01:37:15,439 --> 01:37:20,639
Speaker 1: the red side, then that just makes it where all

1660
01:37:20,680 --> 01:37:24,240
Speaker 1: appreciation of art has to be filtered through the lens

1661
01:37:24,320 --> 01:37:29,240
Speaker 1: of those politics. Okay, so let's assume you're in the

1662
01:37:29,560 --> 01:37:34,680
Speaker 1: lower status group. Do people ever accept their status or

1663
01:37:34,760 --> 01:37:39,080
Speaker 1: they always saying, God, I want more status. So what's

1664
01:37:39,120 --> 01:37:43,360
Speaker 1: really important in any hierarchy for it to function is

1665
01:37:43,520 --> 01:37:46,280
Speaker 1: what's called status integrity. So there's the people at the

1666
01:37:46,280 --> 01:37:48,400
Speaker 1: bottom look up and they say, it makes sense why

1667
01:37:48,439 --> 01:37:51,679
Speaker 1: those people up there or have the status that they do.

1668
01:37:51,960 --> 01:37:54,040
Speaker 1: And if they believe in that integrity, they'll stay in

1669
01:37:54,080 --> 01:37:56,680
Speaker 1: the group even if they're low status. They'll believe my

1670
01:37:56,840 --> 01:37:59,559
Speaker 1: group will be successful, and the success of that group

1671
01:37:59,560 --> 01:38:00,920
Speaker 1: will be good for me, even if I'm at the

1672
01:38:00,920 --> 01:38:05,360
Speaker 1: bottom of it. Often, where people don't believe in that,

1673
01:38:05,720 --> 01:38:09,760
Speaker 1: and they understand that they could be higher status in

1674
01:38:09,760 --> 01:38:12,559
Speaker 1: any different group, they will leave. And so the rise

1675
01:38:12,600 --> 01:38:14,880
Speaker 1: of some cultures in the twentieth century is a lot

1676
01:38:14,880 --> 01:38:17,840
Speaker 1: of people saying I don't agree with these people at

1677
01:38:17,840 --> 01:38:21,559
Speaker 1: the top being the top. I'm going to leave and

1678
01:38:21,640 --> 01:38:23,840
Speaker 1: be a surfer or a biker or whatever it is,

1679
01:38:23,880 --> 01:38:27,479
Speaker 1: because those communities except me and I can be valued

1680
01:38:27,479 --> 01:38:31,519
Speaker 1: and esteemed for these interests and these values I already have.

1681
01:38:31,600 --> 01:38:34,800
Speaker 1: They are different than the mainstream. UM. I think there's

1682
01:38:34,840 --> 01:38:38,760
Speaker 1: a lot of political turmoil in the United States at

1683
01:38:38,800 --> 01:38:41,439
Speaker 1: the moment in that the United States has ceased to

1684
01:38:41,800 --> 01:38:44,680
Speaker 1: feel like one status group that we're all in. And

1685
01:38:44,680 --> 01:38:49,879
Speaker 1: I think in particular, people who support Trump, they believe

1686
01:38:50,040 --> 01:38:52,960
Speaker 1: that their group should be at the top, and they

1687
01:38:52,960 --> 01:38:56,880
Speaker 1: don't believe that these these these coastal elites should have

1688
01:38:56,920 --> 01:39:00,240
Speaker 1: the status that they have, and that causes a lot

1689
01:39:00,240 --> 01:39:05,000
Speaker 1: of resentment and causes them to want ill things to

1690
01:39:05,080 --> 01:39:10,400
Speaker 1: happen to people on the coast. And uh, that is

1691
01:39:11,720 --> 01:39:15,639
Speaker 1: that lack of integrity has made these two groups split.

1692
01:39:16,400 --> 01:39:20,799
Speaker 1: And they you know, they do not accept that feeling

1693
01:39:20,840 --> 01:39:24,720
Speaker 1: of being in a lower status tier, whether they are

1694
01:39:24,800 --> 01:39:28,360
Speaker 1: or not, is all perceived. And at the moment they

1695
01:39:28,360 --> 01:39:31,320
Speaker 1: turn on the television, these people who support Trump turn

1696
01:39:31,360 --> 01:39:33,400
Speaker 1: on the television, they don't see themselves, they don't see

1697
01:39:33,400 --> 01:39:38,160
Speaker 1: their values, UM, and they're quite resentful about it, and

1698
01:39:38,160 --> 01:39:40,000
Speaker 1: it makes it makes a lot of sense. But you know,

1699
01:39:40,040 --> 01:39:42,040
Speaker 1: we do live in a world in which you're able

1700
01:39:42,080 --> 01:39:44,280
Speaker 1: to move to other groups as quickly as possible. But

1701
01:39:44,320 --> 01:39:47,760
Speaker 1: that splintering then makes it where there isn't really a

1702
01:39:47,800 --> 01:39:51,640
Speaker 1: mainstream core, or the mainstream core becomes one group and

1703
01:39:51,640 --> 01:39:53,760
Speaker 1: then the other group is simply trying to battle back

1704
01:39:53,800 --> 01:39:58,000
Speaker 1: and forth of taking back power. And in my lifetime,

1705
01:39:58,040 --> 01:40:02,280
Speaker 1: I've never seen soul much income inequality the American dream.

1706
01:40:02,360 --> 01:40:03,960
Speaker 1: You work hard, you can make it. You can work

1707
01:40:04,000 --> 01:40:05,600
Speaker 1: for the rest of your fucking life hard, You're not

1708
01:40:05,600 --> 01:40:08,960
Speaker 1: gonna have as much money you z Elon Musk. So

1709
01:40:09,520 --> 01:40:13,479
Speaker 1: to what you spoke earlier about the French Revolution, are

1710
01:40:13,520 --> 01:40:18,800
Speaker 1: we pushing towards some cataclysmic event that will reworder status

1711
01:40:18,800 --> 01:40:22,080
Speaker 1: as a result of income inequality? And maybe what we

1712
01:40:22,080 --> 01:40:29,479
Speaker 1: were just referencing the political differences, Um, I don't think so.

1713
01:40:29,720 --> 01:40:33,600
Speaker 1: I mean, I if you look at the trump Is

1714
01:40:33,720 --> 01:40:38,920
Speaker 1: movement as a backlash against the order, they are trying

1715
01:40:38,960 --> 01:40:43,360
Speaker 1: to restore some bizarro you know, twentieth century, nine fifties

1716
01:40:43,479 --> 01:40:45,559
Speaker 1: version of America that doesn't exist, in which you know

1717
01:40:45,800 --> 01:40:47,200
Speaker 1: a lot of people that move it would have not

1718
01:40:47,240 --> 01:40:49,519
Speaker 1: been particularly high status at that time either, but they

1719
01:40:49,520 --> 01:40:55,360
Speaker 1: felt like they it's better than where they are now. Um,

1720
01:40:55,400 --> 01:40:58,120
Speaker 1: so that group is incredibly reactionary. It does not seem

1721
01:40:58,120 --> 01:41:01,439
Speaker 1: like they want a revolution in a French Revolution since

1722
01:41:02,360 --> 01:41:05,760
Speaker 1: and I don't get a sense that there is a

1723
01:41:05,800 --> 01:41:08,280
Speaker 1: group like the bourgeoisie that's going to have a French

1724
01:41:08,320 --> 01:41:11,280
Speaker 1: Revolution and there's not an empowered group of proletariat that's

1725
01:41:11,320 --> 01:41:14,280
Speaker 1: going to overtake things in a Mark Marxist revolution either.

1726
01:41:14,760 --> 01:41:18,960
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I mean, this is this is

1727
01:41:19,240 --> 01:41:22,120
Speaker 1: probably beyond my pay grade, but it just does not

1728
01:41:22,160 --> 01:41:27,280
Speaker 1: seem like we're headed towards an actual reversal of what

1729
01:41:27,479 --> 01:41:30,479
Speaker 1: creates status in society. And because that's what these revolutions

1730
01:41:30,520 --> 01:41:34,360
Speaker 1: always are, there an attempt to change why the people

1731
01:41:34,680 --> 01:41:37,200
Speaker 1: at the highest levels have the status that they do.

1732
01:41:37,280 --> 01:41:39,720
Speaker 1: And so the French Revolution is saying it should not

1733
01:41:39,760 --> 01:41:44,160
Speaker 1: be about aristocracy at all, that you know, personal achievements

1734
01:41:44,160 --> 01:41:46,120
Speaker 1: should be the reason that people move to the top,

1735
01:41:46,800 --> 01:41:48,519
Speaker 1: and that idea is stuck with us even after the

1736
01:41:48,520 --> 01:41:50,880
Speaker 1: French Revolution, and you know, Marxist revolution is trying to

1737
01:41:50,880 --> 01:41:54,200
Speaker 1: say that capital itself should not be the reason people

1738
01:41:54,200 --> 01:41:58,080
Speaker 1: at the top. But I don't know. I don't I

1739
01:41:58,080 --> 01:42:03,160
Speaker 1: don't see any major tempt at at gigantic revolutionary status reversal.

1740
01:42:03,880 --> 01:42:08,760
Speaker 1: And looking into the future, we can certainly see changes.

1741
01:42:09,000 --> 01:42:12,519
Speaker 1: You know, the Internet era as opposed to the prior era,

1742
01:42:13,120 --> 01:42:17,080
Speaker 1: the fascination with devices in the first decade of this century,

1743
01:42:17,320 --> 01:42:22,400
Speaker 1: the triumph of software, the go go now the backlash.

1744
01:42:22,560 --> 01:42:28,080
Speaker 1: Are we going to be staying? What will this stagnancy

1745
01:42:28,200 --> 01:42:32,240
Speaker 1: in culture continue? Will it have to be a once

1746
01:42:32,280 --> 01:42:34,559
Speaker 1: in a lifetime event to change it? You know, what

1747
01:42:34,600 --> 01:42:36,120
Speaker 1: do you think is going to come down the pike?

1748
01:42:38,560 --> 01:42:40,240
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, one thing I do is

1749
01:42:40,760 --> 01:42:45,920
Speaker 1: do think and then talking to friends is people who

1750
01:42:46,280 --> 01:42:50,240
Speaker 1: are the most sophisticated cultural consumers and most interested in culture.

1751
01:42:52,200 --> 01:42:55,040
Speaker 1: We're on the internet early because the internet promised you

1752
01:42:55,200 --> 01:42:58,439
Speaker 1: the ability to have better distribution for the things you

1753
01:42:58,520 --> 01:43:00,960
Speaker 1: create and find people who have the same interest. So

1754
01:43:01,000 --> 01:43:04,040
Speaker 1: you have all these people into marginal things. You go online,

1755
01:43:04,400 --> 01:43:07,760
Speaker 1: suddenly there are all there's thousands of people interested in

1756
01:43:07,800 --> 01:43:10,840
Speaker 1: this and you can get new information. You can trade tapes.

1757
01:43:10,920 --> 01:43:13,360
Speaker 1: One of the earliest things I did on the Internet

1758
01:43:13,360 --> 01:43:15,960
Speaker 1: and the nineties was trade bootleg tapes with people. So

1759
01:43:16,000 --> 01:43:18,599
Speaker 1: you join a mailing list and then trade bootlegs back

1760
01:43:18,640 --> 01:43:21,160
Speaker 1: and forth. So my understanding of the Internet was that

1761
01:43:21,200 --> 01:43:24,360
Speaker 1: it was the thing for people with niche tastes and

1762
01:43:24,400 --> 01:43:28,439
Speaker 1: that was incredible and useful. And the Internet in the

1763
01:43:28,520 --> 01:43:33,800
Speaker 1: last decade has become mass culture is dominated by lowest combinator,

1764
01:43:34,439 --> 01:43:37,639
Speaker 1: lowest common dominator aesthetics. I mean cases, if you open

1765
01:43:37,680 --> 01:43:42,120
Speaker 1: TikTok and you haven't quite put in your personal preferences,

1766
01:43:42,160 --> 01:43:44,200
Speaker 1: as in you say I'm not interested in this, it

1767
01:43:44,320 --> 01:43:48,640
Speaker 1: sends you often very sexually provocative videos, but it just

1768
01:43:48,680 --> 01:43:50,800
Speaker 1: sends you things that make you want to close the

1769
01:43:50,840 --> 01:43:54,360
Speaker 1: app because they're not They're not really set up for

1770
01:43:54,360 --> 01:43:58,120
Speaker 1: for people who are used to the Internet being niche

1771
01:43:58,200 --> 01:44:01,840
Speaker 1: artistic things. So these platforms are based on the aesthetics

1772
01:44:01,640 --> 01:44:05,720
Speaker 1: of mass culture, and that original group of people on

1773
01:44:05,760 --> 01:44:09,120
Speaker 1: the Internet are quite disappointed with it, and and a

1774
01:44:09,160 --> 01:44:12,320
Speaker 1: lot of this idea of cultural stasis it comes from

1775
01:44:12,479 --> 01:44:15,679
Speaker 1: cultural elites. It does not come from you know, eighteen

1776
01:44:15,760 --> 01:44:17,920
Speaker 1: year old kids are not saying, oh wow, the culture stuck.

1777
01:44:18,000 --> 01:44:20,280
Speaker 1: They're fine, they're on TikTok, they're having a good time.

1778
01:44:20,800 --> 01:44:24,280
Speaker 1: So that group is disappointed with the direction the Internet

1779
01:44:24,280 --> 01:44:28,680
Speaker 1: has gone. And either the Internet splinters a little bit

1780
01:44:28,680 --> 01:44:31,800
Speaker 1: where you start getting these social media platforms only for

1781
01:44:31,840 --> 01:44:34,840
Speaker 1: that group that really have barriers to injury, so they

1782
01:44:34,840 --> 01:44:37,479
Speaker 1: don't become mass platforms. But that's not a particularly good

1783
01:44:37,479 --> 01:44:39,879
Speaker 1: business model because the business model of all these platforms

1784
01:44:39,920 --> 01:44:42,240
Speaker 1: is scale. So if your Instagram and you only have

1785
01:44:42,240 --> 01:44:44,120
Speaker 1: creative costs people, well that doesn't work. You've got to

1786
01:44:44,320 --> 01:44:48,120
Speaker 1: have everybody. You've got to bring everyone's mom on. So

1787
01:44:48,960 --> 01:44:53,519
Speaker 1: uh if if the money is made in lowest common

1788
01:44:53,520 --> 01:44:56,080
Speaker 1: denominator taste in order to get as many people as possible,

1789
01:44:56,400 --> 01:45:00,360
Speaker 1: the Internet is not home two people with niche taste

1790
01:45:00,400 --> 01:45:05,320
Speaker 1: because there isn't a way to escape it, to say, oh, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook,

1791
01:45:05,320 --> 01:45:09,559
Speaker 1: these are all platforms only for the masses. I'm over

1792
01:45:09,640 --> 01:45:11,559
Speaker 1: here the way that I think there used to be

1793
01:45:11,600 --> 01:45:15,759
Speaker 1: with with magazines. We all still care about our success

1794
01:45:15,760 --> 01:45:18,160
Speaker 1: on these platforms. We were told, especially if you're creating things,

1795
01:45:18,160 --> 01:45:20,120
Speaker 1: you have to market yourself on this platform so people

1796
01:45:20,160 --> 01:45:23,560
Speaker 1: can't escape it. So either you get a movement offline

1797
01:45:24,200 --> 01:45:28,760
Speaker 1: and that people return to their cultural experiences being offline.

1798
01:45:29,160 --> 01:45:31,800
Speaker 1: And what's nice about online is you can show that

1799
01:45:31,880 --> 01:45:33,639
Speaker 1: you've done this thing offline, so there was an article

1800
01:45:33,640 --> 01:45:37,560
Speaker 1: in The Atlantic recently, um where you know, restaurant reservations

1801
01:45:37,720 --> 01:45:42,120
Speaker 1: are the hot new thing, and they're hot because it's scarce.

1802
01:45:42,160 --> 01:45:44,880
Speaker 1: It's real life, it's physical. You could only certain amount

1803
01:45:44,880 --> 01:45:46,519
Speaker 1: of people every night. You can go to this restaurant.

1804
01:45:46,760 --> 01:45:50,240
Speaker 1: At the same time, you can use Instagram to show

1805
01:45:50,240 --> 01:45:53,160
Speaker 1: that you've been to that restaurant. So using online to

1806
01:45:53,880 --> 01:45:57,000
Speaker 1: show your offline exploits, I think is one direction. This

1807
01:45:57,040 --> 01:45:59,200
Speaker 1: is going to go quickly, but I could see a

1808
01:45:59,280 --> 01:46:02,519
Speaker 1: growing cultural movement of just offline activity. You had to

1809
01:46:02,520 --> 01:46:05,080
Speaker 1: be there, and that's that is going to be where

1810
01:46:05,080 --> 01:46:07,519
Speaker 1: the real status is because that's the way it used

1811
01:46:07,560 --> 01:46:12,080
Speaker 1: to work other otherwise. I think these communities that are

1812
01:46:12,120 --> 01:46:15,880
Speaker 1: interested in niche artistic culture, I mean, there's lots of niche,

1813
01:46:16,320 --> 01:46:20,120
Speaker 1: weird things that aren't artistic, but the kind of people

1814
01:46:20,160 --> 01:46:23,760
Speaker 1: doing the invention that moves culture forward, there has to

1815
01:46:23,800 --> 01:46:27,200
Speaker 1: be spaces for them to experiment and be rewarded for it.

1816
01:46:27,280 --> 01:46:30,240
Speaker 1: And the current state of the Internet is not there.

1817
01:46:30,320 --> 01:46:32,360
Speaker 1: It may have been there maybe twenty years ago, but

1818
01:46:32,360 --> 01:46:34,280
Speaker 1: it's not there now, and so there will be some

1819
01:46:34,360 --> 01:46:38,640
Speaker 1: sort of new movement or exodus. But that also presumes

1820
01:46:38,680 --> 01:46:41,040
Speaker 1: that people who are eighteen right now want to do

1821
01:46:41,200 --> 01:46:44,600
Speaker 1: cultural invention the way that my generation wanted to or

1822
01:46:44,720 --> 01:46:46,559
Speaker 1: you know, I was listening to a lot of weird music,

1823
01:46:46,560 --> 01:46:49,280
Speaker 1: and I wanted to make weird music. But I don't

1824
01:46:49,280 --> 01:46:51,240
Speaker 1: know if eighteen year old kids are listening to weird

1825
01:46:51,280 --> 01:46:54,120
Speaker 1: things and want to make weird things. Okay, just going

1826
01:46:54,160 --> 01:46:58,559
Speaker 1: back one step, you talked about people watching movies and

1827
01:46:58,720 --> 01:47:03,519
Speaker 1: constantly looking at a clock. I resonate with that. That

1828
01:47:03,720 --> 01:47:05,920
Speaker 1: is me. If I'm watching with my girlfriend, I can

1829
01:47:05,920 --> 01:47:09,559
Speaker 1: watch anything. If I'm watching alone, it's a real pain

1830
01:47:09,800 --> 01:47:13,799
Speaker 1: to sit through it. If it's fantastic, that's not usually

1831
01:47:13,800 --> 01:47:18,240
Speaker 1: the issue. But there's very little that's fantastic. What is

1832
01:47:18,280 --> 01:47:21,960
Speaker 1: really going on? Why am I looking at the clock

1833
01:47:22,040 --> 01:47:28,040
Speaker 1: or stopping? You know, there are probably scientific studies on this,

1834
01:47:28,160 --> 01:47:31,439
Speaker 1: but I think it seems like our our attention spans

1835
01:47:31,479 --> 01:47:34,920
Speaker 1: are shorter, just in the sense of sitting there for

1836
01:47:34,960 --> 01:47:38,200
Speaker 1: an hour not checking your phone has become quite difficult,

1837
01:47:38,920 --> 01:47:41,719
Speaker 1: and you know, sitting through anything for two hours straight

1838
01:47:41,840 --> 01:47:43,680
Speaker 1: has become difficult. I feel like if I'm in a

1839
01:47:43,720 --> 01:47:45,519
Speaker 1: movie theater, I can get very into it. When I

1840
01:47:45,560 --> 01:47:49,519
Speaker 1: was watching Dune or something I was in, but at

1841
01:47:49,560 --> 01:47:51,680
Speaker 1: home you're just so distractive by the things around you,

1842
01:47:51,760 --> 01:47:53,360
Speaker 1: and you know you can stop, and so if you

1843
01:47:53,400 --> 01:47:55,639
Speaker 1: know you can stop, you stop. So I think that's

1844
01:47:55,680 --> 01:47:59,559
Speaker 1: one of them. The other is, you know, the model.

1845
01:48:00,680 --> 01:48:03,879
Speaker 1: I don't know what the exact business model is anymore,

1846
01:48:03,880 --> 01:48:06,679
Speaker 1: but it used to be you're gonna make ten movies

1847
01:48:06,720 --> 01:48:09,200
Speaker 1: in a year. You're you have no idea what's going

1848
01:48:09,240 --> 01:48:14,280
Speaker 1: to hit, and so you give ten people, uh, you say,

1849
01:48:14,320 --> 01:48:17,000
Speaker 1: go off and do these things. And one of them

1850
01:48:17,040 --> 01:48:20,639
Speaker 1: is David Lynch. And David Lynch makes a really weird

1851
01:48:20,800 --> 01:48:22,439
Speaker 1: movie with your money and you don't make any money

1852
01:48:22,520 --> 01:48:25,000
Speaker 1: from it, but you there's a David Lynch movie in

1853
01:48:25,000 --> 01:48:29,560
Speaker 1: the world, And the question is whether studios or everybody.

1854
01:48:29,600 --> 01:48:33,360
Speaker 1: Because it's so data driven, they got smarter and they thought,

1855
01:48:33,400 --> 01:48:36,000
Speaker 1: I'm not this David Lynch movie is definitely not going

1856
01:48:36,040 --> 01:48:37,840
Speaker 1: to be a hit. You know, just because Elephant Man

1857
01:48:38,240 --> 01:48:40,479
Speaker 1: was a hit doesn't mean Wild and Heart is going

1858
01:48:40,560 --> 01:48:43,920
Speaker 1: to be hit. So you don't give new David Lynch's movies.

1859
01:48:44,520 --> 01:48:46,280
Speaker 1: But then the question is are there a bunch of

1860
01:48:46,360 --> 01:48:48,240
Speaker 1: David lynch Is out there that we're just they're not

1861
01:48:48,280 --> 01:48:50,200
Speaker 1: getting funding. I don't know about that. I think the

1862
01:48:50,280 --> 01:48:54,840
Speaker 1: next generation is a lot more savvy and a lot

1863
01:48:54,920 --> 01:48:57,920
Speaker 1: less artistic minded in that really classic Aumant Guard way,

1864
01:48:58,000 --> 01:49:01,480
Speaker 1: And so you have a lot you have fewer creations

1865
01:49:01,520 --> 01:49:03,559
Speaker 1: that are probably from that world, you have the studio

1866
01:49:03,640 --> 01:49:05,960
Speaker 1: funding fewer of them, and then you have less patients

1867
01:49:06,000 --> 01:49:07,400
Speaker 1: from it, and then it comes out and of course

1868
01:49:07,400 --> 01:49:09,479
Speaker 1: it's not a hit because no one's gonna watch that

1869
01:49:09,520 --> 01:49:11,479
Speaker 1: kind of thing anyway. So the whole ecosystem is just

1870
01:49:11,600 --> 01:49:15,400
Speaker 1: not set up for some sort of movie that is

1871
01:49:15,439 --> 01:49:17,439
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything like it before. I have to

1872
01:49:17,479 --> 01:49:20,479
Speaker 1: turn away. And also we're we can turn away, and

1873
01:49:20,520 --> 01:49:23,800
Speaker 1: if the first ten minutes you don't like it, um,

1874
01:49:24,080 --> 01:49:26,519
Speaker 1: you will turn turn away. I mean, I can't imagine

1875
01:49:26,560 --> 01:49:30,639
Speaker 1: someone watching a Razorhead right now and being gripped by

1876
01:49:30,640 --> 01:49:32,680
Speaker 1: and say, I gotta, I gotta keep watching this thing.

1877
01:49:32,680 --> 01:49:34,880
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's so slow. You have to really

1878
01:49:35,040 --> 01:49:37,639
Speaker 1: be disciplined to keep going. But if you're at an

1879
01:49:37,640 --> 01:49:39,720
Speaker 1: indie theater and it's nineteen and I don't know when

1880
01:49:39,680 --> 01:49:42,559
Speaker 1: it is, it's a late night theater, and you you

1881
01:49:42,680 --> 01:49:44,960
Speaker 1: go and it's the only culture you have in your city,

1882
01:49:45,320 --> 01:49:48,400
Speaker 1: You're gonna sit there and watch it, okay, And how

1883
01:49:48,479 --> 01:49:51,200
Speaker 1: much of it is the form has changed. Yes, so

1884
01:49:51,240 --> 01:49:56,599
Speaker 1: I can get bites online that are brief, and that's

1885
01:49:56,680 --> 01:50:00,200
Speaker 1: the new format and relevant of attention span is just

1886
01:50:00,360 --> 01:50:03,440
Speaker 1: more rewarding. I'm gonna want to get into science and dopamine,

1887
01:50:04,120 --> 01:50:08,120
Speaker 1: but is what people are looking for generally speaking different.

1888
01:50:10,400 --> 01:50:14,200
Speaker 1: It has most definitely conditioned us to want things very

1889
01:50:14,240 --> 01:50:16,760
Speaker 1: very quickly. I know that when a YouTube video hits

1890
01:50:16,760 --> 01:50:19,519
Speaker 1: about ninety seconds and goes beyond that, I think this

1891
01:50:19,560 --> 01:50:22,679
Speaker 1: is the longest video that's ever existed, and I fade out.

1892
01:50:23,120 --> 01:50:27,080
Speaker 1: So it's very strange. It's it's very strange that ninety

1893
01:50:27,080 --> 01:50:29,000
Speaker 1: seconds is about all we're willing to give us something.

1894
01:50:29,080 --> 01:50:31,720
Speaker 1: But also you know, you're often recommended it or it

1895
01:50:31,880 --> 01:50:35,360
Speaker 1: pops up on your feed, and you're not bought in.

1896
01:50:35,479 --> 01:50:37,240
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not in a place where you're going

1897
01:50:37,240 --> 01:50:38,679
Speaker 1: to sit there and say, I'm gonna watch a thirty

1898
01:50:38,680 --> 01:50:42,280
Speaker 1: minute movie. You're just trying to kill time for five minutes,

1899
01:50:42,280 --> 01:50:43,960
Speaker 1: and this is gonna be ninety seconds of it. So

1900
01:50:44,000 --> 01:50:46,200
Speaker 1: you really don't want anything that's ninety seconds. But we

1901
01:50:46,240 --> 01:50:49,080
Speaker 1: consider that time to be cultural consumption in a way

1902
01:50:49,120 --> 01:50:51,600
Speaker 1: that I think before, if you watch the film, you

1903
01:50:51,640 --> 01:50:55,040
Speaker 1: were going to sit, sit down at seven pm and

1904
01:50:55,160 --> 01:50:58,000
Speaker 1: pop pop the you know, VC pop the cassette into

1905
01:50:58,040 --> 01:51:01,960
Speaker 1: the VCR and watch a movie. Where today we're just

1906
01:51:02,880 --> 01:51:06,360
Speaker 1: thinking about our entertainment time. It's filling it with just

1907
01:51:06,479 --> 01:51:11,000
Speaker 1: what comes up, not by being intentional, um it's different

1908
01:51:11,040 --> 01:51:13,639
Speaker 1: by person by person, but the fact that so many

1909
01:51:13,680 --> 01:51:16,639
Speaker 1: people have reported that they can't get through long things,

1910
01:51:16,720 --> 01:51:20,880
Speaker 1: it does seem to be a plague of our times. Well, thanks, David,

1911
01:51:20,880 --> 01:51:22,639
Speaker 1: I think we've come to the end of the feeling

1912
01:51:22,760 --> 01:51:26,559
Speaker 1: we've known. This has been fascinating. You and me could

1913
01:51:27,479 --> 01:51:31,240
Speaker 1: express opinions and go over these issues for days, but

1914
01:51:31,280 --> 01:51:33,920
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be today. So and Nanny event thanks

1915
01:51:33,960 --> 01:51:36,640
Speaker 1: so much for taking this time with me. Thank you

1916
01:51:36,680 --> 01:51:38,320
Speaker 1: so much for having me. It's an honored to talk

1917
01:51:38,360 --> 01:51:40,200
Speaker 1: to you. I've been a big fan of the newsletter

1918
01:51:40,240 --> 01:51:43,439
Speaker 1: for a long time. Until next time. This is Bob

1919
01:51:43,520 --> 01:51:44,120
Speaker 1: Leftstax