I'm Out Of Touch With Modern Culture

I just read  in an online newspaper about the death of some fellow named Philip Seymore Hoffman. He was an actor who died from a drug overdose of heroine. He's another of those Hollywood people who play with drugs and die as a result. But then it's not a surprise. Hollywood people live in their own insular world and forget some of the very important things of the world outside of Hollywood, and that sometimes causes them great distress or even death.  What is revealing to me about this death is that it is yet another "important" celebrity in the news of which I had no awareness. The biography of Hoffman I just read says that he won an Academy Award. It's news to me, and confirms that I am largely out of touch with current entertainment, or for that matter, much of the "modern world" in which I live.

Show me a list of Granny Award winners, for example, and I would probably not have heard of the vast majority of the names? Nope! I know few of the pop culture stars, given that I rarely watch any movies that have been recently made. I don't listen to current music, see current film, or read books by trendy authors. In short, I am out of touch with the pop culture that is so pervasive.....and I am glad that I am. I think if I were not I would be driven mad, sitting in a corner listening to Justin Beiber while reading the latest Twilight Novel. Ugh! I hope someone will shoot me if that ever happens.

As we age we tend to lose interest in what is the common pop culture.  It must be that we have to, because as one experiences more of life he or she redefines his or her perspective.  Common perspectives today are driven, not by tradition and the over 30 group, but by the young. Uh, it is driven by the very young. It seems to me that current music and film is suited more to the 12 year old mentality than to what is traditional. It used to be that culture consisted of tradition with all else seen as a subculture. The culture was slow to change and more universal. Mores, folkways and attitudes were fairly consistent from one generation to the next. The youth culture was a separate one. Today the youth culture is the mainstream culture and what is traditional has become a subculture.

But my being out of touch feels good. We older types become smug and say the old culture is "better than the current one", though culture is subjective and should not be qualified that way. I think it must be our defense mechanism against the assaults of Bruno Mars and that ilk. And I suppose my parents and their parents, and so on, also felt the current culture to be more coarse and less uplifting than their own. It is probably a good thing, as is my not knowing who Philip Hoffman was.  Though I am sorry about his death I frankly don't give a damn about the culture he represented.