“The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.” So claimed T. S. Eliot in his iconic essay “Hamlet and His Problems.” And what’s true of Hamlet is doubly true for the New York Times‘ Modern Love column. This recurring essay feature aspires to represent emotion in the form of art, but with a 2000-word length limit, plus there’s no sex scenes or cussing allowed. To put things into perspective, this it what it sounds like when an essayist describes their love story in literal language: “We went to the beach and swam, held hands at the Fourth of July fireworks, went on roller coasters at Six Flags, ate Thanksgiving dinner with each other’s families, exchanged gifts on Christmas. We cried when I had to leave for long periods of time.” Fascinating. No, this will not do: If you wish to interest the world in your banal tale of romantic disappointment, you must take Eliot’s advice. You need a metaphor. You need a symbol. You need an objective correlative for those ineffable emotions. Like this: Continue reading “Crazy Love III”
Tag: Sex
The Bruni Bible; or How to Write a New York Times Editorial
Frank Bruni’s accession to the position of New York Times editorialist was announced in May by Andrew Rosenthal (no relation to former chief editor A.M. Rosenthal) (just kidding, he’s his son). The op-ed page editor suggested that Bruni was qualified by virtue of his ability to provide a “sharp, opinionated look at a big event of the last week, from a different or unexpected angle, or a small event that was really important but everyone seems to have missed, or something entirely different,” presumably involving a medium-sized event. Further lending gravitas is that fact that the former restaurant critic’s NYT career has “spanned…part of a papacy.” (This is true of many events, but it does sound impressive: “We’ve been sitting here for part of a papacy, waiting for our appetizers! This service is atrocious!”)
In the six months that followed, the papacy-spanning pundit has been called “a pretty bad columnist,” denounced as inane, unreadable, and an unqualified poseur, vilified for his lack of arithmetic skills and contempt for substantive issues; it’s even been suggested that he doesn’t know he’s writing for the Times at all.
But I believe he does. Oh, he knows it all too well. Whatever his faults of relevance or coherence, Bruni’s work is distinguished for its firm grasp of the New York Times house style — that mélange of dad-joke whimsy, inspiring truisms, fake sociology, celebrity snark, magnificent scorn for the lowbrow, and horse-race election reporting, all united by a pervading tone of NPR blandness and upper-middle-class obliviousness. Frank Bruni’s writing could appear scrawled on a bathroom wall, or crumpled in a bottle that washed up on the beach, or blazoned in the sky in letters of fire, and you’d still be like “is that from the New York Times?” (Although you might mistake it for Gentzlinger.)
So by understanding Bruni’s literary techniques, we’ll understand the essence of the Times editorial page. In no particular order, here they are.
Continue reading “The Bruni Bible; or How to Write a New York Times Editorial”
What Not to Wear: From Hot-Pants Trashy to Pinafore Classy, the New York Times Way!
It may sometimes seem like women face an impossible task: Whether it’s motherhood, professional life or just walking down the street, ladies are vulnerable to the conflicting demands and judgmental expectations of society. A woman is liable to be judged on tiny details — of speech, behavior, even the clothes she wears — and must negotiate the conflicting dangers of being labeled too butch or too feminine, too assertive or too timid, too prudish or too sexy.
But if you think that sounds hard, it’s nothing compared to what New York Times writers have to deal with. Just look at the first sentence of Ruth La Ferla’s article “Women Enjoy the Cool Comfort of Summer Dresses“: “Trends come and go, but the dress persists, secure in its status as a metaphor.”
Why Does the New York Times Hate Fun?
The New York Times has a strange idea of fun. They seem eager to give me, the reader, tips on enjoyable things to do with my free time. But the activities suggested aren’t always so relevant to my interests. I could become an influential industry bigwig, then spend years befriending club promoters and buying $1000 “bottle service” to earn myself a permanent spot on the guest list at a trendy night club. I could go to an exhibition of designer nightstands featuring such artists as Sting. (“I liked the idea to let men conjure up their story for the nightstand. It’s almost role reversal,” says the curator.) Or stop in at a racist country club to sample a delicacy called a “frozen tomato” that consists of “essentially tomato ice cream (except, instead of cream, it’s got cream cheese, cottage cheese and mayonnaise), served in a round scoop on a lettuce leaf with a dollop of more mayonnaise on top).” I could collect Victorian taxidermy, or knit Brobdignagian cozies for public statuary.
Still, for every bizarre activity that they praise, there is another relatively harmless pastime they disparage. Why? Maybe it’s too lowbrow. Maybe it’s because the fans of said pastime are presumed to be illiterate proles who don’t understand the consequences of their actions. Or maybe it’s for the opposite reason — the pastime is question has gotten too popular with the hip, trend-chasing urbanites whom the writers fondly imagine comprise their core readership. There must be something dangerous about it. But what? In a selection of recent articles, we’ll explore how Times scribes find fear in the benign.
Crazy Love II
Love has always proved a difficult subject for NYT writers to tackle. Having existed for over 50,000 years, long before the beginning of recorded human history, it cannot be convincingly described as a “trend.” It could even be said defy trends, outlasting all epochs, regimes, reigns, administrations, and empires. It’s a human universal! That is all very inspiring, but poses difficulties for the Styles scribes, who have a paradigm that — while perfectly serviceable when men’s eyebrow grooming appointments go up 8 percent between 2009 and 2010, or some such — lacks explanatory power when dealing with with time frames in the tens of thousands of years.
Are trend pieces the only option? No. If you want to explain the vagaries of affection to Styles readers, you could turn to another perennial format, the one that I call “article about a press release.” Specifically, an article about a press release about a scientific study, a study that is about something of interest to Styles readers. Creating an AAAPR(AASS) is easy, because all you have to do is read the one-age press release, paraphrase what it says, and add in some Jersey Shore references. You don’t have to weigh conflicting opinions and reach an independent conclusion, or read a bunch of relevant scientific work in the field, or even read the one scientific work that the article is about. Just summarize the press release, and bam, you’re a Science Reporter, using all kinds of cool words like “hypothesize” and “control group.” Science is great!
Wrong: A Typology
Some of the problems with the New York Times are nebulous and diffuse. The writers’ tone can seem kind of smug and suck-uppy. They write about rich people too much. They care way too much about iPhones and hipsters and artisanal axes and stuff. Yet none of these things are wrong, exactly. It’s not incorrect to write that a man in TriBeCa is crafting beautiful handmade “urban axes,” as indeed he is. Yet some claims and ideas in the Times aren’t just annoying; they’re concretely, satisfyingly wrong. That is what we’ll be looking at today. How many kinds of wrongness are there in Times articles, and what form do they take?
Crazy Love
Michael Leviton is a New York musician and author who has a children’s book forthcoming from Hyperion next year. The video above gives you an idea of his worldview: It features accordion and glockenspiel, warbly soprano vocals, and lyrics about how all the normal beautiful people are having fun in the summertime but the speaker is lonely and disillusioned because he’s so quirky, unique and sensitive. The video contributes to the atmosphere, spinning a nostalgic yarn about a 1940’s sailor who falls in love with an emaciated mermaid and is lured by her coquetry to a watery grave. I posted it on my Facebook page, and one music fan was moved to comment on the song’s “incoherent lyrics, extremely amateurish singing, and worst of all, an acoustic guitar (technically ukulele) with which absolutely nothing interesting is done,” observing that “Benjamin Franklin invented electricity for a reason.” I think it sounds like an imitation of parody of a Stephen Merritt/Belle and Sebastien cover band. You might like it, though!
Why am I telling you about Michael Leviton? Because he is the author of the latest “Modern Love,” and the subject of this post. But before looking at his writing, let me shift gears for a moment. Why do people write embarrassing stuff about themselves? Everyone has done dumb stuff they feel bad about, but why publish it for all the world? It’s hard to say. Yet autobiography, memoir and standup comedy would all be impossible without the speaker’s penitential urge to be bracingly honest. No one wants to read a story about how you went to Stanford, didn’t do drugs, got a job at a financial firm, bought a Prius, and married someone just as upwardly mobile as you. Or maybe they do, if you’re in the New York Times wedding pages, but that doesn’t make it interesting. So it’s lucky we have some writers who feel compelled to tell the ugly truth.
Happiness the Sunday Styles Way: A “Hard Look” at the Way We Live Now
The New York Times has much to offer that is not worthy of hatred. Within the US, International, Local and Business sections, there is a wealth of informative coverage of the world around us — “news,” if you will. Why, then, do we return again and again to the Styles section, again and again to be disappointed? What is the true purpose of the Styles section? What is it doing next to all those other sections, and why can’t we just throw it away? Well, I’ll tell you why. The Styles section (and the Magazine, and T the fashion magazine) is far from extraneous. These sections have news to transmit, albeit more ineffable and subjective than that which you’ll find in the “A” section. The tidings they bring are about our lives, here in the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century: How are mores and manners shifting? how are we changing? how is technology changing us? and how we should feel about it all? These sections help us make sense of it. Their subject is (hip, urban, upper-middle-class) humanity itself. They may be vapid, but they are dear to our hearts.
But what answers do the Styles section and the Magazine really give? Below, I analyze a selection of pieces from this Sunday. I will extract the conclusion or “moral” each piece offers, and we’ll see if any patterns emerge.
We’ll start with Randy Cohen’s latest. Randy Cohen writes a column called “The Ethicist,” in which he advises readers on morally significant decisions. His qualifications to do this are that he has a B.A. in music and is an “Emmy-winning humorist,” although I suppose he’d be just as ineffectual if he had a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard. There’s something reassuring about his lack of credentials, though. If you don’t like Cohen’s ethico-philosophical worldview, you can feel free to ignore it, because he’s just some guy.
I remember Cohen best for the column in which he asserted that “nobody should attend strip clubs, those purveyors of sexism as entertainment. Strip shows are to gender what minstrel shows are to race.” That’s a nice analogy, because think about it. Minstrel shows were a form of traveling variety show enjoyed by multiracial audiences in the 1800’s and early years of the 1910’s. They gave many talented black musicians, actors and comedians a chance to succeed as professional artists, yet also forced them to perform degrading caricatures of blackness for the benefit of their white spectators. If everyone had boycotted minstrel shows, these black artists would have been able to… go back to cotton sharecropping! Thus bringing about an end to racism. Similarly, boycotting strip clubs would help the women’s movement by putting a bunch of single moms out of work. Why am I comparing these two things, again?
Don’t get me wrong, I think Cohen should following his personal moral compass on this issue. As a feminist, I would never want to go to a strip club with Randy Cohen.
This week Cohen is at it again with the milquetoast-y pronouncements. Someone writes in saying they don’t spank their kids, but have been asked by friends to spank their kids “when they are playing at our house and misbehave.” Cohen says they don’t have to:
Many parents are militant in defense of their putative right to discipline their children as they see fit: with a sound thrashing. But conversely, your friends may not impose their Neanderthal parenting practices on you…. When you [tell them] that, you probably ought not mention that spanking is banned or restricted in 22 countries. Such facts will only irritate them. (And you should avoid the word ‘Neanderthal.’) Parents can be so prickly. Here in America, most people believe it is a fine thing to beat children, as long as you employ the accepted euphemism, ‘spanking,’ and are the child’s parent. (A similar justification was once applied to spousal abuse.)
Actually, I kind of love that Randy Cohen exists. It is a rare writer who can make a person like me — someone who goes to graduate school, drinks Starbucks Via and gets one hundred e-mails a day from MoveOn.com — feel like a flag-waving mama grizzly Hell’s Angel rebel. Don’t tell me not to spank my kids, you pantywaist! I’m not gonna let some Liberal fascist feminazi communist Canadian Al Gore-hugger tell me how to raise my kids! I almost can’t wait to have kids, just so I can start spanking them (moderately) (in cases of extraordinary disobedience). Don’t Tread on Me! Live free or die tryin’! You’ll pry this imaginary gun out of my cold, dead hands! I’ll put a boot up your ass, it’s the American way!
Moral: Don’t spank kids, don’t go to strip clubs.
Up next, “Out and About: Cruising the Caribbean.” This piece argues that “cruise ship food doesn’t have to be bad.” “Qsine’s approach is high tech and high concept. The menu, with a lineup of small bites — or food to be shared — is presented on an iPad, through which each diner scrolls to select his favorites…. For dessert, the options are presented in a Rubik’s cube-like puzzle. Shift the boxes around and reveal ‘The Cupcake Affair,’ four cakes with do-it-yourself sauces and garnishes.”
Moral: The next time you’re planning a luxury cruise, hold out for one with gourmet meals.
“TV Right-Sizes 3D” by Virginia Heffernan. “In deciding whether to buy one of the new, ludicrously cool 3-D TVs — some of which won’t even require special glasses — ask yourself a serious question: Do you like your entertainment in front of you, inside your body or all around you?” Um… are you sure that’s really what you meant to ask me? That’s a very very… intimate topic! A penetrating question, if you will! I’ll take the second one.
Moral: Buy a 3D TV immediately, unless you’d rather just fuck.
Social Q’s. Someone writes in to Galanes complaining that their daughter (apparently of high school age) is dressing “trampy.” He responds: “We don’t want your little girl mistaken for a hooker as she waits for the school bus. Horns of a dilemma, right?” Anyone who would mistake a student waiting at the bus stop for a “hooker” is probably not a reliable arbiter of youth fashion, anyway. Galanes suggests a way for the parent get perspective on the situation: “Drive over to your daughter’s school and take a hard look at what the other girls are wearing.” Yes. There is no more welcome sight on the high school campus than an adult cruising around the parking lot, taking a “hard look” at the female students. You might want to take the family van, in case a couple of those girls needs a ride! Teenage girls can be shy, so don’t hesitate to ask. Some of them might need painkillers for their menstrual cramps, so try yelling “WANT SOME DRUGS?” at them to get their attention. Let me know how this goes.
As for the daughter in questions, “set reasonable limits: blouses three inches above the nipple line.” Nipple “line”? It’s a circle, Galanes, a circle! I knew none of these guys had ever seen a naked woman. “And save those mini minis and four-inch heels for 11th Avenue, not home room.” Is anyone else creeped out by all these references to someone’s “little girl” becoming a prostitute? Galanes is not an “edgy” humorist; he cannot transition easily from anodyne gags about old sitcoms to statutory-rape jokes. Also, the vast majority of women you see wearing skimpy or revealing clothing are not prostitutes. Galanes must be a barrel of fun at cocktail parties, though. “Pardon me, madam, that’s a lovely pair of boots! Didn’t I see you wearing them earlier on the corner of 28th and Lexington?”
“”Keep her safe, but let her express herself, too.” “Safe”? From what, nipple-line frostbite? Oh wait, I get it… from rapists, against whom the only impregnable defense is modest clothing. No man would be so beastly as to victimize a woman with the mouth-watering three inches above her nipples covered up.
Moral for girls: Don’t dress trampy, or bad men will rape you. Moral for parents: Go to the high school and check out all the trampy chicks!
“What ‘Modern Family’ Says About Modern Families,” Bruce Fiedler. “In his 1964 book ‘Understanding Media,’ Marshall McLuhan helped define the modern age with his phrase, ‘The medium is the message.’ Were he here nearly 50 years later, the critic would hardly be surprised to discover that in the most talked-about sitcom of the moment, the medium has become the punch line.”
Moral: You should watch Modern Family because it holds a mirror up to your techno-savvy, upper-middle-class lifestyle. Also, Bruce Fiedler is an intellectual.
“MTV’s Naked Calculation Gone Bad,” David Carr. This article chronicles the problems MTV has caused by itself by airing the controversial show Skins. “What if one day you went to work and there was a meeting to discuss whether the project you were working on crossed the line into child pornography? You’d probably think you had ended up in the wrong room. [DRAMATIC PARAGRAPH BREAK.] And you’d be right.” Wouldn’t I actually be wrong, if I worked for MTV, and we were being accused of violating child pornography statutes, which is what this scenario is all about? Oh, never mind.
Carr is in a moral panic about this show. To be sure, “MTV didn’t invent ‘friends with benefits’ [or] oral sex as the new kiss.” Man, I’d like to see a profile on the guy who invented oral sex as the new kiss. Now that’d be a trend piece I could get behind, am I right? LOL! That guy is responsible for so many cold sores. Here we are wasting time on this stupid Skins show, while a much more sinister figure lurks in the darkness of anonymity. He’s like the huge cocaine kingpin who gets rich and hangs out on a yacht in Miami, while all the little neighborhood crack dealers get prison time.
“The self-described ‘Guidos’ and ‘Guidettes’ of ‘Jersey Shore,’ MTV’s breakout hit, have probably already set some kind of record for meaningless sex.” Gratuitous Jersey Shore reference alert! The “record” for meaningless sex was probably set by some gay dude on Fire Island in 1978. Still, it’s helpful to have David Carr around, weighing in on how much “meaning” other people’s sexual experiences should have.
“MTV leaves it to real-life parents to explain that sometimes, when a car goes underwater, nobody survives and that a quick hookup with cute boy at the party may deliver a sexually transmitted disease along with a momentary thrill.” Or… they could just use condoms? I am not joking right now. Actually kind of mad that the paper of record is resorting to scary metaphors straight out of an abstinence-only classroom to demonize young people’s sexuality.
Moral: Don’t watch Skins; don’t have sex or you’ll die of STDs and drown in a car.
“On the Street: X Factor,” Bill Cunningham. This is that weird collage of half-inch fashion pictures. “Every era has a defining stance, and at present, it is standing with your legs crossed, like a model or a dancer en pointe. The key to the look is the ankle boot, some with platforms and stiletto heels.”
Moral: You’re not standing right. Go buy some Christian Louboutin ankle boots.
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Meta-moral: The lesson I take away from all this is that we live in a time of great opportunity, yet also great danger. This era is exciting, because innovations like 3D televisions, gourmet Caribbean cruise cupcakes, and Christian Louboutin booties are available to all, except people who don’t have a combined total of $16,299.98 to spend on them. It is terrifying, because raunchy television shows, hookup culture, unrestrained oral sex and scantily clad young women are undermining the very fabric of the society in which we live. Yikes! But no matter how bad things get, pseudointellectual theorizing and half-assed social commentary are here to stay. The Styles section will never die.
Motherhood: The Most Dangerous Trend
First, some links:
The Most E-mailed New York Times Article Ever. David Parker’s brilliant parody of NYT Trend pieces has been linked all over the internet, and may have even found its way to your computer screen! Is 2011 the year that hating the New York Times goes viral? If so, remember that I was here first! I’ve been doing this since early January!
Accordingly, I have started a page for this blog on Facebook, the popular social networking website. Please join!
News on the Glamorous High Life: The business section reports that the bottom has quite simply fallen out of the superyacht market. The article keeps nattering on about how yachts are “the ultimate status symbol,” but is that really the main reason people buy them? In my town right now now, it’s 10 degrees, windy, and there’s dirty slush all over the place. I would greatly enjoy being out in the Pacific, in a hot tub on the deck of a yacht, even if it was not considered a high-status thing to do. Even if yachts were known as “the trailer parks of the sea,” I would still go. Say what you will about this country’s vastly wealthy ruling class, but they know how to have a good time. I don’t know why the New York Times keeps running them down so.
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the unmerited economic struggles and unpredictable woes of the privileged elite. But socioeconomic trends do not restrict themselves to the buyers of yachts, designer long johns and $1500 coffee tables. Trends reach out to touch the heart of every man and woman on this earth. No one can escape them. It matters not whether you’re a beleaguered superyacht seller or a bedraggled pregnant teen, someday you will come to recognize that your life is not truly your own — it is part of the vast communal striving after cultural relevance we all share. Our births, our joys and sorrows, our deaths — all of them bob like organic corks on the great ocean of trends we can Life. The Buddha taught in his Four Noble Truths that “life is trends; the origin of suffering is trends; understanding trends is attainable; there is a Path to the understanding of trends.” With this knowledge can come great suffering, or great peace.
Or, for readers of Alessandra Stanley’s “And Baby Makes Reality TV,” great confusion. Alessandra Stanley is a TV writer who has often been criticized for breaking the NY Times record for errors, although I don’t see why anyone should hold that against her; somebody’s got to be the worst. The article is an omnibus review of reality TV shows about pregnancy (16 and Pregnant, and so on). While it would have been challenging enough just to evaluate each of the shows and explain why they’re good or bad, Stanley doesn’t stop there (or even start there, really); she presents us with a review, a trend piece and a think piece all in one. It purports to explain what’s going on in the world of regular women having babies. Below, I explain the explanation.
“Motherhood, at least the way it is depicted on cable networks like MTV, TLC and even FitTV, is a menacing, grotesque fate that is mostly ill-timed…. Horror makes for easy entertainment, of course, so it’s hardly surprising that the maternity ward would be milked for bloodcurdling thrills in the way of weddings…weather…or travel.” Yeah but like, I bet you these shows reflect anxiety about pregnancy because women really are anxious about pregnancy. I’m no expert, but from what I understand about pregnancy, your feet swell up, you barf, your clothes don’t fit, a mean doctor tells you you can’t have any wine, and eventually a tiny little person starts hanging out in your apartment all the time, drinking from your nipples and yelling all the time. That sort of thing is pretty menacing all by itself, without the networks needing to gin up concern about it.
“But the growing number and lasting appeal of reality shows about fertility and babies reflect a particularly contemporary obsession. Focusing on the darker side of giving birth might seem at odds with the giddy cult of motherhood in popular culture.” Yes. Women have never been celebrated for motherhood or fertility before this precise historical moment. That is why you’ll notice that in the Bible, all the women are sexy secret agents or high-powered attorneys. Pregnancy and childbirth are kind of like fiber optics, or Yelp.
I do have a theory, though, about the mysterious paradox Stanley is adumbrating. Perhaps the fact that women are expected to feel relentlessly “giddy” and enthusiastic about motherhood… is the very reason they want to see media depictions of darker outcomes and more ambivalent attitudes. That is my sociological explanation of this phenomenon. I have solved the mystery! But we still have way more of this article to get through.
“Red-carpet reporters and tabloids stalk celebrity breeding as much as divorce or career misconduct; a ‘bump’ in Us Weekly or on TMZ refers to a pregnant starlet’s belly, not a professional roadblock.” Why would anyone expect it to refer to a “professional roadblock”? Surely Stanley originally wrote “…refers to a pregnant starlet’s belly, not a line of cocaine,” and her editor made her change it. So, I’ll give her credit for that one. That’s funny!
She starts explaining that in vitro fertilization is popular now, and the frightening baby shows somehow reflect that. “But beneath all those balloons, baby showers and HappyBaby organic food pouches lies a lurking dread, the anxiety that comes with cheating biological destiny.” Comes with cheating what? Because they’re trying to treat infertility?* That’s kind of strange, but I’ll try to make sense of it…. It’s like how people feel nervous before they go to the dentist, because they fear a hideous recompense from the gods for depriving them of their allotted toll of tooth decay and gingivitis. You’ll never escape destiny! Stop trying to vie with the immortals, you stupid yuppies!
And so it is with the barren women on TV. They should take a tip from all those high-powered attorneys I read about in the Bible: Veil yourself in shamefacedness, and betake yourself back unto your father’s abode so that your husband can find a more fecund helpmeet. Your husband will probably hook up with the maid… he’ll build a giant superyacht and go on a booze cruise with all your fertile sisters and cousins for 40 days and 40 nights… the joke is on him, though, because he’ll never sell that yacht in this economy, even unto the seventh generation. (Note to fact-checkers: I haven’t actually read the Bible, please correct as necessary.)
*Extra bonus question: Has Alessandra Stanley been hanging out with Ross Douthat? Her exciting ideas about how women should stop cheating fate by avoiding “the biological realities of being female” suggests Yes! Don’t date him girl, he’s a total player!
“Mary Shelley’s 19th-century novel ‘Frankenstein’ is often seen as a metaphor for a woman’s fear of childbirth and motherhood. Cable television cuts through the metaphor and channels deeper fears about tampering with nature.” Here we go again with the cultural references awkwardly shoehorned into an article. Stanley is “pulling a Heffernan” by making a high-class literary reference instead of a pop culture one, but that doesn’t make it any less random and annoying. These writers’ compulsion to make “intellectual” references reminds me of a story my parents once told me about some friends they had in the ’70s. It seems this couple invited my parents over to play the board game Trivial Pursuit: Genus Edition. The couple, though, mistakenly believed the game they had bought was titled Trivial Pursuit: Genius Edition, and that their ability to play it successfully was indicative of genius. Gratuitous literary references work in a similar way. When you indulge in them, you are playing Trivial Pursuit: Genius Edition. I am christening a new tag in its honor.
Anyway, Frankenstein was 1818. In the nearly two centuries that have passed since then, there have been a number of fictional works depicting anxieties about motherhood that Stanley could have referenced. Here, I’ll do it for her. “Classic films from Rosemary’s Baby to Alien have play on viewers’ fears about the more bizarre aspects of pregnancy and childbirth. Now, cable television {something something something}”. Not bad! Still not brilliant, but good enough for a passable first draft.
“Multiple pregnancies, along with cosmetic surgery, are arguably among the most visible — and startling — displays of scientific daring, be it artificially enhanced mothers like the 70-year-old Indian woman who in 2008 had twins after in vitro fertilization, or the drastic surgical makeover that turned Heidi Montag of ‘The Hills’ into a horror movie of her own making — ‘The Hills Have Eyelifts.'” Recent cultural reference alert! This sentence is a bit difficult to parse. It seems to suggest that Heidi Montag’s plastic surgeries are a form of “multiple pregnancy,” but that can’t be what was intended. I think it’s at that “be it” in the middle of the sentence that things start to go wrong. Maybe it’s a syllogism. Heidi Montag is a woman who had freakish plastic surgery… in vitro fertilization is a procedure that is also had by women… therefore all men are Socrates in vitro fertilization is freakish. Never mind, I get it now!
“Modern medicine has achieved more remarkable advances, but procedures like hip replacements or Dick Cheney’s mechanical heart pump aren’t as visible. There’s a pretty direct line in many people’s minds between double and triple strollers clogging the sidewalks of Park Slope, Brooklyn, and the Octomom.” Man, people are dicks! Guys, here’s a little exercise in compassion: The next time you see some adorable twins in a stroller, stop thinking about Dick Cheney, Heidi Montag and Frankenstein, and just smile at them. It’s not their fault their mother cheated destiny.
“It’s hard not to believe in a correlation between the recent decline in teenage pregnancies…and the rise in ratings for reality shows about pregnant teenagers…. No pamphlet or public service ad is more likely to encourage birth control than these MTV tableaus of maternal boredom, fatigue and loneliness.” Of course, the decline could also be the result of decades of hard work by feminists to make birth control widely accessible and diminish the culture of fear and shame surrounding sexuality that prevents women from taking control of their own fertility. But a TV critic thinks it’s because of TV, so that’s probably right. At least it didn’t turn out to be because of Facebook or earbuds or something.
Stanley summarizes some of the problems faced by the characters on Teen Mom 2. It’s all pretty simple and straightforward, and then the review ends with the following mystical zen koan: “It’s often said that it takes a village to raise a child. On cable television it takes a child to raise a child and women sometimes give birth to a village.” What the hell is that supposed to mean? I’m just trying to figure out what TV shows to watch, not attain enlightenment, you asshole! This is ridiculous! Sigh. There are some things this blog will never be able to explain.
The Magazine, the Medium, the Message: Virginia Heffernan’s Vook Manifesto
“Seriously, though: I will always remember 2008 as the year I finally gave up on the Sunday NY Times Magazine . . . LOL, good magazine, guys . . . it’s really become a “must-read” in my house . . . LOL, lots of great articles about how What I buy says about who I am(?) and how How I watch screens says what I like is really who I am(?)” — David Rees
“I read three paragraphs about absolutely nothing, and the forth paragraph began, ‘Take pilates.’ So I stopped.” — My boyfriend, on this article
When it comes to the content offered by the NYT Sunday Magazine, there is a certain lack of conceptual clarity. Within its pages, readers encounter a bevy of enthusiastic, articulate writers eager to present us with ideas about media, technology and Our Society; but as the epigraphs above suggest, there’s a thin line between a provocative new concept and a heap of stupefying drivel about nothing whatsoever. While the “how I watch screens says about who I am” model for constructing think-pieces is nearly ubiquitous–see, for example, this hard-hitting cover story about The Beatles: Rock Band–nowhere is this trend more pronounced then in the electronic virtual pages of Virginia Heffernan’s column “The Medium.”
Heffernan’s intended goal is to provide us with paradigm-shifting interpretations of the electronic digital e-culture we now inhabit. She would have us consider her an updated version of such revered cultural theorists as Susan Sontag, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard and Stanley Fish (<<— irony alert, no one reveres him), breasting the turbulent waves of internet culture with her titanic intellect. Auguring positively for this endeavor, she has a Ph.D. in English from Harvard University and once worked as a fact-checker for the New Yorker. On the minus side: She once recommended a climate change denialist blog because she “didn’t know” that’s what it was, once accused feminists of not caring about sex slavery, and once reported that Facebook was almost dead after a “user exodus.”
That was over a year ago, and it still hasn’t come to pass. So, perhaps her intellect is not all that titanic after all. But let’s not hold her up to an unreasonably high standard. Instead of comparing her to the intellectual icons of the twentieth century, let’s just look at her most recent column and ask a more basic question: Is it about anything at all, and if so, what?
Continue reading “The Magazine, the Medium, the Message: Virginia Heffernan’s Vook Manifesto”
I Hate the New York Times 