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Monday, April 11, 2005

Glotzerdämmerung

Posted by John Holbo on 04/11/05 at 05:30 AM

I'm glad to see Sean's Deadwood post getting a few comments (let it not be buried before it has lived): "Is there any doubt that historians will some day consider the 10 years or so flanking the recent turn of the century and regard it as an astonishing acme in the art of TV?" Isn't that a conversation starter? Joel Turnipseed pours gasoline on the bright thought in comments: "Many years ago, a friend of mine - whose father was in television - remarked among several of us drinking and talking of writing that, “no one writes better than tv writers now.”

Today I gave my final Nietzsche class of the semester. "The Case of Socrates" from Twilight of the Idols, which took me back to where we started, with "Schopenhauer as Educator", §3:

Everything contemporary is importunate; it affects and directs the eye even when the philosopher does not want it to; and in the total accounting it will involuntarily be appraised too high. That is why, when he compares his own age with other ages, the philosopher must deliberately under-assess it and, by overcoming the present in himself, also overcome it in the picture he gives of life, that is to say render it unremarkable and as it were paint it over.

By the time he writes Twilight, Nietzsche decides this sort of reflex negativity - pretending the present is worse than it is - is far from a wise tactic for securing critical autonomy and teleology; it is a piece of stupidity and probably unhealthy asceticism. (At least I think that's what he decides. He isn't worried about judgments of the value of pop culture, but of life. But life is a form of popular culture, really.) In other words, Nietzsche still subscribes to the above diagnosis of why folks won't agree with Sean's sensible judgment about the Golden Age of HBO. But he ceases to accept this as an excuse not to open your eyes - yes, not even if you feel overwhelmed and nauseated by and alienated from the sheer mass of contemporary pop culture. Go argue with Sean in his comment box. (Or maybe the reason you aren't arguing with Sean is that you've all figured out for yourselves that it's true about TV being good. In which case: good.)

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Monday, April 11, 2005

Glotzerdämmerung

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