An Important Piece for Perspective...

[GermanBlitzkrieg]

Just something to think about...

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=43088

[Drbio]

For those who like me wish the article was posted here.....



Arguably, the biggest problem in American culture today is the fact that mere entertainers are its heroes. There is no precedent in any civilization in the history of the world for entertainers – actors, singers, dancers and directors – to be elevated to the highest positions of prominence in the culture. That's why none of us can name actors and actresses from ancient Greece or Rome. They weren't important enough to be remembered.

Sure, we can name the playwrights and we can name the satirists. We can name the politicians, the philosophers and the generals. Because literary, academic, political and military figures were always the personalities who dominated the cultural landscape. Whatever you thought of these pursuits – and many of the ancient conquerors were highly immoral men – their pursuits were at least consequential.


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The Academy Awards: When court jesters become kings

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Posted: March 1, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern


© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com


Arguably, the biggest problem in American culture today is the fact that mere entertainers are its heroes. There is no precedent in any civilization in the history of the world for entertainers – actors, singers, dancers and directors – to be elevated to the highest positions of prominence in the culture. That's why none of us can name actors and actresses from ancient Greece or Rome. They weren't important enough to be remembered.

Sure, we can name the playwrights and we can name the satirists. We can name the politicians, the philosophers and the generals. Because literary, academic, political and military figures were always the personalities who dominated the cultural landscape. Whatever you thought of these pursuits – and many of the ancient conquerors were highly immoral men – their pursuits were at least consequential.


But entertainment? Lighthearted merriment? That's what you did in your spare time, when you needed a break from the serious things. Prior to the rise of American popular culture, entertainers could never even dream of being the most important members of a society, engaged as they were in a frivolous past-time that helped the folks escape their solemn responsibilities for a short time.

In our time, however, the incredible has happened. The court jester has become the king. Those who play the heroes have become the culture's actual heroes. Those who direct fantasy movies are directing the direction of our youth. And with entertainers as the principal people we look up to, so much of our society has become silly and trivial.

This is exactly what was going through my mind as I watched the narcissism of the Academy Awards. In America today, there exists not a single mainstream televised awards ceremony for anything other than movies, television, acting and music. Even when brave soldiers are awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry, it is not broadcast on television.

When the president awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to our leading thinkers, writers and civil servants, it is watched by 10 people on C-SPAN. But the awards for best actor and best actress are followed closely by hundreds of millions who take such nonsense quite seriously. That's a major change for a country whose only actor to become an historical figure, prior to the age of Hollywood, was John Wilkes Booth.

The consequences for the elevation of people who perform inconsequential tasks to the center of national attention are enormous. Even if our Hollywood celebrities were not the most damaged people in our society – drugged up, divorced, with even their kids in rehab – the results would still be tragic. By making fashion models our role models, Hollywood heroines our heroes, and singers into saints, we have created a shallow and vain society, distinguished not by sacrifice, but by indulgence. We have created a culture known not for virtue, but for vanity. And our country is becoming not more dedicated, but decadent.

American kids today, for the most part, don't want to be doctors. They want to be directors. They don't want to be rabbis, but rock stars. They don't wish to be soldiers, but superstars. And then we wonder why American kids are so messed up.

To gauge the effect of entertainers being at the epicenter of a national consciousness, just imagine if it were to happen in the life of a single individual. What if entertainment, rather than scholarship, were the foremost preoccupation of a medical student. Instead of working at a library and attending lectures for eights hours each day, our student watched eight hours of television and DVDs each day. Would you trust him with your kidney?

And now you begin to understand why so many people around the world think we Americans are so stupid and shallow. It's not because of Bush. It's because of Hollywood. The very nature of entertainment is that it is something you do in your spare time. Entertainment is designed to be on the periphery, never at the center of national endeavor. Performers dare not replace professors, cinematographers dare not replace soldiers, and comedians dare not supplant cardiologists as a country's most lionized citizens.

The future of the United States is not threatened by any existing foreign power. Less so is it threatened by any terrorist. Terrorists can harm us, but they can never defeat us. The only thing that can threaten the continuity of this great country is if it collapses from the inside. If its foundations become so eroded, its pillars so brittle, that its national edifice falls victim to the forces of historical inevitability.

If our nation is built of the marvelous marble of the Greek Parthenon or the Roman Pantheon, or the solid stone of Jerusalem's Western Wall, it will last for many centuries, and perhaps millennia, to come. But if it is built of the flimflam material of a mere Hollywood soundstage, a movie set facade that is all glitz with no substance, it will, God forbid, crumble before our very eyes.

[XERXES]

hmmmm...i agree with several of those points.

so, what's the solution?

[Usually Lurkin]

I don't necessarily agree. I'd like to know if the ancient greeks could name the names of their biggest actors or their best scholars. I'd like to know if in 2000 years people will know the name of Sean Penn, Chris Rock, Albert Einstein, or Stephen Hawking.
I can't name many Vaudevillians, though I'm sure many people could at the time.

To illustrate my point, take their example:

To gauge the effect of entertainers being at the epicenter of a national consciousness, just imagine if it were to happen in the life of a single individual. What if entertainment, rather than scholarship, were the foremost preoccupation of a medical student. Instead of working at a library and attending lectures for eights hours each day, our student watched eight hours of television and DVDs each day. Would you trust him with your kidney?

the answer of course, is, "no, but he or she'd probably make a better writer for 'The Simpsons'". Would it be better if that medical student was spending all his or her time drinking at the bar, or working the fields, or recovering from various illnesses, or any other past-time that was available before the 20th century? Hardly.

But turn it around a bit:
Imagine that Rosanne Barr or Britney Spears had decided to learn medical surgery instead of going into entertainment. Would you trust either with your kidney?

I think our science, philosophy, politics, etc. are advancing quite well. We've got lots of people. Lots of smart people. Lots of nerds who are doing lots of good, nerdy work. I might be convinced if there were no organ transplants, no mapping of the genetic code, no explorations of mars, no advancement in number theory, no invention of psychology in the last 100 years, no computers, no cars, no air conditioners or microwaves or viagra, no advancement of the standard of living since the onset of media. But there has been. Relax, chicken little. Go see a movie.

[Ninkobei]

I try to boycott any mass production.
IE: Everyone and their DOG went to see Passion of the Christ, but I saw a reason to not go. Mel Gibson probably made a BILLION dollars of that movie alone, all to his own pocket. Any thing that makes one man so much money probably isn't a good thing...It's marketing a religion for christs sake, god knows we have plenty of churches that do that already.
Eventually if enough people quit caring about Hollywood it will go away, it will become less marketable causing the higher-ups to lose money and cancel production. The only way I see this happening is if everyone in the world becomes so enticed by Hollywood that it controls their every move, until one day they wake up and realize, "What the hell am I doing watching this stupid tv show?"

[dude1394]

I guess you could call it the marketing of religion but you could just as easily call it a labor of love, telling a story that he felt deeply about. There was certainly no guarantee that a movie in aramaic without sub-titiles would be some sort of hit. I look at the Passion and Saving Private Ryan much in the same vein. Both movies were exquisite and I'm glad I experienced them, but I wouldn't necessarily want to see either of them again, too gripping and emotional to be classified as "entertainment".

I think this article is correct to a point, the movies and hollywood for many years promoted a culture of self-sacrifice, good versus evil and honor. Also many of the stars of that days exhibited that honor and self-sacrifice. Stewart, bogey. There are still some today that would have the same thoughts I imagine, Willis, Hanks, Pat Tillman. It's the glorification of the dishonorable and the revelling in the immorality that is disturbing to me and is not worthy of being so honored. Much like the drug-culture that was glorified by SNL in the early days.

I have much more of an issue with the targeting of our youth by television, advertisers, magazines than I do the movies. I had a lot more control over the movies than I did the main-stream media in my household. Of course we were able to turn the television off, but the free media is hard to control.

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What is strange to me however that an australian has become such a maker of movies glorifying the american ideal of honor, self-sacrifice, freedom and self-reliance. Gibson is a good one.

[MavKikiNYC]

The writer left out mention of jock glorification.

His point would be a lot stronger if he hadn't.