All of the old candlepin style bowling alleys are closing down. The Boston Globe reported on yet another one going the way of the drive in theater and the dinosaur, and the drive in theater that shows movies about dinosaurs.
The 32 lanes of one of the most prominent suburban bowling alleys in the area will go dark next week, as Fairway Bowling -- a Route 9 institution-- shuts its doors after nearly 56 years in business. The prospect of Fairway's closing -- the latest of several local bowling alleys to close recently -- is "like a death," said its 84-year-old owner Helen Sellew, who along with her father and brother, helped open the business in 1955 on part of their family's dairy farm.
Candlepin is a New England style tradition, so the disappearance of these bowling alleys could probably be seen as emblematic of a trend in homogenizing localized entertainment customs in favor of centralized mandated fun patterns or something, right?
Probably? Of course it is, says PTSOTL's Mint E. Fresh. He figured out what it means for us below...
Before our generation, every preceding generation of mankind had their norms established by the generation previous, fathers, mothers, elders, priests, pastors etc. We have the dubious honor of being more or less the first generation to have norms, morals, and ethics transmitted to us not by the generation previous, which knew us and knew our homes and knew the people and places we would likely one day be intimate with, but instead by pop culture. Which is to say, by corporate executives in the pop culture business. That is why people all over the country are losing the accents of their fathers and grandfathers and adopting instead the Television Accent. And, after adopting a Television Accent, they sneer at those who are slower to conform to what television presents as “the norm. (Americans have always been known for their hyper-conformist tendencies – even Toqueville noted this).
That same thing is happening with bowling and everything else – all variety, all true and meaningful diversity, is being annihilated and replaced with a sanitized, homogenized, standardized “norm” defined by corporate execs at entertainment media corps. Corporations who peddle “pop culture” must always appeal to the widest possible demographic, which also necessarily entails appealing -- always -- to the lowest common denominator. This means we lose not only regional diversity, but vertical (for lack of a better word) diversity as well. Meaning that not only do the different regions of the country lose their local flavor and peculiarity, but all culture is leveled out as well, and both High Culture and folk culture are eradicated in favor of corporate, mass-produced “pop” culture.
The hope of the preceding centuries was that prosperity would lift the lower classes and enable them to be exposed to and benefit from the High Culture of the upper classes. Instead, the opposite has happened, or worse than the opposite; in catering to the absolute lowest common denominator, in a hyper-conformist society, trash culture has replaced both High Culture and folk culture entirely. Instead of Sully Workboots attending an opera or at least listening to Vivaldi and Handel on his iPod, we get Archibald Montgomery Roosevelt-Smythe III (of the Manhattan Roosevelt-Smythes) cranking Lil’ Wayne and watching Real Housewives of It Doesn’t Matter Because All Cities In The U.S. Are More Or Less Interchangeable Now Anyway1.
So not only has the hope of any sort of American High Culture been strangled in the womb, even our folk cultures, once America’s greatest cultural strength, are being eradicated. You don’t see candlepin on television sitcoms and whatnot, because those are marketed to the US as a whole, and most Americans are not familiar with candlepin, so they must show tenpin. Then, because tenpin has a greater presence in corporate-pop culture, even people in areas where candlepin is traditional start to think of tenpin as “real bowling” Real because it’s on the tee vee, and whuts on duh tee vee is duh right way tuh do it, cuz what the tee vee done said is whut we’re supposed tuh do. Duuuh, droooool, faaaaart.
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1Some people will tell you that there’s no difference really, that there’s artistic value in any random piece of obvious garbage, that going from Brahms to Biggie Smalls isn’t any sort of degradation at all, and that such distinctions are meaningless. This is why it’s pointless to even talk to that person. That decline in quality between Brahms and B.I.G. is an obvious, immutable fact that literally every person on earth understands immediately to be an objective truth not open to debate (including phony pop culture pontificates), and so anyone who claims to believe otherwise is simply being dishonest.
But people like this unquestioningly believe everything they were ever told by pop culture. All of their morals and ethics and ideas and so forth, literally not one of them would be out of place in any pop culture setting (like, say, a Pro Life position would seem out of place if advocated by a rap star, or in a rock video on MTV, in a way that pro-choice messages from Nirvana weren’t). Pop culture is the dominant cultural authority in the United States, and the safest ideas to hold are those that conform to its rules, and every single idea in this type’s head does just that. So when a fact like that decline contradicts with a pop culture myth, they go whole hog on the side of the myth, despite knowing it is a myth, because that myth is more palatable among the bien pensant than the irritatingly unpleasant truth.
--MINT E. FRESH
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6 comments:
man, i feel really threatened that all of my culture are belong to us(us being corporate america) it's just like we have nothing left anymore and this all seems to be because liberalism has promoted this homogenous normalcy through their aggressive agenda over the last 50 years. they've simply killed america by promoting multiculturalism and diversity and now i'm scared half to death. guess i'll vote for ron paul and hope it works out for the best.
This is a really interesting topic and an even more interesting post mint e fresh. You address the decline of folk culture and the desire of our forefathers to uplift the general situation of the common everyday man. Folk culture aka local tradition has been diluted by corporate interest and greed. Right? Then what is the solution or direction we should step in? And what about the small number of the current generation of young people who have been combining the best(and worst) of pop culture to create their own traditions?
The post above sarcastically(or not, i can't tell) blames multiculturalism. But diversity itself is not the problem. The problem is HOW diversity is implemented and practiced in our culture. Unfortunately, instead of the slow and gradual push and pull of various races, income brackets, and experiences interacting naturally...The interaction gets fast tracked and watered down by corporation's efforts to cash in on "diversity" as quickly as possible. What do ya think? Fresh? O'Neil?
Fresh and I talked about this the other day, I think. The idea was that corporations should be limited in their scope to the state level, thereby reducing their vast influential power. I sort of like that idea. But I'm the type of guy that thinks no one should be allowed to make billions of dollars, no matter how successful their business is, so what do I know?
I also happen to think diversity is a good thing, and don't really care about the idea of nationality or race as a form of identity, which is the exact opposite of what he thinks. I sort of disagree with this entire post in a lot of ways I suppose, since I think civic, state, or national pride is harmful. But I like local traditions when they aren't given too much important, so I don't know how to reconcile the two.
I'll just be happy when the environment is gone and every town has its own Walmart, Chili's, and Home Depot and there's nothing unique. Then we won't be slaves to air travel. Oh, I'm also assuming Global Warming will make the weather exactly the same in every region.
For the record, though, candlepin sucks. Duckpin FTW!
Haha. Yeah, I don't even like candlepin. I like that it exists though.
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