This Wall Street Journal article: "25 Years of Pushing the Envelope: MTV is Our Leading Purveyor of Crudeness"(06.08.04), was brought to my attention by fellow author Jim Bowers. The writer of "25 Years" contends that MTV has not only "violated cultural boundaries" just like many other tv programs, but has, in fact, blurred the distinction between pornography and pop culture. The result? a generation of children who now see pornography and crudeness as acceptable and desirable.
Edward Gibbon was a self-educated man, but his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—published in the late 1800s—is still regarded as a definitive work on the topic.
According to Gibbon, one of the five social signs of the Empire's decline was perversity seen as originality in the arts.
This cuts across the entertainment spectrum--sex sells and the free-market is wallowing in it. Original works are rare in Hollywood too—Baby-Boomers go to see re-make movies so that's what the studios crank out. Look at the automotive sculpture of the Big Three: re-makes.
Incidentally, the US has experienced all five of Gibbon's signs since the 1960s and we’re now in a spiral. Unless we divorce our culture from free-market morality (greed), our greatness is going the way of the British Empire.
French writer Alexis de Tocqueville http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocquevilletoured America in the mid 19th century, for the purpose of discovering what made the US so great. After crossing the land and seeing all the churches, he concluded that America is great because America is good.
When it ceases to be good it will cease to be great.
We have arrived.
"In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity."--Martin Luther.
To God be the glory,
Scott “Frank Creed” Morris
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The Lost Genre Guild http://www.lostgenreguild.com
Lost Genre Guild Blog http://lostgenre.blogspot.com
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4 comments:
I'm afraid that the Tocqueville quotation is spurious. See: http://www.tocqueville.org/pitney.htm
You have my gratitude.
I did not use quotes because I did this from memory of a radio broadcast.
As soon as my web-mistress gets to this, I'll rewrite the ending.
If the pen is mightier than the sword, the Web is a writer's whetstone.
To God be the glory,
Scott “Frank Creed” Morris
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e-mail: frankcreed@insightbb.com
Home: http://www.frankcreed.com
Blog: http://frankcreed.blogspot.com/
Book Review Blog: http://afrankreview.blogspot.com/
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Only today did I find your site. This post is excellent, sad, but true. I have bookmarked here.
Blessings.
shirley Buxton
www.writenow.wordpress.com
What do you think of this salary review- that includes many Christian authors?:
"Reformation: 2006 Hall of Fame and Shame"
http://www.freegoodnews.com/2006/12/reformation_200.html
...Bernie
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