More on the Culture Gap

At the Ridgecrest conference, the culture gap was again hammered home by a couple of classes I attended. In a class about writing "curriculum" for small group studies, all the examples shown were videos with a little bit of writing in a book; the intent being to watch the video and discuss it, using a few simple questions from the book. The videos were the typical run-from-scene-to-scene, or shot to shot, with almost no time spent on any one shot. No time to focus on what is being said, to absorb the points made. Just run, run, run. One video-based study we spent a little time viewing was The Trouble With Paris. We watched the first five minutes, which was totally unmemorable to me. I think the on-camera narrator said something about our culture being a problem, but the study title was not explained. After watching, our class instructor said Paris referred not to Paris, France, but to Paris Hilton, as a symbol of what's wrong with our culture. Funny thing was, the video itself seemed to me a symbol of what I don't like with the trend in the culture. I immediately decided this was Gen-X stuff, and I can't write it.

Another class was on fiction writing. The instructor, talking about the importance of conflict in the modern novels, said, "Knock your hero down with angst, then shovel angst all over him." Later, I talked with this same instructor in an informal setting, and mentioned I liked best the sagas, such as written by James Michener and Herman Wouk. He said, "You and three other people." They won't sell. A novel over 100,000 words won't sell. We live in a TV culture world, and books have to compete with American Idol, Survivor (another show I've never watched), Lost, etc. The population at large has fewer readers than we used to, as a percentage of population. Words aren't enough to captivate the mind. We must now have fast-paced visuals as well, and more of that than of words. Don't let description crowd out dialogue. Don't let dialogue crowd out conflict and angst.

I suppose every generation decries the culture of the next, and I'm no different. All this stuff saddens me. It seems like the culture has been coarsened by television and the Internet. More and more I find myself further and further away from the mainstream in America. I once wrote a poem that included this couplet:

for I, I must with sorrow state
was born two centuries too late.

More than ever I think that is true. Maybe not really 200 years, but at least fifty.

I leave most writers conferences, after some initial time of wondering "why am I here" with a feeling of "I can do this." Then, a week later I realize what "this" is. It means writing things I don't particularly like to read just to get published. It's a form of prostitution. I guess I'll have to think about it some more.