From: yunus@loro-next.Stanford.EDU (Jonas Sami Celebiler)
Subject: USA, the junk culture
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 04:56:28 GMT

I agree with the fact that the trashiness or junkiness or baseness  
(however you want to put it) of American narratives, and American arts  
(not Art) in general, is a big problem and could possibly be the cause for  
much of the misconceived attitudes and ideas that America as a nation and  
Americans as individuals infortunately have today.

I just watched "Romancing the Stone", and I has happy to see that it was  
really a terrible movie.  It is loaded with assumptions, myths, and  
prejudices.  Some of them I can name below:
- Miss Wilder's savior in the middle of the Columbian countryside is an  
American
- The symbol of power which allows the "good guys" to escape from the  
Columbian offficials, is, in the middle of the Columbian countryside  
again, a Ford Pickup. and American car.
- The antagonists, are Columbian, or dark skinned Americans.
- They are very "cruel" and ill-meaning, but never achieve anything and  
are in fact treated in a much more cruel way by the "good guys" 
- The whole plot itself is inspired with prejudice and jingoism: it is  
that two Americans go to Columbia kill off bothersome local officials, and  
run away to make it rich with the stolen historic national heritage of a  
developping nation.

After talking with a few people about this, I came to the sad feeling that  
people condoned this movie regardless of the attitudes it puts forward,  
with the excuse that "it's just entertainment, and just to be taken  
lightly."  I don't take my brains lightly, and I don't take the education  
of children and all people  for that matter, lightly.  It is not the  
government's job to condone or condemn such works, for that relates to  
censorship and is unnessecary.  It is the role of the general people, the  
public,  the duty of all those who can think for themseles enough to see  
these things, to condemn them for themselves, for their children, but not  
to censor such things, but to inform of the negative ideas and assumptions  
in such works, in fact to encourage other people to watch such movies and  
to see and point out forthemselves what's going on.

As to the concept of "light entertainment," I find it to be a nonexisting  
distinction, and therefore harmful.  I find people, especially in the  
United States of America where everything intellectual is so-labeled and  
thereby either revered or despised, that people want to make a distinction  
between "movies" which they don't think about and "films" which they do  
think about.  Whereas in reality, one must see that both are but the same  
form of the arts, an audio-visual form of communication.  Both are  
governed by the same rules and needs and limitations.  Both are in fact  
the same medium.  The only difference is that we condone stupidity in one  
and believe that we enjoy ourselves in watching them, and that we think  
overintensively of the other and believe we don't enjoy ourselves watching  
them.  Both are but the same, and hopefully when seen that way one sees  
that all are movies, but some are just slightly bad movies, or very stupid  
movies, or good movies.

I believe there are more than the two genres of fictional and  
non-fictional.  There are three genres, fictional-imaginary,  
fictional-real, non-fictional.  The worst of all three, at least  
especially in modern American cinema is the second of the three.

Possibly it is this materialistic and self-centered ("it is only for my  
entertainment") attitude toward the arts that is evil.  In other words it  
is not the actual products of the junk culture that are to be fought  
against.  Censorship should be fought against at all costs, and has never  
helped anything anyway.  But the attitude that such junk (expressly  
unintellectual arts that supposedly are to appeal to the senses) is  
permissible, acceptable, and actually even part of a culture (whereas it  
is actually the exact opposite of what culture is), that attitude is what  
is evil and should definately be fought.  And evil I truly believe it is,  
because not only has it screwed up the minds of Americans, but the  
American junk culture is spreading around the world, and not only badly  
influencing the people of other nations, in the same way as it badly  
influences the American people, but also actually destroying other  
cultures.