July 14, 2004
The Decline in Reading
Kevin at Collected Miscellany says what so many others have about the value of reading, but does so very well. One part that struck me was this:
I know in my own life that I must consciously guard against letting TV, the web, video games, and other electronic media sucking up all of my leisure time. I have books that I want to read but it takes discipline to commit to doing so. It also takes concentration and time for this reading to pay off.
I find myself faced with the same problem. It's far easier to spend my time reading blogs and political news than to engage a long novel or poetry. Since there is some value in staying informed and debating the various current issues, that temptation is even greater. I've had to refuse to turn on the computer at home in order to force myself to read. Once I start, I enjoy it and do so happily for hours, but there's a noticeable amount of inertia that must be overcome to get started, unlike browsing the web or worse, watching reruns of sitcoms I've seen a hundred times already. It all comes down to one thing—our lives are short; we should spend time wisely and profitably as often as possible. Although it's practically impossible to be constantly engaged in worthwhile pursuits, it's a good goal. I certainly won't care if I saw every episode of MASH or Seinfeld when I'm 80, but I may regret not reading enough.
Well said, dawg. Maybe I should pick up a book now....
First off, you forgot to Trackback, doof.
Now, to the point. I probably should do a whole post about this, but I think the constant condemnation of structuralism/post-structuralism etc. in the academy is a valid criticism, but one that's difficult to address in practice. The reality is that the people in academy who pioneered media studies, the treatment of things like television, fashion, etc. as texts are/were intelligent and critical at a really astronomical level (just try to read some Barthes sometime), but the idea of mass culture as a legitimate object of study (which I think is valid, even if it's increasingly subverted by so-called academics who mask uncritical celebration as research) very quickly trickled down out of academe in perverted form, giving free license for people to consume mental junk food. We're all familiar with the "I'm researching the masses" excuse for watching just one more episode of South Park - and that's among those with at least academic pretensions. But those who initiated the study of mass culture got the idea to do so, and the tools and techniques they used, from reading books. Most of those who continue the tradition are pretty big readers, too (though sometimes you wonder - I'm looking at you, Chuck Klosterman). Drawing that line, the line between the cultural elite studying mass/electronic culture and the masses consuming it is necessary to reinforce the ideology of book learnin' - but how do you do that without a hefty dose of elitism? And the academy lives in fear of elitism as a threat to its relevance, so you can't look that direction for people to put their feet down, they'd just get laughed at.
Oh well, at least Oprah is doing her part. Bravo.
I did trackback. It just didn't show up for some reason. They don't always work.
Anyways, I think it's pretty clear the article and myself were talking about average Americans, not academics. I really doubt many regular tv watchers are doing so because they read some Barthes. I also think it's highly unlikely that people feel they have "free license... to consume mental junk food" because the academics do it too. That's really a ridiculous statement. At best, the opinions of academics suffer from benign neglect in this country, if not outright contempt.
For someone potentially aiming for a Phd, you're far too blithe in dismissing the influence of academics on public life. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's obvious, but it's definitely there. It was academics who undertook the very aggressive early-20th century campaign to define "English" as the discipline most of us are now mourning, championing the idea of Great Books as a path to moral self-improvement - the idea that is still, albeit in stunted form, guiding the teaching of literature at the high school level. It is, similarly, academics who have been the ideological leaders in the shift (retreat?) from that perspective to "cultural studies." Of course it's not as if noone watched TV back when Literature as Self-Improvement was still the dominant ideology, and this ideology itself is not quite dead. But how many college-educated people have had their attitudes towards mass culture substantially adjusted towards embrace by a professor who presented a dumbed-down vision of cultural studies instead of an (equally dumbed down, but simpler, more deeply ingrained, and thus easier to transmit) vision of Literature with a capital L, complete with semi-Puritanical moral uplift overtones?
Over the two decades of this ideological shift within academia, I'm sure there has been a direct impact on the reading population - despite my laments of the educated working class, the fact is that college-educated people will always make up the mass of readers, so what happens when college is busy teaching them how to watch Gilligan's Island?