popular culture?

[Star Wolf]

Greg Cox wrote:

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And, of course, once you get out into the Final Frontier, beyond the boundaries of the Federation, anything goes. You could have entire planets driven by money or celebrity or the worship of ancient Sandra Dee movies . . .

You mean the historical documents

[Mr. Laser Beam]

indolover wrote:

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Maybe pop culture doesn't exist then.

Though it depends how one defines it. If it's media-driven attitudes and memes, then the media in 24th century Earth or the Federation in general may be very different from today.

With technology like that, social media must be out of control in Trek's time...imagine what an interstellar version of Facebook or Twitter would be like.

[King Daniel]

That's what Spock's always checking out in his scanner...

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ "Captain. Ambassador Kardashian has posted to her Spacebook wall. Recommend we go to Warp 5 immediately."

[TheGoodNews]

indolover wrote:

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Maybe pop culture doesn't exist then.

Though it depends how one defines it. If it's media-driven attitudes and memes, then the media in 24th century Earth or the Federation in general may be very different from today.

Also, as the Federation is a multi-species union, not all cultures may even have media (at least as we know it or would recognise it).

Pop culture (or mass communication) today is economically and politically driven. That was true in ancient times, with theocratic and monarchial control over mass communication and ceremony, that is so in today's corporate-state society. The system only promotes itself through its communicative means. In Roddenberry's future those factors are not supposed to exists anylonger, so pop culture/consumer society (at least as we know it) shouldn't exist either. I think Roddenberry was envisioning a more creative rather than consumerist society based on mutual support and equality rather than competition.

"A culture now wholly commodity was bound to become the star commodity of the society of the spectacle. Clark Kerr, an ideologue at the cutting edge of this trend, reckons that the whole complex system of production, distribution and consumption of knowledge is already equivalent to 29 percent of the annual gross national product of the United States, and he predicts that in the second half of this century culture will become the driving force of the American economy, so assuming the role of the automobile industry in the first half, or that of the railroads in the late 19th century." -- Debord.

Looking around the country and the world it is the economies dominant face.

[Dale Sams]

Star Wolf wrote:

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You mean the historical documents

Kirk: You mean the profanity? That's simply the way they talk here. Nobody pays attention to you unless you swear every other word. You'll find it in all the literature of the period.
Spock: For example?
Kirk: Oh the neglected works of Jacqueline Susan. The novels of Harold Robbins...
Spock: Ah, the "Giants".

[Greg Cox]

TheGoodNews wrote:

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Pop culture (or mass communication) today is economically and politically driven. That was true in ancient times, with theocratic and monarchial control over mass communication and ceremony, that is so in today's corporate-state society. The system only promotes itself through its communicative means. In Roddenberry's future those factors are not supposed to exists anylonger, so pop culture/consumer society (at least as we know it) shouldn't exist either. I think Roddenberry was envisioning a more creative rather than consumerist society based on mutual support and equality rather than competition.
.

Well, again, "Roddenberry's future" wasn't one cohesive culture that extended all through the Federation . . . and beyond. I'm sure the Andorians and the Tellarites and the Deltans and the Betazoids and the Argellians all had very different approaches to economics and journalism and art and entertainment, which would translate into different varieties of pop culture.

STAR TREK is about "strange new worlds" and civilizations, not one enlightened universal society . . . .

[TheGoodNews]

[
.[/QUOTE]



STAR TREK is about "strange new worlds" and civilizations, not one enlightened universal society . . . .[/QUOTE]

Roddenberry mentioned many times that a large part of Trek's appeal is that it shows a very positive vision of humanity's future, which was a very profound message during the tumult of the sixties and seventies and even during the Reagan era with Cold War tensions, environmental and hostage crises at the forefront.

"Everything is said about this society except what it really is: a society dominated by commodities and spectacles." -- On the poverty of Student Life.

I still say Roddenberry was imagining a society beyond this. Also, Gramsci was on to something when he described "cultural hegemony" and how it used popular culture to mould public consciousness.

[TheGoodNews]

robau wrote:

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A future without celebrities sounds awesome. They can start by no longer airing the obscene Academy Awards circle jerk.

Also, we can start by looking at the root of the problem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsHtSPub3w8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN26E410Euk

"The Spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image." Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle.

[Greg Cox]

TheGoodNews wrote:

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Roddenberry mentioned many times that a large part of Trek's appeal is that it shows a very positive vision of humanity's future, which was a very profound message during the tumult of the sixties and seventies and even during the Reagan era with Cold War tensions, environmental and hostage crises at the forefront..

But, again, Star Trek wasn't really about the society the Enterprise supposedly came from. We never even saw future Earth on the original series. And the individual episodes themselves were hardly dramatizations of the enlightened politics and policies back on Earth; nine times out of ten, they were about beaming down to Gamma Hydroxi VI where strange and unearthly encounters awaited . . . including exotic forms of art and entertainment.

Star Trek was a theatrical production, not a political symposium. Let's not confuse the backdrop with the stories on center stage.

[TheGoodNews]

Okay, but even TOS sometimes used the central story and characters of Star Trek to explore important topics. E.g. "Who mourns for Adonis?" dealt with religion and ancient superstitions. Kirk's parting line to Apollo was pretty forward for 1960's TV. "Let that be your last battlefield" obviously dealt with racial tensions during the Civil Rights struggle. "Bread and Circuses" was a send up of media culture. "A piece of the action", well that dealt with, hmm, I'm not sure what it dealt with beyond the old gangster dramas of the 1930s. And I don't even want to get into "Spock's Brain." I think Roddenberry used TNG to go even further.

"Okay, you've rationalized your economy to the point where you have no unemployment, poverty or depressions. But that means you don't understand those who do." Ralph Offenhouse to Capt. Picard -- Debtor's Planet (a ST:TNG novella).

[Mr. Laser Beam]

People will always want to be entertained, and therefore, there will always be SOME form of popular culture. Otherwise life would be very boring, I should think.

[TheGoodNews]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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People will always want to be entertained, and therefore, there will always be SOME form of popular culture. Otherwise life would be very boring, I should think.

Maybe life wouldn't be so "boring" if consumer society actually offered people something more meaningful than the endless rut of work-consumption, work-consumption. That's why it's called "alienation." Otherwise, people wouldn't need to rely on passive entertainments (which are just commodities), but on self-actualization of their true potentials in place of dispossession and passive consumption.

"The SPECTATOR'S ALIENATION from and submission to the contemplated object (which is the outcome of his unthinking activity) works like this: the more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more readily he recognizes his own needs in the images of need proposed by the dominant system, the less he understands his own existence and his own desires. The spectacle's externality with respect to the acting subject is demonstrated by the fact that the individual's own gestures are no longer his own, but rather those of someone else who represents them to him. The spectator feels at home nowhere, for the spectacle is everywhere." The Society of the Spectacle, Thesis 30.

[CorporalCaptain]

We can assume that "Beyond Antares" was a hit in the 23rd century. That's another item from The Conscience of the King.

[yousirname]

OP made me think of this: