Have A Cigar Date Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 06:14 AM PST Topic Rant I have a friend (and no, that is not a euphemism for myself) who imagines that he is a great deal more clever than he probably is. He has spent the past few years in sunny California in a fruitless attempt to pitch ideas to various network executives for the production of different television shows he has envisioned. He writes to me on a semi-regular basis to kvetch about how the latest attempt has gone and the reasons that he has been given for his most recent rejection. Although he has yet to pick up on it, I have noticed that, nearly invariably, the reasons his ideas have been shot down are that they are (in the opinions of those who produce and market short attention spans for a living) too cerebral. "No market for it", "That could only find an audience on PBS", and "Huh...?" seem to be the standard responses as they are related to me. For anyone who has actually experienced the intellectual void that is spewed out on a regular basis by the so-called entertainment industry, none of this should come as a surprise. I have chided my friend many times about throwing in the towel and consider selling the candy-coated insipidity that they seem to be buying. Like so many others, I shrugged in self-satisfied complacency about the tastes of the lowest common denominator, but did not imagine it did any harm. As long as I have a local library, I told myself, what harm can it do to give the mentally bereft their bread and circuses...? Then, out of the blue, it hit me. I was minding my own business when suddenly I saw what can only be described as "The Great Lowering Of The Bar". Out of my very own idiot-box came an advertisement for... and I have to warn you that I am completely serious... Disney's Cinderella II: Dreams Do Come True. The lowest common denominator (that demographic that television, motion pictures, music and all forms of entertainment are marketed to) is, by definition, an outlier. This means that greater than 99 per cent of the population has happily gobbled up what can only really be appreciated by the single least intelligent denizens of the Earth...the bottom of the barrel... people who would not have any say in ANYTHING if there were a compassionate god! I have long begrudged the Disney corporation and their soulless minions for their contempt for Homo sapiens, but how much more obvious does their cynical exploitation of all art and human history have to be before the masses rise up to vomit back the technicolour tripe they and corporate bastards like them have been force feeding us into their materialistic faces...??? Back to my earlier question: What harm can it do to devote the entirety of our art and entertainment to the congenitally stupid? Beyond the fact that it has homogenised the culture into a swirling and soulless cesspool, it has conditioned us not to expect... not to DEMAND!... more from anyone. We sit back on our jaded butts and feel superior to the "idiots" who believe that pro-wrestling is real and that people with lunch meat fetishes really want to talk to their spurned lovers on Jerry Springer. News flash people: Everyone else feels superior to this imaginary lowest common denominator as well, while sleaze merchants are growing rich by forcing you to consume what should be falling out of your large intestine. The culture does not HAVE to be sterile and soulless. Intellect and art CAN be commercially viable (Dosteovsky made his living selling his works) IF AND ONLY IF the constituents of the culture pull their vapid heads out of their overly large bottoms and demand to have things produced that actually nourish people instead of distracting them from how miserable they have grown. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=275