Careful what you reject, you might become your parents.
If you haven’t heard yet, Kodak is discontinuing their Polaroid products by the end of this business quarter. This may seem like somewhat of a shock considering the level at which instant photography exist within our culture. Utilized by Warhol to your friends on Myspace, the Polaroid photo is a major element of the iconography that characterize the mid to late twentieth century. We all have memories connected to an instant photo. Its influence has permeated our society at an incalculable level.
With the sudden disappearance of the much beloved Polaroid photo, the question arises: Is film dead? Or maybe more precisely asked: Is everything that we have grown up with disappearing? The answer is a resounding yes.
People have already been predicting the death of the compact music disc for years. With advent of Ipod and downloadable music, we would be fooling ourselves to think that the CD is here to stay. The same is occurring to books. Sony recently released the E-Book which is equipped with a high pixel density display panel using what it calls "electronic paper". All our favorite novels may soon be read on a device that can fit in our back pocket.
While some embrace the arrival of advanced technology, many indulge in things of the past, take pleasure in their aesthetic appeal and reject the new. We all yearn for something from the past but this act of nostalgia is a reoccurrence with each generation. If you’re one who prides yourself on not having a Myspace or refusing to buy an Ipod, here is a little hint of what you’re becoming: exactly like your parents.
Rejecting the coming digital age may seem an inoffensive action, however such wistfulness for the past is an attitude that can have future implications rooted in bigger issues that are social in nature. And if you are not careful, such an attitude will lead you to be exactly like those you abhor now. Comedian Doug Standhope poignantly explains;
“Baby boomers are going to start to die in droves and it’s a good thing. Their day is over and there is new shit that they won’t accept. Old people look back at the good ole days and it was good because they were young and they act like it was the day. But no it was good because youth is good. That’s gone…your fucked. And now because it’s not the day anymore they got to reject anything that is new like we do with hip-hop if you’re in your 30’s and white. ‘That aint music…we had music back when 38. Special was around.’ What? We should kill ourselves because of the hypocrisy.”
While the context of such a statement is characterized by sarcasm Standhope has a point. At once, even our grandparents were young and hip. Slowly, as they got older they begin to dislike new art, technology and ideas. This probably happened around the same time they started tucking in their shirts and voting republican. Chances are that if you constantly reject the new, then you’ll do the exact same.
The point is that one should take caution in immediately snubbing what is the latest trend, technological innovation or cultural movement. Keeping an open-mind and attempting to understand the new and seemingly foreign is important to not simply prevent a recreation of the paradigm we exist in now (stubborn old conservatives running our country) but to create the necessary environment to progress into something socially better.
In a recent Harpers excerpt taken from his yet-to be released book In Defense of Lost Causes, Slovenian sociologist and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek attacked the modern leftist view that change can only come from existing and working on the fringes of the establishment.
“The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not to insist on “infinite” demands we know those in power cannot fulfill. So wonderful that, with your critical demands, you remind us what kind of world we would all like to live in. Unfortunately, we live in the real world where we have to make do with what is possible. The thing to do is, on the contrary, bombard those in power with strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse.”
It starts with a rejection of many aspects of latest cultural trends and over time develops into a blindness where one cannot see beyond the ideologues and time period of our youth. It’s been said almost way too many times but the “times are-a changin’”. While this mantra may be interpreted by some that a transformation fitting our ideals is on the horizon, it is also a statement of constant renewal and rebirth.
To be truly radical, subversive or create the greatest possibility for change, one must work within the current, established framework. Plus, you’ll have a better chance of being that hip grandparent rather than the one who your grandkids loathe visiting on Sunday afternoons.
By the time you graduate you are already on the out and a new generation full of varying, and possibly different ideas is arriving. How will you react to their demands? Whatever you do, never consider immediate rejection. They deserve to be heard and considered just as much as we do now.
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