MISCmedia for 9/28/99
Still More of What
They (And We) Don't Know

LAST FRIDAY, we discussed Beloit University's annual list of once-ubiquitous pop-cult references incoming college students might not know about.

Yesterday, we began our own such list.

Now, in the spirit of equal time, a few reference points today's 18-22-year-olds get that folks closer to my age might not:

• Safer sex as a normal discipline, no more spotenaity-killing than putting on seat belts or a bike helmet.

• The whole Internet/World Wide Web/email thang. Such a common gen-gap notion, there are even whole books devoted to assuring oldsters that it's good for the next-generationers to be adept at cyberskills that confuse and frustrate some oldsters.

• Electronica. Big-beat synth-dance music has its roots in the early '70s, and became largely what we know it in the mid-'80s. But to many old-line music critics, nothing that sounds so unlike Dylan or Springsteen-type balladeering could ever deserve critical attention. So an audience of kids, gays, and young cyber-hustlers has embraced it as a scene combining Euro-glam, community spirit, and rebellion against tired old ideas of song structure and artist-audience relations.

  (Though the self-congratulatory hype surrounding the electronica scene can be just as annoyingly smug as that surrounding "progressive" rock. But that's a topic for another time.)

• Advanced image "reading." So-called "MTV Style" composition and editing still haven't made for many good feature films, but that's because it's a shtick for short-form concentrated doses. But when applied in proper amounts and degrees, the strong-imagery and precision-editing can indeed make for strong, even haunting stuff in the hands of a D. Lynch, P. Greenaway, or P. Spheeris.

• Anime and related lore. Japan seen not as a far-off land of "inscrutable" exotica but a center of pop-action entertainment of astounding varieties of weirdness; which gets even weirder when exported. (True fans know there were two female Power Rangers in the show's new U.S.-shot footage, but only one in the original Japanese stunt footage.)

• The (hetero) male body as object of desire; from boy-butt cleavage to designer boxer shorts to Calvin Klein ads to the rubber costumes in the last Batman movie.

• The demystification of cultural production. Anybody can record an album, stage a performance-art piece, make a movie (at least on video), or desktop-publish a zine. Couldn't they always?

• Information saturation. Reading from a coputer screen, with a TV on in Mute mode and a CD spinning away in the same room, can actually improve concentration and retention in some students.

• Gender/race equality. Interracial romance? No big deal. Women doing all sorts of big important things? All the time. Girls picking up boys? Common. Whites and blacks and Asians and Hispanics all on the same dance floor? Not as common, yet, but when and where it does happen it works just fine.

• Each Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and his individual weaponry.

TOMORROW: Can Net hype REALLY sell movie tickets?

ELSEWHERE:

• A new book claims UW virologists might have captured the first samples of what's now known as HIV, way back in '59....
• A UW-based collection of futuristic transportation past and present....
• Within the Ivy League, "Aesthetics is returning to the academy. Beauty is rearing its beautiful head...."
• The ever-dreaded specter of "Obsolete rock critics" rises again, now tearing into the once supposedly-impervious-to-critical-bollocks thang that is/was punk....
• "The highest-paid person in the first half of the next century will be the 'storyteller'" (found by Rebecca's Pocket)....

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• Parts one and two of our gen-gap exploration.
• Home satellite dishes--still worth it?
• Brief looks at a few real-estate relics.
• Newspapers try to stem circulation declines by becoming even duller.
• Who's afraid of digital movie theaters?
• The truth behind Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner."
• Fun words about music from all over.
• The subtle beauty that is Amtrak Cascades; the first and second parts of our Vancouver journey.
• The lost seductive powers of architecture.
• Some of the supposed worst writers taught to teens; and a few examples of great writing they could be taught instead.

ARCHIVES:

• 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, and 1986-94 columns
• Longer articles and essays
• The origin and future of MISCmedia