I realized today that it has been over a year since I began this blog and nearly a year since my last post. Part of me loves this immensely. Perhaps some stranger searching through blogs came across the Blah Blah Blog and said to himself, "His brilliance was too much to bear. His light shined brighter than 1,000 suns and he could not keep it up. I'm amazed he was able to produce as many entries as he did. Goodnight, sweet prince." If you were one of the people who thought this, you're not un-right. I like to think of myself as a latter day John Kennedy Toole who found his perfect match and became happily married rather than committing suicide, but who knows what the future holds. Sidebar - If you are unfamiliar with JKT's Confederacy of Dunces, please do go find it right now and read it...I'll wait...k, u ready? You're welcome. I would rather this blog die a painful, dysenteric death than become a series of me standing in front of rocks in western states while pretending that I didn't get pregnant so I don't have to work anymore. That's a very specific reference and I'm not even sure I fully understand what I'm doing here today.
Here are the facts as I understand them. Earlier today I came across an article at the AV Club that provided a critical breakdown of an episode of Clarissa Explains It All. Because this is what our society does now. We think about shows we watched as children and elevate them to elite status through some delusional pretext that they serve as commentaries on our culture. Dammit, Steve, I can't argue with that. Why did you state that so succinctly? But my point is this, children are little idiots. We prop them up in front of televisions and wait for them to grow up into full-blown idiots.
Sidebar #2 - I saw Anderson Cooper discussing his interview with Magic Johnson re: Donald Sterling's racist comments about him. In reacting to the statement that Magic Johnson has AIDS, Anderson Cooper pointed out that Magic has HIV, not "full-blown AIDS." What is it about AIDS that necessitates the preceding full-blown? Is it not sufficient to say he has AIDS, not HIV, since they are two different things. Yet these words are always found together. There is something so much more ominous about these words together. "Do you have full-blown AIDS?" "Naw, man. I just got a touch of the AIDS. It's cool." - Sidebar end.
My knowledge of Clarissa Explains It All is minimal. I was aware of it during my formative years, but I was not then, nor have I ever been, a "girl." I know it as the show that gave the world Melissa Joan Hart. So thanks for that. It was a beautiful thing to watch MJH blossom from an awkward young girl into an awkward woman that mistakenly began to believe she was hot and started arching her back slightly in pictures as if to prove her viability as a Maxim cover model. But the article in question went deeper. It dared to cite My So-Called Life, Wonder Years, Full House and Boy Meets World as cultural touchstones as well. Let me single out Boy Meets World here because I loathed the show. I believe this summer we finally get the relaunched Girl Meets World that someone somewhere apparently wanted so that we could catch up on the lives of some shitty middle schoolers. This is a show that aired on ABC's TGIF lineup. As you probably know, TGIF was primarily a money laundering scheme by the Cosa Nostra and the resulting TV shows were not intended for human consumption. The AV Club goes so far as to separate Full House and Boy Meets World into a sub-genre called "normcore." I don't know what this means. Genre naming is a practice that has plagued music criticism for far too long. They seem to be hanging their hat on the notion that labeling something makes it legitimate as a topic of study. But sometimes pop culture is exactly as shallow as it seems. In fact, I believe that is the exact thing that gives it the "pop."
Perhaps this is an extension of our increasing cultural tendency to draw a line in the sand and fight pointlessly for something that someone else dares not like. Is it possible for people to admit that they might just enjoy something on a visceral level? Or does the world need to understand why you had a much deeper understanding of Salute Your Shorts? Whatever the reasoning, it needs to stop. I loved He-man when I was little, but I got over it. Was it better than Transformers? I don't care. Why are we wasting critical thought on the television equivalent of a dirty tissue? I am continually amazed at where our society is headed. A recent article indicated that the U.S. ranks in the mid-20s among the 30 most developed countries in terms of education, while simultaneously achieving #1 status on the list of countries whose people believe they are the smartest. Purple mountain majesties! God help us all.
But credit where it's due, here's that Clarissa Explains It All article if you'd like to give it a whirl: http://www.avclub.com/article/clarissa-explains-it-all-tried-ban-tv-tv-204252
It definitely gave me plenty to think about.
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