O Aspecto "Nutritivo" da Cultura Pop

Foi lançado (por enquanto só lá fora) o livro 'Everything Bad is Good for You', de Steven Johnson. Ele defende uma tese controversa e curiosa: a cultura 'pop' (ou 'de massa') faz bem para nossas cabeças, inclusive (ou principalmente) dos adolescentes. Ele diz que mesmo a visível degradação 'moral' ocorrida nos veículos de massa nos últimos 50 anos é positiva. Programas como "24 Horas" e "Família Soprano" seriam mais realistas. E que, ao invés de nos entregar 'lições aprendidas', nos forçam a raciocinar. O NYT publicou um longo trecho do livro. Transcrevo abaixo apenas uma pequena parte dele:



For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ''masses'' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But as that ''24'' episode suggests, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less. To make sense of an episode of ''24,'' you have to integrate far more information than you would have a few decades ago watching a comparable show. Beneath the violence and the ethnic stereotypes, another trend appears: to keep up with entertainment like ''24,'' you have to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting social relationships. This is what I call the Sleeper Curve: the most debased forms of mass diversion -- video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms -- turn out to be nutritional after all.

I believe that the Sleeper Curve is the single most important new force altering the mental development of young people today, and I believe it is largely a force for good: enhancing our cognitive faculties, not dumbing them down. And yet you almost never hear this story in popular accounts of today's media. Instead, you hear dire tales of addiction, violence, mindless escapism. It's assumed that shows that promote smoking or gratuitous violence are bad for us, while those that thunder against teen pregnancy or intolerance have a positive role in society. Judged by that morality-play standard, the story of popular culture over the past 50 years -- if not 500 -- is a story of decline: the morals of the stories have grown darker and more ambiguous, and the antiheroes have multiplied.

The usual counterargument here is that what media have lost in moral clarity, they have gained in realism. The real world doesn't come in nicely packaged public-service announcements, and we're better off with entertainment like ''The Sopranos'' that reflects our fallen state with all its ethical ambiguity. I happen to be sympathetic to that argument, but it's not the one I want to make here. I think there is another way to assess the social virtue of pop culture, one that looks at media as a kind of cognitive workout, not as a series of life lessons. There may indeed be more ''negative messages'' in the mediasphere today. But that's not the only way to evaluate whether our television shows or video games are having a positive impact. Just as important -- if not more important -- is the kind of thinking you have to do to make sense of a cultural experience. That is where the Sleeper Curve becomes visible.


A tese é legal e esse tipo de 'defesa intelectual' da mídia de massa faz falta. Mas não posso concordar com o 'Everything' do título (acho que nem Steven de fato concorda. O título precisa chamar atenção, certo?). 70% (tô bonzinho hj) do que recebemos aqui no Brasil, principalmente via TV aberta, é puro lixo. Nos EUA não deve ser muito diferente (99% dos nossos enlatados importados são de lá). Na noite de ontem, por exemplo, vc podia escutar 'Vai Rolar a...' com a Ivete no Faustão, ou ver uma coxuda de cabeça para baixo no Pânico, ou o Avalone na Band... e por aí vai. Acho que nem com boa vontade celestial e em sã consciência alguém pode dizer que tirou alguma coisa ÚTIL de tais 'experiências culturais'. E não é preconceito não. Afinal, cada um vê o q quer (ou merece, sei lá).

Porisso também não posso concordar com os radicais que adoraram 'Throw away your Television', do Red Hot. Terei um aparelho de TV enquanto existirem coisas como "'A Sete Palmos' ('Six Feet Under', HBO, domingos 21hs).



ops... e enquanto trasmitirem jogos do Timão tb...