PERSPECTIVES I The Michigan Daily Monday, November 13, 1989 Page 8 0 NMass . Note: "Wretched Refuse," a ce #Zn dealing with American me- d~a"will appear each Monday in tse-Daily. sJ4is column being a new feature, I'.t, in lieu of any actual original tlf'ht, devote the first installment t6Ee6laining why it is called what it i4alled. .is is the New World. That's tftiing to keep in mind. I culture spawns media ,nin Tn thm tional Review..."). The second rea- son takes a little more explaining. The phrase is taken from the Emma Lazarus poem, "The New Colossus," inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty. In the poem, America calls on other countries to send us "the wretched refuse of your teeming shores"; the "wretched refuse," as Bill Murray pointed out in the movie Stripes, is us. World by smash- ing whatever cul- tures they found there, then effec- tively ignoring the ones from which they came. This accom- plished, they be- gan the long and arduous process Wretched Rotfuse by Jim Poniewozik musicals. Ii the Old World, you had epic poetry; in the New World, you had greeting cards. Wonderful, you may think, but what does this have to do with the media? prise the most distinctively Ameri- can "art form" there is; they are available to the masses, and "popular" is the highest adjective of praise in America. We may not have read a word of Shakespeare, but you can have a 15-minute conversation with a stranger about old Charmin commercials. trash stantly engaged in flooding you with articles, ads, and other forms of in- formation, but, though they're a cen- tral part of our lives, we treat them as beneath analysis. We're probably also afraid to in a way, because, face it, it's pretty easy to make fun of self-reflexiveness. A lot of people see it as masturbatory 6 1e: started to place emphasis on those Ivments of culture that were accessible to &erybody. In the Old World, you had opera: in the New World; you had musicals. In the Old liirld, you had epic poetry; in the New World, 9441 had greeting cards. ,-,To the people who were here be- f°'the Europeans settled, there was nbtling new about it, of course. The nzine, then, is really an indication of who won. Wonderful, you may think, but what does that have to do with the term "Wretched Refuse"? The primary reason for calling this column "Wretched Refuse" is, of course, to see if the Michigan Review can resist making a stupid joke about it in next month's "Serpent's Tooth" ("Refuse' in the Paily? So what else is new? Ha, ha, ha! Hey, pass me that copy of Na- Ms. Lazurus probably picked the phrase because she was big on allit- eration ("tempest-tost," "world-wide welcome," "I lift my lamp," etc.) - either that, or she had a Nos- tradamus-like vision of the medical waste crisis. But she also hit on the predominant theme of American cul- ture. Refuse. Garbage. Disposability. This is, as I said, the New World. Not the Native American world that the settlers found when they came here, nor the European world that they left. The settlers of the Ameri- cas went about creating the New of evolution that eventually gave us People magazine. They established a new republic based on the principles of democracy and capitalism. This led to, well, you know, the Monroe Doctrine, the Three-Fifths Compromise - all that "Schoolhouse Rock" junk - but it also led, maybe even more impor- tantly, to the development of mass culture. "Culture" used to be the province of the wealthy, the nobility, but in the New World, we decided, any chump would have the right to be just as cultured as anybody else. Some would call the resultant soci- ety "egalitarian." Some would call it "the lowest common denominator." In any case, we started to place emphasis on those elements of cul- ture that were accessible to every- body. In the Old World, you had opera: in the New World; you had And what about this "refuse" business? Probably the fondest memory I have of journalism is seeing myself in the garbage. It was my sophomore year, and I had just started writing for the Daily. My first news article had been printed the day before, and I was at the Graduate Library, studying. I set my books down in a carrel, and no- ticed that, in the wastebasket, there was a crumpled-up newspaper, with my article showing. Somehow, I got a charge out of thinking that any- body could have walked in there, seen my name in the garbage, and spat out their chewing gum on it. I was doing my share to fill garbage cans around campus. I had become an American. Because the different forms of communication media - advertis- ing, newspapers, television - com- So America's most distinctive ar- tifact - communication, and lots of it - is, unlike, say the Pyramids, transitory. It's either garbage, or about to become it. Or ideally it dis- appears as soon as it reaches you, as with TV and radio. Wonderful, you may think, but why write a column on it? Because as pervasive as media are in our society, they themselves act largely ignorant of that fact. News- papers, including this one, are con- Because as pervasive as media are in our society, they themselves act largely ignorant of that fact. Newspapers, including this one, are constantly engaged in flooding you with articles, ads, and other forms of information, but, though they're a central part of our lives, we treat them as beneath analysis. for media to critique media. "Every now and then," H. L. Mencken wrote, "a sense of the futility of their daily endeavors falling suddenly upon them, the critics of Christen- dom turn to a somewhat sour and depressing consideration... of their own craft." Then again, he did write that. Wonderful, you may think, but why should I care? I don't know. We'll have to see. I I r CLASSIFIED ADS! 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