Book Review: Blank Space

From Blank Space, by W. David Marx:

Amazon

"Where society once encouraged and provided an abundance of cultural invention, there is now a blank space. Over the past twenty-five years, culture has prospered as a vehicle for entertainment, politics, and profiteering—but at the expense of pure artistic innovation."

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Book Review: "Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century"

Grade: B+

I used to be good at trivia. But there's one category that I've grown dumber at as I've grown older, largely because I'm getting out of touch with popular culture. I set out to rectify that by reading this history of popular culture in the last twenty-five years. I won't say it's exhaustive, but it covers a lot at a very fast pace. It covers music, art, movies, fashion, the internet, you name it. It's been said that everyone enjoys 15 minutes of fame. That seems true in the fleeting coverage of celebrities in this history. Paris Hilton is described as "the aughts’ quintessential celebrity. Hilton wasn’t just famous for being famous; she was famous for openly wanting to be famous for being famous." When Kevin Federline married Britney Spears (remember them?), Jimmy Kimmel labeled him "the world's first-ever no-hit wonder."

Marx argues that modern culture lacks the innovation of prior eras. Instead, the culture industry focuses on popularity, virality, and monetization at the expense of experimentation. Provocation and sensationalism lead to notoriety. That captures an audience. Howard Stern exemplified the phenomenon. After years of controversy, including incidents such as guests using racial epithets, Stern ultimately left terrestrial radio, and Sirius eagerly hired him with a reported $500 million contract. Increasingly, everything seemed to be done "for the clicks."

For every Howard Stern, there were a thousand "influencers." "The biggest cultural shift came from Web 2.0’s revenue-sharing models. Platforms like YouTube allowed creators to monetize directly, making a career in content creation an end goal rather than a means to traditional industry acceptance." The era of algorithmic optimization has arrived. "Teenagers were filming amateur videos in their bedrooms that repeatedly drew larger audiences than the work of professional studios."

Marx covers the intersection of culture and politics, too. "The twenty-first-century civil rights struggle moved beyond the liberal ideals of equal recognition under the law to focus on dismantling the unconscious biases embedded in cultural norms. Virtually every facet of society could be subject to scrutiny and revision. This expansive push for all-encompassing inclusivity became known as wokeness." The backlash was swift and devastating. Will this backlash prove lasting when so little else in modern culture does? "By the Trump era, both political sides agreed that pop culture was the key battlefield. As a result, purely artistic-minded culture receded in favor of social activism. Even in the US, culture echoed Mao Tse-tung’s assertion that there was 'no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics.'"

The 21st century is only one-quarter over, yet it takes Marx 282 pages of jam-packed text, 73 pages of notes, and 17 pages of index to cover it. I may still not win trivia contests for having read it, but at least I might have fewer times when a celebrity's name is mentioned and I have to admit that I'd never heard of them. I now know Baby Gronk, Boing Boing, and the Costco Guys. And that's just a tiny random selection from A-to-C.