Fascinating. Thanks. This raises the question of the difference in kind and utility of abstract or embodied knowledge. The well rounded Renaissance man is still expected to be both cultured intellectual and celebrated athlete. Within your paradigm I do wonder if the modern cult of celebrity is an endgame expression of the atomization, with all of its attendant emotional and social faults. Warhol’s lonely vision of a sterile automatized world where everyone gets to be famous for just five minutes. What next ?
Interesting. The celebrity cult apparently represents a reversal from literacy to orality, induced by electronic and now digital media. Movie stars and showbiz celebrities mirror the pantheon of gods, demigods, and heroes, with Hollywood serving as Olympus.
The growing popularity of comic book superheroes in the late 20th century clearly reflects this reversal. As electronic and digital media retrieve orality, the tribal need for unifying associations manifests in totemism (team or university mascots) and, in its later cultural form, polytheism (superheroes with specialized superpowers and celebrities).
I can see that. When I looked at the cultural creation of the folk harp movement in California back in 2001 I found the phenomenon of harp circles - where individuals met regularly to play together in a circle - reminiscent of the image of the circling of wagons under attack by hostile forces during the period of US Westward expansion. Especially as so many were internal educated economic migrants who had travelled to California’s financial promise of Silicon Valley only to find disappointment. It was an example of modern self conscious totemic tribalism.
Fascinating. Thanks. This raises the question of the difference in kind and utility of abstract or embodied knowledge. The well rounded Renaissance man is still expected to be both cultured intellectual and celebrated athlete. Within your paradigm I do wonder if the modern cult of celebrity is an endgame expression of the atomization, with all of its attendant emotional and social faults. Warhol’s lonely vision of a sterile automatized world where everyone gets to be famous for just five minutes. What next ?
Interesting. The celebrity cult apparently represents a reversal from literacy to orality, induced by electronic and now digital media. Movie stars and showbiz celebrities mirror the pantheon of gods, demigods, and heroes, with Hollywood serving as Olympus.
The growing popularity of comic book superheroes in the late 20th century clearly reflects this reversal. As electronic and digital media retrieve orality, the tribal need for unifying associations manifests in totemism (team or university mascots) and, in its later cultural form, polytheism (superheroes with specialized superpowers and celebrities).
I can see that. When I looked at the cultural creation of the folk harp movement in California back in 2001 I found the phenomenon of harp circles - where individuals met regularly to play together in a circle - reminiscent of the image of the circling of wagons under attack by hostile forces during the period of US Westward expansion. Especially as so many were internal educated economic migrants who had travelled to California’s financial promise of Silicon Valley only to find disappointment. It was an example of modern self conscious totemic tribalism.