And Now For Something Completely Different

Running out of a self-imposed time limit here so, from my notes:

Class of 3000.

Watch this. At least the first five minutes.


Background Information:

• Children’s TV show. Often used to educate children as much as to enteratin them.
• Andre 3000. Member of Outkast. Big time music star. Had big hit a few years ago “Hey Ya” (Though I've been a fan since the much earlier "Rosa Parks"). Really famous, really rich? Hope so. Took at least some time off from recording and what does he do? Makes a children’s TV show with himself as stand-in.
• Class of 3000: Children’s TV show. High production values. Highly promoted. Well received. Story of a successful entertainer who returns to his school for creative studies in order to become a teacher.

Points of Interest

• First words out of main character when speaking to class “Okay, have my books, my chalk, my , time to start teaching.” Turns to chalkboard starts to write then turns around to class “Um, how do I teach?”.
• First student to ansewr responds by saying “I don’t know, we barely know how to learn.”
• Class continues.
• Class ends with introduction of new character who informs main character that he cannot continue with his current teaching method because he needs a lesson plan according to the school’s rules.
• Show continues but I flicked channels at this point.

Analysis

• This is a good show.
• This is a show packed with meaning and symbols. The people producing the show have put a lot of time and effort into each character and each scene. This was not done accidentally but for a purpose. Yet, done so smoothly and simply that it can easily be overlooked. Like most children’s television it is trying to entertain yet at the same time impart new ideas and concepts to its audience.
• The principal character is a counter-motiff. There in the story to throw the meaning into sharp relief by opposing it.
• Mr. Andre 3000 is a nice man.
• This show is so good and successful, on a variety of levels because it has a high budget and this is the direct result of being a pet project of Mr. 3000.
• This show is a modern day morality play.
• Pop culture is popular culture. Popular things are succesful things. Successful things happen for reasons. Well done popular media can be as effective and as moving as so-called high art but at the same time reach a much larger audience.

Lessons

• Tear down the walls of convention with the wrecking ball of creativity.
• People learn in different ways through different methods.
• The starting point of knowledge is learning how to teach. Ie start with the basics.

And we’re back. Sorry about that, production of new posts has been held up since we took a wrecking ball to our ideation department late last night. Apologies. The persons responsible have been sacked and replaced with their closest, Mexican, non-union equivalents. Porque es la tiempo para Lunes Gigante! Anyhow, I mention this particular childrens show not because I happen to be a fan and not because I have or don’t have children who watch it (Although, rest assured that have I children of a suitable age I would park them in front of this particular feeding tube if they weren’t lining up already) because I found it to be an example of the kinds of meaning and importance that can be found in unexpected places.

Big breath here, because I’m about to let out a big secret. There is no pop culture. There’s no emphemeral bubble of liquid dreams propped up by hollywood, the left, and a byzantine consortium of interests and agendas that somehow polluting our youth and its culture and tainting us all by its very pressence. Somewhere along the line – just like how 2000 became the millenial moment instead of 2001 – we’ve collectively gotten it just a little bit confused because the wrong meme has been propigated. Pop culture is short for popular culture. And there are no inherent classifications and segregations of a culture because nothing creative can exist in a vacuum. All art, all creative endeavors, all creation of something from nothing[1] are a directed, purposeful endeavors following their own particulars. Different genres, different perspectives, different audiences but it all adds up to one, giant zeitgeist of a culture. There is no more innate value in what’s called pop culture than there is in any other arbitrary classification or grouping of a body of works. What matters is how effective they are at execution given their self-imposed parameters. In other words, it’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion in the ocean.

Popular culture is that which succeeds by, well, being popular. If something is successful in that then it has captured a large audience. And, as we’re beginning to understand the aggragate opinion of a large enough body of otherwise unremarkable individuals is often frighteningly accurate even when no particular member of the sample group is all that right or understands the underlying question especially well. This is called the wisdom of the commons and we’ll get to it another time because it’s another big breath of fresh air. Because it means that a random group of people with no knowledge and no direction can be very, very wise especially when compared to a group of elite, so-called experts, each trying to outguess the crowd response. When we’re talking about pop culture those elites are critics and that crowd are consumers. You might not have realized it but every time you’ve gone to the store, any sort of store, and bought a CD or a DVD or a book or a magazine or subscribed to a website or whatever else might fall under the all encompassing umbrella of popular culture you were offering, in your own small way, a rebutal to any critic who’s ever said that your particular interests are somehow less valuable and less significant than, say, opera or the “legitimate” theater. Or any other high-falluting, artsy-fartsy example of what we might call “high” culture in that in our arbitrary classification system it’s trying to rise “above” the muck and commercial crassness of popular culture. Those sort of things tend to appeal to the elite critics, our guardians of opinion, because they’re a rather jaded sort who’ve seen a lot more and done a lot more than you or I ever will – at least, they sure talk like it – and as a result seek out novelty as effectiveness rather than solid craft as effectiveness. So, high culture, by its very nature, appeals to a smaller niche. But when we acknowledge the wisdom of the commons, it’s high culture that’s somehow “below” popular culture[2] because with as big a market as there is for pop culture within just the United States we’re talking about a lot of insect intelligence in the hive. And you have to be a very, very smart critic to even compete.

So, consider culture to be valueless, directionless, a complex system that no one organization or individual can exert complete control over for a moment. But let’s also remember that when we’re talking about culture we’re talking about art, in some way. Culture is the songs we sing to ourself[3]. And popular songs are the songs that a large amount of people are, in some way, willing to part with their money to own. So, they’re not just the songs we sing to ourself, they’re the songs we like to sing to ourselves. And, when trying to figure out a culture, that’s not nothing. As all artistic endeavors are somehow directed affairs – they’re made somehow from the raw, primal nothing of the empty page or screen by someone, somewhere, for some reason. That reason can be nothing more than the pursuit of art for arts sake but could be as simple as trying to sell soap or for nothing more than to see what happens when you put this word after this one here. Accidents happen in art, of course, but leaving the unexpected notes in our songs is a deliberative, conscious process. Otherwise, why do pencils have erasers?

Took a while to get here but Class of 3000 did not happen by accident. And it has a value and uniqueness all its own. We have to consider it on its own terms to evaluate that value. I, for one, find it to be of much value. It’s densely packed with the kind of symbology, shorthands, and codings that I, as someone who’s at least passingly familiar with the creative process, recognize right off as being well-crafted, if nothing else. The purpose of this show we’re talking about, after all, is not to sell children yet more crap they don’t really need[4] but to educated. This is educational programming not unlike Seasame Street or Blues Clues or any other attempt made in the genre of entertaining and informational childrens programming. The whole thing is designed to teach - subtly of course as few people like being shouted and hit over the head with an anvil while they’re enjoying things – and more than just teach. As I see it, the goal of the show is to teach creativity. To encourage children to explore and adjust and experience art in some way on their own terms rather than according to a set plan. Each of the multi-cultural cast members represents a different audience, a different way of learning, a different way of approaching art if not life[5]. It might look like a Benetton ad on the surface but that’s only because, by now, a Benetton ad is a code word for a rather lame and corny attempt at forcing multi-cultural diversity by just cramming together a bunch of differently skinned people – a cliché, in so many words. But these characters on the Class of 3000 are far from stereotypes and cardboard cutouts. They show more life, more depth, more, well, character in just a few moments than some real life people I could mention. They’re, if you’ll pardon the expression when talking about some preteenage cartoon characters, well-developed. From the mini-Queen Latiffa-esque strong, confident black little girl who just so happens to play a harp to the well-meaning but completely misguided southern accented white girl who is always looking on the bright side of things - open to freely changing her viewpoints and perceptions and unafraid of the consequences of failure in the court of public opinion - to the overly serious asian male to the hip, cool black male to the teachers and on and on and on. And, if you’ve been paying attention none of its there by accident. And I, for one, consider something that’s trying to teach our children about the very basics of knowledge, of understanding, of creativity, and, above all, how to teach themselves to be a very worthwhile endeavor indeed. And anyone who doesn’t like it can take their tophat and cane and coat-tails and listen to people sing centuries old songs. Not that opera and other so-called high culture don’t have their own value – everything does if you look at it right – it’s just, at the moment, I’m in the market for something a little more now-ish.

[1] – Ah, but here’s where we part ways and branch ourselves into two different and seemingly irreconcilable halves – a schism, if you will. That’s logic for you, tricksy stuff and I’m certainly no expert. Art cannot come from nothing because art is something. Something cannot come from nothing. Something can only come from something else – something which is not nothing. Hence, all art, all creation, begins from a quantifiable set of concepts and experiences rather than some random inspiration.

[2] – Could just as easily say pop is up and high is down rather than the opposite. Direction being an arbitrary classification of its own. As Card (Nice writer, disagree with just about everything he says personally and morally, though. Leaving that particular connundrum for another time.) said in Ender’s Game “The enemy’s gate is always down”. In other words, absent a strong controlling influence on a system, such as gravity affecting what’s up and what’s down, you’re free to pick your own with your own valuation. That’s what I mean, at least, by arbitrary.

[3] – Quick braintease here. Can we do something other than sing songs? Are song, by definition to be sung? Can we dance a song? Can we act a song? Just how crazy can we get by picking apart the underlying assumptions of the arbitrary system we call the English language?

[4] – That’s the advertiser’s goal here. And the network which actually puts the show on the air at no small expense needs to, you know, eat too. So, yes, there are commercial interests at play here but we’re trying to get after authorial intent not find where they’ve compromised their “artistic integrity” for the sake of being invited to the nationally televised party.

[5] – And mindblowingly the lesson the first little bit of the show that was all that I watched managed to hammer home was that each of those students should seek their own way of expression, their own individuality, yet without the support of the other viewpoints of the class they were somewhat less than their potential. The show’s about musical art, after all, and in a band you’ve got to learn to play well with others. Just stunningly sophisticated as its something that took me years and years of going it alone to figure out for myself. And they’re aiming this at kids? No wonder I can’t program the VCR!