Why I Left the Pop Culture Cult

 

“People hate …. Everyone hates” is the mantra of the new, Godless world man has invented for itself from years of prosperity. The hard work of many millions only gets wasted on the empty goods that spoil every subsequent generation. I once belonged to that generation, firmly following the cancerous way of life that Generation Z and the Millennials before them and Generation Alpha are being poisoned by. For one thing, what we call “art” is never so—Bland art that follows the tritest cookie-cutter formula to make the most money possible. This is where the “franchise” comes in—a borrowing from the fast-food world that our movies, television, and books are now forceto conform to. Instead of enjoying a story by itself, it now has to be part of some big sprawling universe that is meant to sell product. It is called “art” because the masses of loyal consumers these days have never understood what true human passion is like. To them, only the big entertainment oligopolies and the famous are entitled to produce such magic. No one else can make anything because they bear the stigma of “not being famous,” or as my peers of my age cohort say, “people hate it.”

But why is this so?

When I still followed that mindset, I would lash out online at anyone whose opinion about something differed from my own. This is dangerous. It teaches us that we should never take criticism, even if it is helpful, and is an act of conduct that might cross the First Amendment: That silencing others, even if their views are harmless, can tear the already worn fabric of national cohesion. The word “hater” in this context seems to have been borrowed from the jargon of the prima donna elites who live their lavish Hollywood lifestyles. The “hater” is the current scapegoat, one who allegedly kills movies with the utter of a simple sentence. Rather than actually understanding why things happen, they want their followers to think as they do--that the right to have an opinion is a great evil.

This in turn creates a kind of “brand loyalty” where many of the younger cohorts devoutly follow the people or franchises they like, consuming ever little piece of material produced to promote these wares. When the latest installment of anything they like does less than they expect, or if they skim the commons of the internet’s innumerable public chatrooms, they take their blame out on others. It was once the critics who were blamed, now the people as a whole is at fault for such petty setbacks.

For a large part of my adolescence, I was addicted to the rising Marvel Cinematic Universe. Iron Man was my hero. I saw most of the films in theaters from Avengers: Age of Ultron through Spider-Man: No Way Home. I thought the franchise would continue forever, and that anyone who said “no” was a hater.

Then the Pandemic happened.

A personal lack of money, and declining mental health had eventually forced me to live elsewhere beyond Montpelier, in Glen Allen, and in Lynchburg. This same lack of money continued, but I finally had an opportunity to watch other movies outside of the MCU, and superheroes in general. But the first movie I had ever seen that got me into movies was The Blues Brothers. A fun cartoony comedy where Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi play as sharp-dressed rocker rogues who love music and evade the police, Neo-Nazis, and a mysterious hitwoman as they seek to raise money through a reunion concert to pay for the orphanage they had grown up in. Such a ridiculous premise rekindled all the variety found outside of a franchise once claimed to be “a melting pot of genres,” so to speak. Then I watched other movies, like Shanghai Knights and Platoon, which like any amount of cinema made by people, have a varied degree of quality. Living away from home encouraged me to watch movies in other genres. In late 2021, I watched Total Recall (the original 1990 Paul Verhoeven version), Tremors, a censored version of Robocop, The Matrix trilogy, and seven of the Star Wars movies. Watching them gave me a better understanding of how to write.

There is a far greater world of stories beyond the preferred staples of recent years. It is one of the antidotes to curing the cultish persecution complex that many fans of superheroes and fantasy have, along with a good spiritual supplement and a drive to actually create something. It is true that one is not entitled to vast fame and fortune, which only few get to enjoy, but that the journey of creating, and completing something, is far more fulfilling. Writing a story is not about the excessive hunger for more material, but rather than need to know what good writing is, and what isn’t, to be able to employ such a craft effectively.

The problem with popular culture is that it became a substitute for religion, where the desire for short-term reward, or longer-term rewards that we never work towards, is prioritized. Religion is then cast aside as an inferior construct to bind the peoples to the land and to work. The guardrails set by faith are torn down, because life has now become a meaningless struggle to acquire the next piece of worthless junk bearing the likeness of any movie we love, and nothing more.

Another reminder of a greater world beyond the frivolous debates over movies is that real problems come that force us to ignore our desires for the time being. A sick father is worse than the latest bombing movie, and a chilly week without power is even worse than not being able to go out for a movie or two. The young lose their minds over the appearance of their favorite characters in a different movie and expect the companies to make more of those movies with such gimmicks. One would pay top dollar for the most expensive action figures and pay just as unreal amounts of money for often low-quality commissions of their favorite characters. It is no longer about working on oneself, nor about mastering the gifts that God bestows on us. It is about the naïve and aimless following the famous in lengthy trails like how the Pied Piper led the children out of town. And the fittingly named influencers tell us how to think, that any movie or game they like fails because the rest of humankind apparently hates it.

The meaninglessness of a life of frivolous consumption is all about the people who made it bribing the masses to forever consume whatever slop they release for them. It is not too different from an impoverished lifestyle where one is busy looking for her next meal, but where the next “event” movie, the latest products determine where our money goes. And in turn, many shallow movies that those kinds of people enjoy persuading some telling how great they are, using the most basic words like “epic” or “slaps”. This inverse of “people hate” is just as bad because it now treats anything new as “good”. Furthermore, this encourages a sense of thinking where my generation now feels obliged to project backwards anachronisms of their shallow lifestyles to the past. They would say that a child at the dawn of the 20^th century was as obsessed with reading as modern children are with smart phones. It’s because they firmly believe that their lives are better than anyone else’s in history, and that they clearly know more than anyone else would.

            But the lives of the young in America are all propped up on the hard work of their parents and forebears. They put so much faith in the latest movies and goods because they have little incentive to go do anything beyond seeking the next source of amusement that corporations are “obliged” to do. I would mention how the dubious reporting of current events plays a role in their perceptions of things, but greed is a much greater drive. Keeping up with all the trends that popular culture advertises has negative consequences from the supposed setbacks of a movie’s failure, or the failure of any product they endorse. And the social media cesspools of negativity where users dwell on the opinions of others help fuel this school of thought. It is us or nothing. No longer is understanding the Act of Contrition important. No longer is critiquing classmates’ work an acceptable practice. No longer is the act of striving hard necessary for personal satisfaction. All what life is anymore is wallowing in misery despite everything that is bought. We have forgotten God, and have also forgotten ourselves. To be ideal citizens, we must continue our parents’ traditions, picking up any habits they used that we may benefit from. Therefore, a sense of fulfillment to our lives on Earth is granted.