Yes, I'm 100% with Freddie here. I'm likewise flabbergasted that--as someone who recently left a liberal arts program--these two are completely off-base on how seriously academics take pop culture, how almost every niche of every department (saving foreign languages? Theology?) is saturated with pop-culture study. Like, it's sickening. I wanted to go to college and read Bacon, not examine the image evolution of Britney Spears. Seriously.

Was Grant doing the diavlog from a traffic helicopter? Kinda distracting...

I agree with Freddie and privatepress. However, the dubiousness of the diavloggers assertions about pop culture was swamped by the rest of the hand-waving, sweeping statements about giant demographic groups. I found it hard to believe that two people who seem smart could keep uttering these talk-show-level banalities and over-generalizations. A very disappointing diavlog. Kerry, in particular, is usually much sharper.

Great diavlog.

Philosophy, at least, is not infused with discussions of pop culture. There is the popular "Philosophy and Popular Culture" Series (The Simpsons and Philosophy, etc.), but in the classroom there is almost no focus on pop culture, except as examples to illustrate various points, and the occasional film clip here and there. I don't know how things are in the other humanities.

I'm glad someone at BhTV FINALLY decided to take this topic on. And I think some of this is correct--on the business about academia and pop culture, I disagree with the commentators above. You're obviously not a millennial if you think there is still a line between high and popular culture and want to read Bacon at the expense of contemporary works. Yes, there are tons of people in academia now working on contemporary culture, but they are mostly young PhDs--ie millennials--and they don't yet have a strong theoretical frame to that with because the theory is still basically postmodernist. Meanwhile, the people TEACHING most undergrads don't yet have a way to speak to their students about popular culture that doesn't sound like grandpas trying to be hip. I think that's what the commentators were hinting at. Now the commentators were wrong about two things: 1. that social capital doesn't matter anymore; social capital will always matter but what constitutes social capital now isn't so much defined in universal terms as it is in niche terms. You acquire social capital by mastering a particular cultural niche. One of those niches is

Quoting PreppyMcPrepperson: You're obviously not a millennial if you think there is still a line between high and popular culture and want to read Bacon at the expense of contemporary works.

I'm not sure of your point here. Is it that the best of contemporary pop culture (or "contemporary works"; are these meant to be the same?) is just as good as the best of the past? Is it that studying any item of pop culture, as long as you study it in-depth, is as good as studying Bacon (or Mozart, or Aristotle, or Einstein, or Vermeer...)?

Yes, there are tons of people in academia now working on contemporary culture, but they are mostly young PhDs--ie millennials--and they don't yet have a strong theoretical frame to that with because the theory is still basically postmodernist. Meanwhile, the people TEACHING most undergrads don't yet have a way to speak to their students about popular culture that doesn't sound like grandpas trying to be hip. I think that's what the commentators were hinting at.

Why is it so important to teach pop culture? Is it so that youngsters will be interested? Isn't there any value

But discussions of generations have always bored me to tears and struck me as supremely self-absorbed and petty. What could be more ephemeral and irrelevant than a generational line? A tic? Boomer (obviously)

Thanks for those links! As a Gen X'er, I value the constructive/destructive power of an individual. I also value the efficacy of employing technical knowledge to define a world. But, the generation has never experienced disaster. The economy has hummed until now at peak. 9/11 and the Iraq/Afghan wars are external, and those with insight are part of a counter-culture - the military - that does not value generations, only its own collective existence. So, how can you talk about transformation! There's no need to change.

I completely agree about post-modernism. When I was a graduate student in archaeology we were taught that the past is unknowable and studying archaeology is only useful in that it allows you to percieve your own political biases in how you interpret the past (unless you were writing about the role of women, then post-modernism did not apply). I know my politcal biases. I don't need to spend 6 years in graduate school to figure that out. It may be a good tool to use as self critique, but it has been a disaster in that it has subsumed every aspect of learning in the humanities.

I did find this discussion to be rather shallow and airy, but I wouldn't say that the point that academia is not engaged in pop culture enough is necessarily wrong. In the end, no matter which direction you go on this, your argument is likely to be circular.

Quoting gwlaw99: When I was a graduate student in archaeology we were taught that the past is unknowable and studying archaeology is only useful in that it allows you to percieve your own political biases in how you interpret the past (unless you were writing about the role of women, then post-modernism did not apply).

Wow. That's pretty terrible. I've often avoided humanities classes because I didn't think that they had a particularly useful approach to study, but if what you say is representative of the humanities, I'm even more glad to have avoided them.

Quoting privatepress: Yes, I'm 100% with Freddie here.

I'm likewise flabbergasted that--as someone who recently left a liberal arts program--these two are completely off-base on how seriously academics take pop culture, how almost every niche of every department (saving foreign languages? Theology?) is saturated with pop-culture study.

Like, it's sickening. I wanted to go to college and read Bacon, not examine the image evolution of Britney Spears.

Seriously.

The only good reason to study Bacon, however, is to have a more complete way to intellectually engage in the present and the future. Reading Bacon for its own sake, to my liberal arts mind, is exactly the problem. Every bit of cultural output that you read is really just training for identifying and astutely analyzing the current cultural moment in our world. If not, then why bother studying it in the first place?

Intrinsic value of art?

I don't know what to make of Mr. McCracken.
Did he just do a bad presentation of his work, or are his books as poorly argued? I don't even know whether he is a pinhead or a patriot. I wonder what O'Reilly would say.

Kerry is wearing her newly emaciated face - just like Hollywood!

I am the one who is flabbergasted by the majority of pedestrian comments above. The point, I think, with regard to liberal arts and pop culture is not that there isn't enough of it in education, but that it should simply be regarded as culture in the classroom. I agree that marginalizing culture with the modifier "pop" is not constructive. It should be clear that McCracken is not advocating more "pop culture" studies when he notes that he wants more classics read in university education. It is utterly obvious, and even pointed out by Kerry in the video, that generation dividing lines are vague. However, analysis of generational differences is penetrating, and I would even say necessary, for understanding cultural transformation. I also thought the way both speakers picked out details to illustrate important points about cultural transformation was illuminating. The only reason I can see for the depraved comments above is the two miscommuniactions that happened between the speakers, which caused a bit of a pause for clarification, but that would entail blindness to content and gross over emphasis on presentation on the part of said commentators. Great job overall Kerry, I hope your back on Will's