Chris Dalen at Pitchfork calls for a new Lester Bangs or Hunter Thompson—but with the ability to write about technology, "because pop culture today is primarily a technology story":
I keep hearing the same gripe from the critics of the critics of pop culture: Today's writers eat it. Nobody knows how to cover music, or movies, or video games, or any of the other media that matter. We need someone to swoop in and save us: We need a new Lester Bangs, or a new Hunter S. Thompson-- one of those guys who made criticism and alternative journalism seem so vital back in the 1960s and 70s. Where they hell did they go?
Chuck Klosterman writes in Esquire about the failure of the gaming press to cough up a single critic who embodies whatever Bangs was doing when he told people to listen to the Troggs. Old school fans of music crit watch the field slip into the morass of mp3 blogs, message boards, and kids who just shout, 'Hey, can you YSI that to me?' every time a new album leaks-- and they wonder, what happened to the great critics? They want a tastemaker, a voice of authority, who can put it all in perspective and knock our heads together with his or her crazy-yet-dead-on arguments.
But I think I've found the answer: We don't have a new Bangs or Thompson yet because pop culture today is primarily a technology story. And we don't know how to write about technology."
I think part of the issue here is that technology writing tends to come in two flavors: technophilia and technophobia. It's very rare to find someone who writes perceptively and accessibly about technology who doesn't either fawn over geeky details or demonize technology as the root of all social problems. Thompson and Bangs both loved their various topics, but were also able to see deep within the ugly heart of it, and within themselves.
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Posted by johndanseven at July 31, 2006 10:30 AM | TrackBack