The High Price of Cultural Change

Townhall.com ^ | May 14, 2019 | Bill Murchison

[Kaslin]

It's a funny thing about "culture." It changes.

That's because people die and new ones get born, and along the way, Things happen, events of one kind and another -- wars, elections, recessions, new inventions. The so-called culture bounces off these various events in surprising ways.

Which is another way of saying I don't think Doris Day -- sad to say, the late Doris Day -- would make it in today's culture, the culture of Lady Gaga and the "Avengers" series and, let us not forget (as if the media would allow it), "Game of Thrones," to whose coming demise the front page of, yes, The Wall Street Journal pointed us on the day Doris Day's own demise made the news.

There is always a breathless quality to cultural change and to sheer newness. Doris Day once was new -- a big-band singer in the year of grace 1945, when Bernie Sanders and I were tricycling around our respective communities. She went on to artistic heights on the basis of her gosh-darn niceness and freshness -- not excluding her rich talent, obviously, but niceness was her calling card. You had to like her, if not love her; she compelled it. Any notion of Doris Day cavorting in the manner film directors now prescribe as normative ... well, there wasn't any such notion. She retired before such notions took hold.

Cultural look-backs are inherently dangerous in that they can lead to accusations of embarrassing fixation on the often mythological beauty of the past. Certainly, any look-back at the 1950s, for refreshment of memories concerning Doris Day's hold on the general public, involves contrasting those times with our own. I think we would agree "niceness" is not the conspicuous feature of today's culture. Donald Trump's most fervent supporters would not call him nice. Nor would the president's most fervent adversaries call Speaker Nancy Pelosi especially sweet. Still less so House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler.

Never an especially kind and generous calling, politics seems in the 2000s to paddle about in human bile. We can accept the necessities of political warfare and the reality of cultural fragmentation while yearning for some higher, more generous forms of behavior, maybe the kind we entertained when Doris Day was a big hit: someone (leave out the sexual innuendos) you'd enjoy just being around the house with.

There aren't so many people today whom modern Americans enjoy being around, in reality or prospect. Anger and resentment are two of our foremost emotions -- the consequence, likely, of the new public mood, wherein my way is the way that counts. As for yours, well, just keep your distance, huh?

For such an era, such a time, Trump may be the inevitable president -- the inveigher, the dogmatist, the tweeter-in-chief, laying down the law for the benefit of those who care to agree with him. A Democratic presidency might not be so different. Telling off those who previously told you off strikes me as a potentially enslaving habit.

The Doris Day era -- which I recall keenly -- wasn't perfect by any means. Is any era perfect? There would never be growth if so. The thing about the Doris Day era that should remind us of Doris' entitlement to significant news coverage is its general -- I say general, not total -- lack of personal rancor or contempt for the otherwise-minded, meaning those yahoos who don't agree with me! Even Republicans and Democrats kind of, sort of got along. That was in part, I think, because government in the Doris Day era mattered much less than it does today, and it cost less, offering fewer occasions for dispute.

There was, anyway, little sense back then (as I recall the matter) of basic decencies being interred and then patted down with a shovel. There were distinct feelings of commonality -- of niceness, if you please -- friendly, peaceable, in contrast with the rancor and hell-raising of the '60s, '70s and beyond.

I do not suggest that a certain golden-voiced singer caused it. I say she was of it.

[SMARTY]

Change is good but only if it’s for the better... change JUST to change is pointless

[polymuser]

50’s niceness:

Men holding the door for women.
Respecting your elders.
Kids behaving in class.
Being quiet at the movies.
Waiting your turn.
Not dressing like a skank.
Playing fair at debates.
Not cursing or spitting in public.
Complaining kindly.
Not pushing your preferences on strangers unwelcomed.
Not staring.
Knowing your place.
Being courteous to strangers.
Picking up after yourself.

[TalBlack]

As the evil ones twist to their own ends the law, that worked so well for so long, the bile factor and disharmony ramp up.

[bert]

Progressives must be eliminated, totally destroyed.. Progressives have ceased to be Americans

That means American cities must be destroyed and rebuilt as American enclaves

The status quo is not sustainable.

[tet68]

That was in part, I think, because government in the Doris Day era mattered much less than it does today, and it cost less, offering fewer occasions for dispute.

Probably because it WAS smaller~!

The socialism promulgated by democrats
has grown our government to ungovernible dimensions,
we no longer control it, it controls us.
Something the founders warned us about.

[Vehmgericht]

Willie Munzenberg, “We will make the West so corrupt that it stinks.”

[abclily]

We are now in the Crotch Culture.

[foreverfree]

bump

[TBP]

We need a good dose of that niceness.

[CoastWatcher]

Why do all those in the Media need to take cheap shots at the President in everything they write?

Donald Trump is not Doris Day; well duh.

If these nimrods would listen to the President; they would hear him say nothing but nice things about everybody he meets. Even Kim Jong-un.

They are just upset that the President responds to people who attack him in kind.

Doris Day was the beautiful girl next door and was loved by everyone. However we have no idea how she would behave if she were relentlessly attacked by the Media as the President.

[sparklite2]

She retired before such notions took hold.

---

I suspect a lot of the change has to do with the emergence,
following the end of WWII, of adolescents being major drivers
of the entertainment industry.  They (we) had money to spend
and  newly forming music genre of our own. 

The problem for shows like Lucky Strike Hit Parade
was that rock and roll was just not easy to perform
in a different fashion every week.  Left in the dust were,
"Dance with me Henry, "This old house," "Canadian
sunset," "Sixteen tons," "Green door," and  other, for lack of
a better word, "grown-up" music,

Giselle McKinsey, mainstay along with Dorothy Collins and Russel
Arms of Hit Parade, was infuriated as rock laid her career to rest.

The movies changed with music as 'stars' became younger and
younger.  Jimmy Cagneys, Jane Russells, and Humphrey Bogarts
gave way to Sandra Dee, Fabian, and other teenage actors.

Doris Day was among the last adult stars who was expected to
act like an adult.  Adolescents don't want stodgy entertainment,
so we get what we get.  If that means Kiss and Alice Cooper,
so be it.

[sparklite2]

Carved into a college study carrel,
“Change for the sake of change
is the ideology of a cancer cell.”