Saturday, December 03, 2011

The Banality of Everything

Horse-drawn caisson, funeral of John F. Kennedy, 11/25/1963

A little over forty-eight years ago, on the morning of November 25, 1963, a casket containing the body of President John F. Kennedy left the White House on a horse-drawn caisson and traveled slowly to St. Matthew’s Cathedral. It was accompanied on foot by members of the funeral procession, including the president’s widow. After the funeral mass the procession resumed, crossing the Potomac to Arlington Cemetery, where President Kennedy’s body was interred.

Virtually everyone in the country who was not present at these events watched them on television. The occasion resulted in any number of photographs that remained iconic for decades afterwards: The flag-covered casket resting on the catafalque in the Capitol; the tiny Kennedy children standing hand-in-hand with their mother; a veiled Jacqueline Kennedy behaving with suitable gravity and decorum, bearing up stoically, weeping when appropriate, and walking slowly in the procession behind her husband’s body; the Kennedy brothers standing solemnly at the graveside; little John Jr. saluting his father.

In the years afterwards, of course, all those icons were demystified, one by one. Except among the most hardcore romantic liberals, the Kennedy myth disappeared. At the same time, as irony and cynicism became predominant in popular culture, respect for solemn ceremony and public decorum declined.

To look back on the footage and photos from November 1963 is to gaze through a window into a different world. As L. P. Hartley wrote, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Fast-forward to December 2011.

Yesterday I read a news story from Texas about one of those all-too-common domestic tragedies: a man shot his wife and four children before killing himself. The response of the surrounding community to this horrific event is shown in the photograph below.

Teddy bear memorial

Tableaux of this nature have become de rigueur in the wake of incidents involving violent death. Whether inflicted by other human beings, caused by accidents, or brought about by natural events, the violence provokes the same response: flowers, candles, and teddy bears heaped at or near the site of the tragedy.

This form of public mourning was already in evidence in the aftermath of 9-11. It has become even more frequent over the course of the past decade, with piles of teddy bears guaranteed to appear as soon as the circumstances of the event become publicly known. The greater the death toll — or the more horrific the method of slaughter — the larger the heap of stuffed animals, candles, flowers, and cards. In the wake of the July 22 massacre in Oslo, the pile of commemorative bric-a-brac appeared to cover acres of public space.

To investigate this phenomenon any further runs the risk of appearing mean-spirited and curmudgeonly. It is certainly difficult to deny the sincerity of the feelings expressed by the mourners through the medium of teddy bears and floral cards. One presumes these memorial heaps are created by people who generally mean well, who are overcome by their emotions and can find no more suitable method of dealing with them.

But how did we come to this? How did our public reactions to tragic events become so insipid, so maudlin, so inescapably trite?

At some point between the death of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the death of Princess Diana in 1996 1997, the accepted form of public mourning shifted away from formal ceremony using time-honored rituals. The solemn state funeral gave way to Elton John and stuffed animals. The Book of Common Prayer was discarded and replaced by schlock, kitsch, and hackneyed sentimentality.

Inspiring oratory has all but disappeared from public occasions. Politicians and preachers deliver bromides. We are regaled with clichés and bombarded with truisms.

We are, in a word, awash in banality.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Then there are the candlelit vigils. The worst tragedies bring out masses of people who carry candles in public spaces after dark and leave them on walls and sidewalks where the TV video crews can capture them for the late-night news. The more deliberately vile the slaughter, the larger the vigil.

This is one of the most meaningless rituals of our time. A terrorist blows up a bus full of school children, and the standard response is to light a candle and stand in a public square for the television cameras.

Does that make sense?

What makes it a meaningful action?

It was not so long ago that abominations such the mass murder of children provoked a different reaction from the general populace in Western countries. Instead of candles, torches were carried, along with whatever weapons came to hand. Under such circumstances local political leaders were hard-pressed to prevent the dispensing of rough justice.

Chartist riots

But not any longer. We are more civilized now. We light candles and heap up flowers instead.

One does not have to approve of vigilante action to recognize that the pitchforks-and-torches response is more rational and more sane than the candlelight vigil. Knee-jerk sentimentality in the face of deliberately-inflicted mass slaughter is evidence of a deep mental dysfunction at the collective level. Our societies seem to have lost the ability to respond effectively to forces that threaten them.

In immunological terms, we no longer produce antibodies that will engulf and destroy deadly invaders.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

The Teddy Bear and Candle Syndrome is part of a larger process of cultural degradation that has proceeded unimpeded over the past half-century. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, time-hallowed customs and institutions have been eroded and have disappeared.

One may posit various causes for the deterioration of our common culture. The patient efforts of the Frankfurt School and its “long march through the institutions” are often cited as a major source of cultural destruction. And the near-disappearance of publicly expressed religion has taken its toll — without the spiritual insights and rituals of religion to contain our grief, we are left without meaningful guidance in our behavior.

The largest portion of blame, however, may be assigned to the emergence of new communication technologies. The ubiquity of television — which performed such an important function for Americans during their solemn mourning on November 25, 1963 — eventually dissolved most of the cultural glue that held our social traditions together. It opened up the younger generation to stimulation and excitement at a level never previously known. It created, through both advertising and general programming, a yearning for the glamorous and exotic sensual world repeatedly depicted on the glowing screen.

The medium itself changed between 1950 and the end of the century. In its early years television was like visual radio, with announcers and actors standing in a static setting and talking or acting in front of a relatively fixed camera. Over the decades, however, the cutting and pacing of television images became steadily more frequent and frenetic. During their most formative years, young minds were presented with these rapidly changing visual and auditory stimuli for hours every day. Neurological studies have shown that the fast-paced cutting actually causes changes in the physical structure of the brain. Children raised under such circumstances grow up processing information in a different manner than they would without television. This long-term effect is independent of the content of the programming — it depends solely on the medium itself.

New interactive means of communication have been inserted into this fertile mental environment over the last twenty years. Cell phones, texting, notebook computers, hand-held devices — all of these media have increased the fragmentation of communication and further shortened the interactions between people. Lengthy and thoughtful exchanges with others become less frequent, and commonly-experienced events are replaced with networking and “cocooning”.

None of these changes has removed the need for emotional satisfaction and catharsis, however. Human nature has not been abolished. When terrible events strike, there are no longer any common rituals to help contain the disturbing emotions that arise. The suffering individual turns to those sources of information with which he is familiar — television, Facebook, Twitter, and so on — and finds his way into the crowd converging on the public square or bomb-blast site, holding a teddy bear and a candle. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the new rituals have poured into the emptiness left by the departure of the ancient ones.

The form of these new rituals is dictated by the feminized zeitgeist, which demands the inhibition of all expressions of negative or violent feelings. The shaking of fists is out. The laying on of flower bouquets is in.

We have become a teddy-bear people.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

The cheapening and coarsening of public culture long predates the arrival of television, of course. Writers between the wars frequently bemoaned the commercialization and materialism of their times. In his 1938 poem “A Week to Christmas” (Part XX of a much longer poem, “Autumn Journal”) Louis MacNeice wrote disparagingly of “gimcracks in the shops”. Presumably he was thinking of a toy shop such as this one, on Wine Street in Bristol, photographed during the Christmas season of the same year:

Toy shop window, Wine St., Bristol, Christmas 1938

If the poet were carried forward in time to the Christmas season of 2011 — which began not in December, but in October, and includes virtually no references to Christ — would he be astonished at the level of further gimcrackery to which Western culture has descended?

Would he realize that, culturally speaking, his own time was halcyon compared with our own?

Would he understand that the Socialist sentiments he shared with his fellow interwar poets bore a large share of the responsibility for the destruction of Western culture — which is now all but complete?

So here we are, closing out the Year of Our Lord 2011 with reindeer and snowmen and Santa Clauses and all the other gimcracks.

Here we are with heaps of teddy bears and candles whenever another gunmen kills eight or ten people in his former place of employment.

Here we are with tattoos, piercings, ghetto gear, texting, reality TV, “get over it”, and “whatever”.

It’s no wonder that Islam is making such inroads into the Western world. Our spiritual vacuum can scarcely be filled with stuffed animals and flowers.

But nature abhors that vacuum, so it will be filled with something.

22 comments:

Brock Townsend said...

Wow, an extraordinary piece. Thanks and posted.

John Kennedy's Assassination
http://www.namsouth.com/viewtopic.php?t=3685&highlight=kennedy

ANTI-ISLAMIST said...

Baron, Kudos to you. I havn't yet read it to the very end, but I have to imediately express my absolute admiration to you for your vision, analysis and description of, if not totally so at least a facet of what I myself with my mediocre intelligence and in all humbleness have chosen to call global idiocy - or, among common voters, the general and daily practiced functional stupidity. This is a historic day, 'a step for mankind has been taken' and I am glad to have lived to experience it.
PS Even the electromagnetic smog we are living in might influence our brains and how they work?!.

Auntie Analogue said...

"For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything." - G.K. Chesterton

JohnX said...

I believe the increasing influence of women in our culture is to blame for this and a lot of other things. Partly anyway.

Men built civilization, and men are more suited to maintain and defend it. Non-patriarchal cultures seem unable even to maintain themselves demographically.

Feminism has to go and we need to restore some form of (western style) patriarchy. I'm not holding my breath.

Check out the writings of F. Roger Devlin (available online).

FP said...

Witness the emergence of virtual funerals held online by avatars in some of the multiplayer games.

Anonymous said...

The great Theodore Dalrymple wrote exhaustively about "the toxic cult of sentimentality" in his book "Spoilt Rotten" in 2010.Highly recommendable author - for all his books.I wonder if he is going to attack Islamism one day.

XPGMCMLXIII said...

Crowds whistling and applauding during what should be public moments of silence, clapping at Military Funerals and feigned mourning rites. An abrupt and massive cultural shift in the U.K. a symbol and condition of civil inferiority - dhimmitude.

babs said...

"The shaking of fists is out. The laying on of flower bouquets is in."

The shaking of fists is so "out" that an assembled group of indiginous people in the UK would most likely be arrested for this public display of anger. We, as a western culture, are no longer permitted to be angry in public. Unless, of course, you are part of a protected group.

whitney said...

Thank you. That was wonderful. I think you might be interested in this article from the brussels journal.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4871

George Pal said...

Dear Baron:

The destruction of Western culture may now be all but complete but another poet had this to say about such matters:

“There is no such thing as a lost cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph.” - T. S. Eliot

A wonderful lament, this post; you do well your part in keeping this valuable something alive.

Anonymous said...

"Over the decades, however, the cutting and pacing of television images became steadily more frequent and frenetic."

During one of my first travels to America, I remember being aghast at the furious pace of local television.

It seemed to me that it was humanely impossible to watch something like that. It looked like a form of torture.

At that time, French television was, comparatively, slow and relaxed. Of course, we have catched up since.

Anonymous said...

And yet, and yet. The new electronic communications media has revived the written word in many ways. From heart felt written emails to what are essentially small monographs appearing on web sites, there has been a tremendous resurrection of the written word. Many more voices are now heard that would not have been published in earlier times. Democratization of publication is not all negative. The impact of decline in the West, and the recent "crease of history" as one US general put it, has brought forth an outporing of analysis and historical synthesis.

Of course, if it is just a bunch of us old fogies talking to each other, while the educationists dumb down and infantilize the future, limiting discussion to 100 character textings, then there is really a lot to be worried about.

Mary Jackson said...

At some point between the death of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the death of Princess Diana in 1996, the accepted form of public mourning shifted away from formal ceremony using time-honored rituals.

Couple of things:

First, Princess Diana died in 1997.

Secondly, the funeral of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 2002, who died aged 101, was a very traditional funeral: gold coach, Authorised version of the Bible, traditional hymns, not a pop star in spitting distance, and attended and watched by millions of "decadent" Britons.

Thirdly, this year's Royal Wedding, also very traditional, though not stuffy, was again watched by millions of the same decadent Britons, and many Western (and Eastern) degenerates all over this doomed planet. A truly joyful occasion -- see here.

Apart from that, spot on.

Baron Bodissey said...

Thank you, Mary. You're quite right; I slipped a year there. I've corrected it.

XPGMCMLXIII said...

Never let jihad get in the way of decadence.

The Emir of Qatar and his wife Sheikha Mozah Bin Nasser Al Missned who are close friends of Prince Charles, Prince Mohamed Bin Nawaf bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi have attended the Royal Wedding of Prince William on Last Friday.
Also, Prince Al Walid Bin Talal and his wife, Princess "Amira Al Taweel", Moroccan Princess Salma and may other Arab leaders were there.

GM Roper said...

What a marvelous post Baron. You have nailed how we "collectively" deal with grief very, very well.

Jewel said...

Another way of putting Chesterton's quote is: Who stands for nothing falls for anything. And that is certainly true today.

I noted the same phenomenon last year, too:

http://tastyinfidelicacies.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-fashion-statement-grief-tats.html

Feuillet said...

I must admit I disagree with the conclusion of this article. I believe western civilisation, or indeed any civilisation,value the notion of restraint and rationality. While it is true that justice has to be done and criminals must be punished, especially in the recent tragedy of the baby case. Yet how will random group of people litting torches and carry sticks, able to make that happen by beating up people they thought to be "criminal". Isn't there a purpose for the justice system to exist because it meant to give everyone a fair trial, and not be assume guilty unless it was provened?

I think such "mob" mentality, which sometimes might be honorable , can have quite a lot of ramification. leftwinger can certainly exploit it to make people violent against the "right winger" (aka anyone they hate), as we can see in the OWS movement. Beside, didm't the muslim employ the same thing when they trash churches in Kosovo?

Anonymous said...

JohnX said... I believe the increasing influence of women in our culture is to blame for this and a lot of other things. Partly anyway.

Men built civilization, and men are more suited to maintain and defend it. Non-patriarchal cultures seem unable even to maintain themselves demographically.

Feminism has to go and we need to restore some form of (western style) patriarchy. I'm not holding my breath.

Check out the writings of F. Roger Devlin (available online).



lazy ass!


«A mosque in Montbéliard in France was partially burned last night. The only clue about who might have been responsible was a piece of paper left in the mosque grounds bearing the words "Les échappées belles". Les échappées belles, which means "the beautiful getaways", is believed to be the name of a mysterious group of girls who have been associated with several fires in the area this year. (It is also the name of a holiday programme on French television.)

A few weeks ago, the van belonging to the mosque was burned and "racist" and "anti-Muslim" inscriptions left inside, along with the message "Les échappées belles". The group is said to have previously been involved in several other fires at construction sites in the local area.

Some news reports describe "Les échappées belles" as a "far-right group of women"; others insist it has nothing to do with the "far-right" and is just a "disorganised gang" of girls.
»

1389 said...

Lighting a candle in church and praying for the souls of the departed is appropriate.

Leaving candles and teddy bears outdoors - not so much.

YouTube: Memory Eternal

DOSTOEVSKY AND MEMORY ETERNAL

Ronbo said...

@Dear Baron:

I have to disagree with you!

I think in the coming years we will see a number of very bloody civil wars in the West, especially in the USA where a Second U.S. Civil War is already in a Cold Civil War stage.

The battle lines have been drawn with the Tea Party Movement (TPM) on the patriot side, and the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) socialist traitors on the other.

"There Will Be Blood"

Anonymous said...

The notion of a second Civil War has become fundamentally more realistic with recent attempts by factions within the U.S. government to define and control a newly invented Federal power to wage direct war on ideologically opposed portions of the American people. How soon open hostilities will become widespread is still uncertain. But that there is no longer any serious political will to avoid such a war rather than attempt to win it through brute force is plain.

According to the laws and executive policies being developed, those piles of sentimental detritus will become acts of punishable defiance against the state when they commemorate victims of direct military action against the American people. Will they continue? Will people find it worthwhile to pile up teddy bears and candles once the punishment is to be hunted down and treated as a political dissident?

Or will Americans disposed to mourn the loss of freedom find more enduring symbols to risk their lives over?

Chiu Chun-Ling.