Everything Bad Is Good for You
by Steven Johnson
We should try to collect ourselves, says Steven Johnson, we are getting a little fevered about the decline of our culture. Our frequent reaction to films, television, the internet, and teenage pursuits may be a waste of perfectly good flecks of spittle. Indeed, he subtitles his 2005 book "How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter."
The radio and TV programs of my youth--Gunsmoke and Dragnet and The Life of Riley--not only didn't challenge 1950s ideas about propriety and authority, they expressly sought to build respect for Truth, Justice and the American Way of Life. Those were the days. In an hour of Bonanza we got a story, a lesson drawn by Lorne Greene (Hop Sing is as good a man as any on the ranch, even if he does talk funny), a few moments of Hoss and Little Joe humor, and well-composed scenes of riding and shooting. Small wonder if baby boomers want to see those programs replayed on TVLand.
But the dramas and comedies of the 1960s belonged to a different culture. Audiences wanted a story, one story about four or five characters, perhaps with a frame and two comic-relief cutaways. They didn't want to have to guess how it came out, either. In the more "adult" series, like Gunsmoke, the only ambiguity lay in how Marshal Dillon felt about gunning down the bad guy at the end. Even Chester's bungled errand furthered the episode's story.
Compare that linear plan, suggests Johnson, with an episode of Boston Legal in which a dozen and a half characters appear in multiple plot threads, some of them arcs that span half a season. This evening's threads may include stories of a client about to be executed, another with an absurd-but-winnable case, still another whose pickle illustrates some big national dilemma. No thread dominates the program, no character is central in a Joe Friday way, no lawyer spends the whole hour focused on one matter, and no outcome (even one the audience applauds) is free of ethical thorns. What's more, some threads are not about the practice of law but about relationships: what any viewer of The Rifleman would have tagged as "mush."
Boston Legal fans, however, are the same people who cut our teeth on Perry Mason. What happened while we weren't looking? One answer may be that we got smarter by watching Hill Street Blues and Star Wars, writing our blogs and playing "Grand Theft Auto III."
But that doesn't make any sense! The internet, we understand from every figure of authority, brings us a soul-deadening mix of porn and urban legends. TV is a medium designed to stupefy us, while Hollywood does nothing but promote violence, sex and liberal values. And video games . . . ask your preacher or school principal.
Johnson begins with the games, thinking perhaps that a sudden, devastating attack is the best defense. (It was the best way he could have picked to open one reader's mind.) Going back to dice-and-rulebook games like fantasy baseball and "Dungeons & Dragons" and continuing through computer games like the "Zelda" series, he argues that these kinds of play teach basic mental skills, situation assessment and decisionmaking and, further, that the gaming subculture provides a social matrix for participants. What, no spillover into schoolyard murders and disrespect for women? Not even that: Many of the most violent young people are kids who don't have access to computers in the first place. It's a persuasive argument backed up by research on both behavior and intelligence. Instead of zombies with repetitive-motion complaints, people who take part in role-playing video games may be the ones best fitted to play roles in a culture that values fast, subtle analysis and goal-focused decisions.
I don't mean to spoil your reading by setting down every point the author makes in this shortish work. You'll find Everything Bad worth taking in and worth talking about. And--one test of a useful book, whether it's Homer, Hume or Heisenberg--the greatest utility you will get from it is when you put it down and project it onto what you see out here in the world.
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Miscellaneous Titles
Everything Bad
Is Good for You