Huey Lewis and the News is one of those bands that ruled the airwaves in the 1980s – radio and television (via MTV) – but then largely disappeared from the pop music scene with the coming of 90s grunge. As with other such artists, that disappearance was something of a shame, as they could always be counted on for powerful melodic hits with a bit of bite to them. Their sound might be called a version of “garage band” with elements of 50s doo-wop (check out “Naturally”) and some occasional country honky-tonk. Around the same time (early to mid 80s), Billy Joel was experimenting with a similar sound on the Innocent Man album (“Uptown Girl,” “Tell her about it”). However, those sounds were filtered through the new wave production styles of the 80s to deliver fresh versions of those influences. The album Sports really solidified their place in rock and roll, and on the follow-up, Fore! they upped the ante by adding the Tower of Power horns to the mix. 1991’s Hard at Play seemed like the last Hurrah. However, the recent Weather, which Lewis has suggested may be their last album because of his progressive hearing loss, is certainly full of what Lewis and company do best, including the wistful yet sharp hit “While We’re Young.” The list is organized chronologically so you can chart the band’s development, including a couple of great live performances from the 1980s. “Power of Love” might be the real highlight, a song that can stand up against any you want to name for pure thrilling listenability. Personally, I prefer Sports to Fore, which felt a little too produced, but anyway you look at it, Lewis is a master song writer in his particular style of rock/pop.

Don't have time to listen to our podcasts? Don't worry. ​Read our "podscripts" here. 

You are listening to the Pop Culture Academy. And if you want to get more thoughtful insight into all things pop culture, don't forget to follow us on Twitter, and YouTube and checkout our webpage at popcultureacademy.com.

Greetings and salutations and welcome to season 2 episode 16 of the Pop Culture Academy where we do all things pop culture with just a bit of an academic slant. I'm your host, MK Adkins, and what has happened in this last week since last we spoke? In the last week my wife and I finally caught up with Fear the Walking Dead. We've been behind on that one a bit. No spoilers, of course, but at some point I really need to put together an episode or a blog post or an article or something on the way that this last season offered this kind of post-apocalyptic reading of the Exodus story. It was really interesting. In general this is such a great series. It's certainly, I think, as good as the original. Right now it's got an amazing cast; so many people drawn from such other great series, I mean people that you will absolutely recognize and frankly, I don't know how they can afford this cast. It's become quite large. I mean, I'm expecting that very soon some people will have to go. You know, if you haven't seen season 5, you really should. And if you haven't seen the series at all, it's really good. I like the whole thing but you can start at season 4 and be fine really. I mean there's some continuity that goes over the whole series but really they do a kind of a reboot after season 4 and so you can start there and not be particularly lost. 

Also I am watching, at the moment, Star Trek: Voyager. A good friend of mine, Ida Bostian, she started this, she did this, and I - you know I thought it was such a great idea that now I'm stealing it but she started with the original Star Trek and worked her way through it series by series, chronologically, and I know that she's been watching Discover and I know that she's been watching Picard. I'm up to Voyager and I'm enjoying it but the question keeps - I mean this doesn't really particularly bother me but why do Star Trek shows seem to become so dated so fast? 

Watching this series, watching The Next Generation. Certainly if you go back to watch the original series it feels so...it just feels so dated. Is it something about the particular sort of future that they're imagining, that it just dates itself very quickly? I mean, if you compare it, for instance, to Star Wars, you know, that original trilogy, everything already feels very old, rusted, used and that's great because then you don't have to worry about it becoming out of date - the technology seeming to become out of date over time. I think one of the problems with episodes one, two and three in the Star Wars universe is that they were suddenly - we went back in time and everything was suddenly new and shiny and it felt a little wrong and it didn't have the same kind of allure. I mean, I don't know why you want your future to feel rusted and worn out but you do. Does all great science fiction have that kind of dated...I don't know. Battlestar Galactica is one that's coming to mind. The Galactica in that series is being retired so, again, there's a since that things are past their prime, things aren't new and shiny anymore. Is that what we need for a sci-fi series to stand the test of time and look good? People love Star Trek. People loved the original, The Next Generation. I'm really enjoying Voyager so maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it's some kind of suspension of disbelief involving aesthetics. I mean, just, you know, the uniforms, the bridge, the console. None of that looks like the future, right? But, anyway, I definitely am enjoying the series, about two seasons in, and it does something -  I think each of the series have really added to the whole Star Trek universe in fascinating ways. 

All right, so I want to talk a little this episode about children's television which I think is really actually a very fertile subject and one that we probably will come back to more over time. But you know, Sesame Street's ending it's 50th season, a very very big deal. I mean, 50 seasons. And of course Caroll Spinney who has played the beloved characters of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch for all 50 years passed away this year. Sort of a sad milestone, I guess you could say. And so in some ways it seems like we have some good excuses to go into the subject of children's television with all these things going on with Sesame Street. 

Before I get into children's television, I think I've got to lay out a theory of television that I've been working on actually for a few years now and it involves thinking of television as a kind of virtual reality. Let me see if I can explain this in a way that will set up the rest of the show. We've talked a number of times about this - the relationship of art to virtual reality. And my argument is that all art is meant to be virtual reality, essentially. We can get into some representational things, some abstract things in the 20th century, but that's a whole other episode-long story involving photography. Other than that, all art, I think, is meant to capture reality. And each generation of artist is trying to capture reality in a more and more realistic way to recreate reality. And so I would say art from it's very beginning, if you go back and again I've talked about this in other shows, you go back to cave paintings 32,000 years ago - all art from that point is trying  to create a virtual reality, an alternative universe that human beings can walk into and feel like they are somewhere else. That's what all art is about. And television, this is the next part of my argument, television, at least scripted television, I would argue is the most sophisticated version of virtual reality that we have got at least so far. I think that video games could overtake it. I think that things involving what we term virtual reality like say the HoloLenz or something like the Occulus Rift, maybe that down the road will be will supplant television as the best version of virtual reality. And there are, you know, probably more things on the horizon that will show up but for right now television is the closest we've gotten to allowing ourselves to enter another reality, an alternative universe and exist. A television show is like a little world. You know this about the shows that you love; they've got characters, places, you get familiar with them, you feel comfortable, you move around to different parts of the world. I mean, you know, let's take an extreme example like Game of Thrones. Obviously, I mean, it's a whole fantasy other world that's realized and I love the opening credits to that show and the way that you get to see the world in it's all they do a very clever thing by making it all clockwork. But it's all there. The whole world sort of spreads out or pops up if you will over the map and you can see the whole world and the series does that. We're moving from one country to another country and crossing oceans and it feels like a complete whole developed world. 

Now, on the other end of the spectrum, we've talked about this recently, soap operas happen essentially every day, every week day and you've got people who play those roles in some cases for their entire lives and certainly for, you know, 40, 50, 60 years. We're talking about Sesame Street turning 50. A lot of these soap operas are that old and some people have been playing these roles that long. And so if you're watching that you're seeing the same people, the same characters, every day at the same time. It's like it's really happening in your life. That's as virtual reality as we can get right now. And there's this great bit in the old Phillip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which many of you know from it's movie title, Bladerunner. But in the novel there's a talk show and the talk show is always on.  I think the talk show host's name is Friendly, something Friendly. It's always on, 24 hours a day. And that's one of the ways that you know something is amiss in this world. This guy never sleeps he's just on 24 hours a day. Dick in the way that he always did, predicting the future and predicting human behavior into the future. Projecting out what kinds of things we would love and what we would be attracted to. Dick gets it dead on. If we could have a television show, I mean, The Truman Show kind of plays on this idea as well. If we could have a tv show that was on 24 hours a day and never ended, that would be pretty close to virtual reality. Now I know it's not the same as putting on a suit and feeling like you're in, well go back to Star Trek, feeling like you're on the holodeck. We're not there yet. But television has gotten pretty close.

All right, so if you buy into the idea that a tv show is virtual reality or is trying to recreate an alternative space that we can go and visit, what's really fascinating is the connection between that concept (television and virtual reality) and children. In one sense you could say that children's tv trains us to be tv watchers. Think about that statement. It teaches us how to live in these television worlds. Kids aren't born understanding television. Just like, I mean we've talked about this recently, when movies were invented movie-makers had to teach us how to watch. We didn't know what to do with movies. We jumped out of the way when a train came on the screen because we thought it might be coming at us. We had to learn how to watch a movie and kids have to learn how to watch, how to understand tv. It's almost like its own language or maybe it'd be better to say it's own grammar. And children's shows do this. If you turn a child loose, I know, I've got a 3 year old, if you turn a child loose with television narrative they will figure it out. You don't have to explain it to them. They will pick it up. And I think a lot of these children's shows are designed to teach them how to pick it up, how to learn television. And we might say, well okay, that sounds awful. I mean, I know that all my teachers growing up would say that. We all know someone who will tell you how awful television is for us, right? Those people who would say, the old boob tube terminology that gets applied to television. It's still there. Even in this golden age of amazing storytelling, that's still there. That's hung on to television. And there's all kinds of studies about tv and the brain and screen time. Of course, all of that has to kind of go out the window during covid. We're all home now and we gotta work at the same time we're entertaining our kids who can't be at school and so...I mean even if they're going to school it's going to involve screen time. So a lot of that advice has now gone out the window. But frankly I've never been so sure about that advice, what they say about screen time. I don't want to take a beating from parents for this episode. And it's really a much longer argument but I don't think we know - are the studies right that it's probably changing kids brains? I have no doubt of that. I would also argue probably that when people learned to read and write 2500 years ago that also changed people's brains. And if you lived 2500 years ago would you be the one who was saying well let's not read and write because that might somehow screw up their brain chemistry? Television may be doing that. Screen time may be doing that. But that's moving them into something different, not necessarily moving them into something bad. Again, that's a whole other argument. 

All right, so let's look at this from another angle. I've raised this question before - why do we as human beings have this desire to create virtual reality at all? If our entire history of art has been an effort to do this, why? Why are we obsessed with creating alternative universes? What is it that compels us to make art and to try to make art so realistic? It turns out there actually may be answers to that in childhood. A number of child psychologists including a great, important experimental psychologist D. W. Winnicott back in the 60s/70s argued that children exist in this very strange world. This isn't just speculation. We know this. When an infant is born, when a child is born that child sees the world as absolutely subjective. That is, the child thinks that everything in the world is a part of her. Her mother, other people she sees, the objects in her room, all of that is part of her because she has no other way of thinking about things. We're born with that total subjectivity. Everything is us. Now, over the first years of life we have to be pried out of that. We have to learn the difference between what's us and what's out there in the world, the subjective us and the objective out there in the world. We have to learn there's a difference between them. And really, who are we kidding? To some extent we do that our entire lives. We're struggling our entire lives to get over our sort of subjective selfish impulses and think about the larger world. But kids are doing that in extreme form in the very early stages.

One of Winnicott's great breakthroughs was when he discovered this thing, this in between place. He uses the word "liminal" which is really just a fancy way of saying in between places. He talks about what he calls magical objects. So the way Winnicott describes this - something that's not the child gets caught up in being part of the child. For instance, the child may have a stuffed bear and at some point the paw of the stuffed bear manages to get into the corner of the child's mouth. And so the child who is experiencing everything as subjective feels this bear as part of itself, this bear is in his/her mouth. It is part of itself. But then mom or dad comes in and takes the bear out of the child's mouth so that the child doesn't choke to death because they are good parents. When this happens, the thing that was part of the child is now taken away and the child has this moment of "this thing that was part of me is now away from me". Winicott says that those objects, that bear, becomes a very special object for the infant. What he calls a magical object because it occupies a space that is both inside of the child and outside the child. If you want to think about it this way, it is part of the child's world and it is part of the outer world.

Winnicott takes this further. As you grow, as children grow they keep this up, they continue to have these magical places that are in between, imaginary worlds, play worlds. And for kids those are truly places that exist in between what you might call the real world and the not real world. And it's not a stretch. Winnicott suggests to think that maybe this same impulse, that the idea that we want to cross the real world with some kind of other - the real and the not real - someplace in between. Winnicott suggests that might actually be the impulse for art. That might be where our desire for art comes from, this need to find a space in between. It's not our world but it's not completely other, it's an artificial world. It's an alternative world. So that if you think about it, if you've studied virtual reality, is what's leftover from our childhood impulses and you say television is virtual reality it actually turns out that television might be left over from something that we really needed in childhood. It's that search for a real/not real space, an in between space. And I think if you think of kids shows in this sense then they become a lot less problematic in terms of is it right to let your kids watch television. Is it not? If you consider that the whole reason tv exists might actually be because of children.

Let's go back to the earliest children's television show, Howdy Doody, there's a whole world they are trying to get there. You've got a kind of a ranch and there are buildings in this space and we move from place to place in the building. And what they are creating for kids is an imaginary space where you can play. Captain Kangaroo. All the shows have basically continued this. If you look at almost every children's show, they're always about developing a space for the kids to be in. An imaginary, in between space. Captain Kangaroo. And you may or may not know this, Clarabell the Clown from Howdy Doody (Bob Keeshan) becomes Captain Kangaroo and the space is different. This time it's the space of a house. But that house has many rooms and we go exploring and that becomes the imaginary space. The old Soupy Sales show, very popular kids show. Again, kind of a limited space but it was still a space that the camera explores. Bozo, there the space turns into the big top and carnival and circus. Peewee's Playhouse, another sort of space, a playhouse that has lots of different places you can go, lots of different components. And they all have this very familiar format. Almost all these shows include several small segments that are all united by the fact that they happened within the larger context of this world. So for instance, on Bozo which is one of the ones I grew up with, it was all about cartoons. The segments were all cartoons - Popeye and Tom & Jerry, whatever the cartoons were. The big top was an excuse to just show all these cartoons and you have Bozo as the host. Here's a cartoon, here's a cartoon, here's a cartoon. It was really just a cartoon show. But all of those individual cartoons are united by the particular imaginary space that they're in.

So within all of this, I think there are probably a couple of shows that deserve special recognition. First of all, Sesame Street. Right? Again, we talked about 50 years old. It's certainly a world in the way that we are talking about. It's certainly a space. I mean the whole idea is it's a street. 

There are tenement buildings, there's an apartment where Bert & Ernie live. There's an apartment where Elmo lives. There's a little store, a bodega. All of these things - there's a trash section where Oscar lives. There's Big Bird's nest on part of the street. All of these things are part of this world. If you go back and look at the music, the original opening credits to Sesame Street they are always going down a road, they are going to a place, they are entering this magical in between space. And that's what Sesame Street was and so it definitely works in the same way. Think about it, in the segments you've even got "Elmo's World". That's a whole world within the Sesame Street world. But I mean here's the thing about Sesame Street that was so cool - and it's not like this anymore, it just isn't. I grew up, I think I was 2 - no, I'm sorry - Sesame Street preceded ME by two years. So I grew up with Sesame Street very very earliest days. I have a 23 year old daughter who I watched go through Sesame Street and that's sort of in the middle years, around year 25. Now I've got a 3 year old daughter, I'm watching again. It is not the same as it was and that's fine; shows evolve over time. But once upon a time Sesame Street, its purpose, you can go back and look at interviews with the creators - its purpose was to imitate television. One of the cool things about Sesame Street was that there were educational commercials, "This episode is brought to you by the letter B". And the number 7. And the little clips inside were all educational. But it imitated television. It gave you everything that television has. It even, now, you get an awful lot of parodies. Game of Thrones parodies on Sesame Street, or Orange is the New Black parodies. Again, the whole idea is this recognition that Sesame Street is a world that exists on television and telling kids that and teaching kids.

 In a lot of ways Sesame Street was the ideal show, I mean, we can talk about it as one of the first really important educational shows. Kids shows weren't educational. Howdy Doody wasn't educational. Howdy Doody was full of commercials. It was entertaining as hell but it wasn't educational. Sesame Street set out to be educational, to give all kids, even kids who weren't going to preschool, that same kind of educational advantage. And it was an amazing show for that reason. But it also served this really interesting function of teaching kids how to understand the television world. And again, you say, well that's awful. I don't know. I don't know if it's so awful. Teaching kids how to survive in the media environment as opposed to being manipulated by the media environment - maybe that's an important skill. Maybe Sesame Street is the antidote to Howdy Doody. Howdy Doody is not teaching kids, Howdy Doody is just manipulating the kids, "Come on kids, we know you love imaginary spaces, come on into this one and we'll sell you some candy." It's creepy. Sesame Street was different; "Come on into this tv space and we'll teach you how to navigate this tv space. We'll teach you how to understand this tv space."

The other show that's coming out at roughly the same time, same time era, is Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. Kind of a companion show for Sesame Street. And again, definitely a world. Think about what that show's opening credits are. It's very Game of Thrones, right? You move down these streets, there's nice music playing but you move through these neighborhoods and it's pretend but it's a world. It's spread out beneath you, you're going through this world. You're going to Mr. Rogers' house. ​

And Mr. Rogers was all about moving you from the real world into this imaginary world. You come into the house, it's obviously a fake house, it's obviously a play house. The walls don't look real. The door doesn't look real; nothing looks real. He comes into this house. He changes clothes to remind us that we are moving into the world of play; we are leaving the real world we are going into the world of play. There's the trolley that takes us from the real world, such as it is, to the really imaginary world of puppets and that exists somewhere else. But Mr. Rogers, and it does this more than Sesame Street I think, really teaches kids how to handle that. There are moments in Mr. Rogers where he steps outside - you'll be in this fantasy zone and then he'll step outside. You'll see him, for instance, holding one of the puppets and you'll see "oh, he's the voice behind that puppet". There's a great episode, and there are a lot of episodes like this, where he goes to the set - the old show back in the 70s, early 80s, The Incredible Hulk. Mr. Rogers takes the kids to the set of The Incredible Hulk and one of the things - one of his goals in that episode is to show kids that you don't have to be afraid of The Incredible Hulk. And so you see The Incredible Hulk and then he takes you behind the scenes, behind the cameras and you talk about how do they make this? How do they put this together? How is this created? And it certainly teaches kids that adults are all about imagination too. Adults are all about creativity and about pretend spaces just as much as kids are. But it also right from the very early development of a kid it teaches that kid television is an imaginary space and that's great but we also need to know how to step outside of that space. And so you have these two shows kind of happening at the same time on PBS that are really addressing the issues of children and television in a fascinating and different way. 

Now, I'm especially fond of the Teletubbies which my oldest daughter grew up with and she was right at the height of Teletubbie mania. And if you've never seen a kid watch the Teletubbies, if you don't have a kid who's in their 20s, and believe me, my daughter is still quite devoted to the 'tubbies. Even today. But there were some amazing, I don't know what it was about that show, it was absolutely, again, the word I can think of is a little creepy. My daughter would play - the tv might be on, you know she liked Barney and she'd watch a little Sesame Street and there were some other shows, and she'd play while those shows were on and she'd you know, she'd notice what was happening. When the Teletubbies came on, the world for her stopped. It's the only thing that she sat still for, she stopped what she was doing, she put down her toys, she sat still and she was glued to and mesmerized by the television for that 25 minutes that Teletubbies was on. I don't know if it has to do - again, it's a very interesting space. There's that sun baby and there's something very hypnotic about that and so maybe there's something going on there. But kids just love Teletubbies. But Teletubbies is a really interesting thing, again, thinking about shows like Sesame Street, shows like Mr. Rogers that were actually thinking about television. They were television and they were thinking about television. Teletubbies, I mean, think about the name of the show. I don't know if you've ever watched this but the point of the show is that these creatures have televisions in their bellies, right? They are tele-tubbies. It's so incredibly post modern. It's what Bozo would have been - you know, the cartoons, again Popeye and whatever we were watching, if they had shown up on Bozo's belly. Instead of the segments being something that are shown on a screen and just introduced by the host the televisions are actually embedded in these things bellies. And each episode, you know, you go through the episode and then at some point in the middle, one of the 'tubbies gets a television signal in his belly and we watch the show, the film that comes onto his belly. I mean talk about, it's so post modern. The tv show that's about watching tv shows. Except that here's the really mind-blowing thing about the Teletubbies, the videos that are shown on their bellies are actually real life. They are videos sent in from kids who are showing you slices of what their real lives are like. It's a chance for you to see how different kids in different parts of the world live. So, you're watching this show and then in the show you go to watch television but what's on television isn't actually television, what's on television is the real world. And so there's this reversal between, I don't know, it gets very confusing. Where's the real world, where's the fake world? It's a real world within a fake world. It's very post modern. It's awesome. 

Of course, you know, as with all pop culture, things now have become so incredibly glutted. There are whole kids universes now with multiple shows. I mean, as soon as Disney had it's own channel, I mean and Nickelodeon to some extent, you get these umbrellas of imaginary worlds and they all fit within the Disney world. But, you know, it's not just Disney anymore. You've got the Star Wars universe. My 3-year old is heavily into Star Wars. I know I make it sound like we watch television all the time - we don't. We limit her screen time. But there are Star Wars cartoons - the big thing is the Star Wars Lego cartoons and there are these whole different universes of Lego cartoons and they all kind of fit together in this larger universe. So it's not just - and there are a ton of other stand alone shows. All of these kids shows that are out there just tons, every channel, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon and - they've all got their own set of shows. And there are all these exotic kids channels. Right? Like Baby Bum. And YouTube is full of kids shows, all kinds of kids channels. My daughter just kind of surfs between one YouTube channel and another. And there are literally there are hundreds. And I'm fascinated by the things that she discovers. She used to watch this show about cars and it was - I don't know how to describe this and you can probably find it on YouTube - you're looking at real cars. I guess it's a little bit like Robot Chicken except that it's less animated. You're looking at real cars and somebody's hand is moving these real cars along a road or along a track and narrating as we go. So, you know, the car comes to a railroad stop and we see, you know a hand comes in and puts the railroad crossing signs down and then the train comes through and all of this is being narrated, "oh, look at the train coming through. We better wait on the train." And these little segments, these little five or ten minute episodes where you just follow along with the cars. And I was thinking about this this week - it's very video game like, right? Instead of just watching the action you are kind of with the cars as they go through which is the way a video game works. The great advancement of video games over television is the first person aspect. You can actually be the character. You don't get to do that in the same way in most television. But if you're a kid and you're watching this television show, that is kind of what you get, is a first person moving along with the cars feeling like you're in the world where these cars and these trains, like a little train set. Is this a bridge - I mean, the way these things work - kids grow up with something and they take whatever it is they grow up and they are so used to it and so attached to it that they make it the whole world. Is kids watching these kinds of first person videos on YouTube, is it a bridge to a day when video games will be tv? And the kids, right, the kids will already be ready. They'll already be there ready to do that. The rest of us may not. But they'll be ready to have a show with a narrative like a television show but where you get to play the character and you get to move around the way that you do in video games. Is that the future of narrative? Now, as usual, I can probably go on about this subject indefinitely and maybe at a future point we'll come back to it but I think that's enough for one episode.

Thank you so much for listening. If you like what you hear, please let us know. Follow us on Twitter, on FaceBook. Check out our YouTube page. Visit us a www.popcultureacademy.com. And please tell your friends about us. I'll be back with an all new episode next Friday. See you then. ​​​​​​​​​

Don't have time to listen to our podcasts? Don't worry. ​Read our "podscripts" here. 
​
​You are listening to the Pop Culture Academy. And if you want to get more thoughtful insight on all things pop culture, don't forget to follow us on Twitter and YouTube and check out our webpage popcultureacademy.com. 

Greetings and salutations and welcome to season 2, episode 15 of the Pop Culture Academy where we do all things pop culture with just a bit of an academic slant. I'm your host, MK Adkins and, well, let's talk a little bit about what's happened since the last time we spoke. I've been watching a new series on Netflix. Actually, I say new series, it's a new series to me. I think it was 2013 -2016 so, not a fresh new series. But these days, you know, there's so many things that we miss and you gotta constantly be going back and adding things that somehow you didn't catch the first time. This one's called Hinterland. Right up my alley. It's a British mystery series, I mean I suppose you'd say British, it's a British mystery series which is my absolute favorite genre, sort of my comfort food, if you will. Set in Wales and dark, dreary - atmosphere's dark and dreary. The crimes are extremely dark and dreary. I've actually been pleased as they've gone into the second season that they've now made - they actually now kind of - I would say two central characters. The central character is this troubled detective from Britain who has, in the beginning we don't know why but has moved out to Wales to begin working for the Wales police department. He is partnered with a woman who is local to Wales. In some ways it's very Broadchurch like, if you will. And I suppose those series were out at the same time which may mean, that could explain why this one didn't get quite the love that that one did. You know, my wife says that I've never met a troubled character that I didn't know. And, you know, I like those characters who really have emotional baggage. But my argument is that every great character in literature, film, television, all the great characters have emotional baggage. That's what makes an interesting character, right? I mean, who would Captain Ahab be if he hadn't lost his leg to a white whale? I mean, what would be the point, at that point? So, anyway, Hinterland I would definitely recommend it if you like that sort of thing - mysteries, dark, a little bit darker. 

Don't have time to listen to our podcasts? Don't worry. ​Read our "podscripts" here. 
​
You are listening to the Pop Culture Academy. And if you want to get more thoughtful insight on all things pop culture, don't forget to follow us on Twitter and YouTube and check out our webpage at popcultureacademy.com.

Greetings and salutations and welcome to season 2, episode 14 of the Pop Culture Academy where we do all things pop culture with just a bit of an academic slant. I'm your host, MK Adkins. What has been going on since last we spoke? Quite a lot actually. Um, of course Emmy nominations have come out this week and I'll be honest that I'm taping this show - I tape a couple of days before we put the show out - I haven't had a chance to really sit down and dig into the nominations. But, you know, everybody's saying this should be an interesting year. Some of the heavyweights have been thinned out, most particularly of course, Game of Thrones. No contender this year. Veep, gone. And that obviously that makes room for new voices for us to hear from new shows, to think about new shows. I think it's more evidence of what I keep talking about, that kind of fragmented culture. I mean there are so many great shows out there. I couldn't even begin to just start listing, more great shows right now than we've ever had before. 

Are there any true, I don't know, what they used to call water cooler shows? Shows that you had to talk about the next day. And that frankly everybody was watching. What are the shows that everybody's watching? You know, what are the Twin Peaks or The X-Files or The Sopranos, or whatever, the Game of Thrones? What are those shows? I don't know if there's one out there. Maybe Killing Eve is - I mean certainly it was. Season 1 kind of had that buzz about it. Last year's Flea Bag. You know, I don't know if it had that kind of buzz going in but certainly, certainly after some nominations it comes out and people know that show. I don't know though. I don't know, you know, will we ever have a show like that again that everyone must watch. I mean the way things are going with all of these different streaming services, will we ever have a show that everybody CAN watch? You know what I mean? I mean, everybody could watch that MASH finale. Everybody. And so everybody did. It's not quite the same anymore. 



​Of course we lost Olivia de Havilland this week. Um, just an - I mean, she's 104. Very long and very graceful life. But it really is the end of an era,  the last of the golden age. I mean, and the really golden age. For my money, my favorite film of hers will always be The Adventures of Robin Hood. My brother and I used to watch that when we were kids, every time it would come on we'd have to sit down and watch that movie. And she's acting with Errol Flynn. Think about that. She's acting with Errol Flynn and she just passed away. It's an amazing, amazing thing. 

Peter Green passed away this last weekend as well. One of the original founders, and the guitarist and singer of Fleetwood Mac. I mean the heart, really, the heart and soul of Fleetwood Mac in the beginning. Obviously that band became a lot of other things over time. I mean, I don't know that that band is through evolving in some ways. I was watching interviews with Lindsey Buckingham this week from a couple years ago about being kicked out of the band. And what does that mean? But leaving all that aside, Peter Green was just this genius blues musician. Like so many British musicians of the time, really attracted to American blues, particularly had a soft spot - the same way Eric Clapton did - for Robert Johnson, a great Mississippi blues man. We need to do a show on Robert Johnson one of these days because I don't know if enough people remember the importance of Robert Johnson. I mean for awhile he was everywhere. Clapton really publicized him but anyway, Peter Green, like Clapton, did a lot of Robert Johnson's old numbers plus some amazing work of his own. And really the most amazing thing perhaps is that just as Fleetwood Mac was beginning to catch a little steam, you know, walked away from it. Decided that he wanted to do something else. Very similar story to Syd Barrett in a lot of ways. Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's original guitarist and founder. Peter Green, the same kind of influence on Fleetwood Mac though I think the story in this case ends a lot more happily than of course Syd Barrett's story. Syd Barrett's a guy that we really should do a whole show on at some point. 

Um, of course Regis Philbin also passed away over the weekend. And there's a guy that just, he just was television. You know? And that's an interesting thing and maybe we'll get into that in this episode - you know, not an actor. Not even really what you might call a celebrity, like a Paris Hilton or a Kardashian, but just someone who was there on our television. And I'm not knocking that. I think that's incredibly comforting. And it was a connection to some of those old days of tv when that's kind of what tv was. It wasn't this sort of amazing art form that it is now. But it was always comforting, soothing, friendly. It was something to have on in the background but something to make you feel good because it was on in the background. And Philbin kind of connected us to that. And so, again, it's one of those generation-spanning losses I think that we suffered over the weekend. 

Really that takes us back into the topic that we got into last week. You know, the real question that we were sort of exploring and I think it's worth exploring in another episode here is in the age of pop culture, who really are the authors? Who are the artists or, is there even - you know, I was raising this question last time - is there even such a thing as an artist in the pop culture age? Philbin wasn't an artist, right? He was a personality or presence but he didn't run things. Even when he was the main attraction and maybe when you are the main attraction you have some clout and some sway in what goes on but you're still not running things. Regis Philbin never ran things. Who is, exactly, running things?

Last time we focused on music and I realized once I had that show in the tank I didn't even get into Milli Vanilli, right? Here is the height - all this stuff happens in the 80s really where you began to get music that is produced and it's not about the artist, in some cases not about the artist at all anymore. I may have said this last time - Frankie Goes to Hollywood - not an artist. No real artist behind that. That's a creation of the production studio. The Art of Noise is another I want to say group; it's not a group. Just a thing, an entity, a music production. And not an artist. And all of that kind of reaches its height with Milli Vanilli because here is a group who are absolutely, completely manufactured. They are not the artists that we think they are. But that sort of raises the question of whether any of them ever were. I mean, it was really interesting. I don't know if you date yourself back that far but when the whole Milli Vanilli thing happened, Sting said he was giving back is Grammys. He was so incensed by what was happening to Milli Vanilli - now, of course, Sting's manager Miles Copeland very quickly stepped in and said "no, no no, he didn't really mean that." But, you know, Sting's point - and I think it was a legitimate one - is how many artists out there, how many musical artists are maybe not Milli Vanilli but as much as, right? Their voices are doctored in the studio. Their songs are written by someone else. They are produced in the studio. They're not an artist. And I'm not pointing any fingers. But there were people out there like that. And Milli Vanilli was just sort of the extreme version of that and got caught. But it's still back to that question - who are the artists?  And that was music - we talked last week a lot about music. I kind of want to get into other things this week. 

Tv has always been that way in terms of not having an artist or an author. I mean, maybe back in the old days there were personalities who ran things. I'm thinking about Lucy and Desi and you know, they invent DesiLu Studios. And they have some power and influence on Hollywood and some control. And maybe you could say I Love Lucy was authored by them, in a way. Jackie Gleason may have had that kind of power, that kind of control with something like The Honeymooners. Milton Berle, maybe, again. I don't know. These are shows, despite what you may think, these are shows well before my time and so I don't know but my impression is that maybe those shows, those actors were the authors. Maybe even Andy Griffith. He certainly had that kind of charisma and - I mean that was his show. It had his name on it.

Let's take another show. I was looking today - certain people call this the silver age of television, right? The age that is sandwiched in between the brilliant early shows like I Love Lucy and The Andy Griffith Show and the brilliant later shows like The X-Files and Sopranos and Game of Thrones. Is this silver age where there are The Love Boats and the - I mean there's - not to knock that period. Things like Mary Tyler Moore, The Bob Newhart Show, there's some brilliant television being made then. But it was a different age. But one of my favorite shows, The Rockford Files. It certainly seemed like to people who watched that show that that was James Garner's show. We thought of that as James Garner's show. James Garner didn't write that or direct it or produce it. Right? He was a pretty good actor. Made that character, perhaps. If you want to go that far and say he was such an amazing actor that he really shaped and invented that character. But okay. Was he the artist or the author of that show?

You know...now film, film actually - this is very interesting because film has been treated more seriously than television for a much longer time. Television has begun to be treated seriously but film studies departments have been in prestigious universities for decades. And I think because they have been working at it so long. Early on they really needed something. They needed an author to hang it all on, I think maybe almost as a competition for literature right? Film studies is very much in competition in those days with literature departments and literature departments  - there are still literature departments out there who look down their noses at film studies. And film studies is trying to compete, they are trying to seem like they are valid. Trying to seem like they are worthwhile. And so, they need an author because literature has the authors. The poets and the novelists and, you know, the revered figures. They have the Shakespeares. They have the Hemmingways and the Faulkners. And film, you know, film needed that. And so you get this term that gets invented, you know, in the 50s, the 60s, the term is auteur. Andre Bazin, the french theorist, early important film theorist, comes up with the idea that a film's director - some film's directors - are so influential on the films that really they should be thought of as the author. And he called them the auteurs. The people who really stand out, probably the most obvious example would be Alfred Hitchcock. And if you go back further than that you can talk about Charlie Chaplin. You could talk about Buster Keaton. Obviously people since then, Truffaut, Spielberg, Tarantino, definitely what you would call an auteur; seemed to control everything about the film. And that kind of became, after the 60s, the way of seeing all film really. So that today when we think about a film and you know, we're trying to think about who is responsible for that film, we really - I mean in some cases you talk about the actors but you really think about the director. Who directed that? Right? Film from the director of so and so. That's how we think about it. The director is the author. The director is the person who makes things - brings things together. And so we give them that credit. 

Now, if we're talking about television, I mean, there are those rare shows - and maybe this is more common in England - that are sort of written and controlled by someone. Obviously Ricky Gervais has done this. I mean, The Office really belonged to him. And so have a lot of the shows that he's done. The Afterlife which is on now, really incredible series. Sad series. You know, you have to be ready for some sadness. But that's clearly Ricky Gervais's show. He writes it. He directs it. He acts in it. He puts that together. And I'm thinking, you know in America the only comparable thing I can think of is maybe Louis which was put out by Louis C.K. and was such a brilliant series. We won't get into Louis C.K's more recent troubles but that series was brilliant. And it was a series that really was down to him. It was written, directed, produced - he, that was his baby. Now, you know, in Britain a lot of times the shows are actually - it is the writer who is given credit for the show, right? This is the person who - whoever wrote this, it's their show. It's their baby and we give them the credit. That doesn't happen in America and we don't do it with directors. We don't say that the director of a television show is the auteur. We definitely don't. I mean there are a lot of great directors and I challenge you, if you really want to - if you really like television, one of the things I would challenge you to do is pay attention when they flash those director's names across the screen. You'll be surprised at some of the names that will pop up. Andrew McCarthy, for instance, of the brat pack, one of my favorite, favorite actors, has done so much television directing. Like, lots of Orange is the New Blacks. And yet those people aren't the ones who are given credit for those shows. Partly because, at least in America, it's very rare for a television director to direct more than an episode or two in a season. That duty, direction, gets passed around and around and around. 

I mean this problem of authorship is actually a serious problem for the academic community. Like a lot of my friends, I mean, the academic community  - the academic community has a lot of issues and pop culture in particular has really done a number on academia in several ways over the last couple of decades. But just think about citations. Right? You remember writing papers in freshman comp class and you know, you had to do a research paper and you have to cite and you have to cite the author. You have to say, you know, who am I writing about? Am I writing about Shakespeare? Am I writing about Faulkner? And so, these days - let's say that you want to write a serious academic book about movies. I wrote a serious book once about television. How do you cite Game of Thrones in the back I mean? The bibliography. Who's the author? Whose name do you use? And the experts, they actually don't quite know what to do with it. They sort of shrug their shoulders and say, it depends. If you're writing about the film Philadelphia, maybe you list Tom Hanks as the first name, as almost the author. I mean he won the Oscar, right? If you're doing a Tarantino film obviously you start with Tarantino's name. 

But even if you take something like a Tarantino film or a Cohen brothers film or Chris Nolan - Chris Nolan, very good example. Very important director. And his personality is stamped all over his films. But if you go back to The Dark Knight, to Batman, Chris Nolan doesn't give us Heath Ledger as the joker. Heath Ledger, that is a performance unto itself. And you could say Chris Nolan was a great director and maybe he helped to summon that performance out of Heath Ledger but that is all about Heath Ledger. So is Heath Ledger the author of that film? Or do you give credit for that film to Chris Nolan?

I mean and I get it, I know that the simple answer is it's a collaboration. And I guess my point in all of this is that maybe that's true of all pop culture. Maybe there is no such thing as an author anymore. Maybe everything is a collaboration. But that really, again, it seems like a simple thing to say - well you just give credit to everybody. But it's not so simple. It's not so simple, particularly for our society. I'll get into that in a minute but you know there's that great movie Wag the Dog, right? Do you know Wag the Dog with Dustin Hoffman? Where that character basically invents a war for the U.S. government to sort of help the government out of a fix he invents publicity, pr, invents a war using sort of his Hollywood skills. And Hoffman's character is a producer. He's the one, and he says this, he's the one who gets things done. Who puts everything together. Who makes sure everything is done right. And he reminds us at the end of that film, and you know ultimately he gets - spoiler alert, ultimately is killed for this. He reminds us that there are no producing oscars. Even though the producer, at least in his eyes, is doing it all. There have been some instances where I suppose directors, you might sort of give it to the director. Twin Peaks I think certainly belonged to David Lynch. That was his baby. The X-Files was definitely Chris Carter's, though he was not often a director. He wrote a lot of episodes. He produced the show. He was the creator. He ran that show. But he didn't direct.

Carter's protege Vince Gilligan gave us Breaking Bad, another show that's definitely controlled. Gilligan was the main force behind that, although again, you know, you have to think about the acting that went into that show. That was so much a part of it. And about 20 years or so ago they came up with this term, the "showrunner". And that's kind of the person who gets, at least in Hollywood circles, that's the person who gets the credit these days. And that person may or may not be a known entity for the public. And it's usually a producer. Sometimes it's a writer. But that's a pretty good way of thinking about who is running these shows.

But I mean here is the interesting question that all of this brings up - has there ever been an author or is that a kind of fantasy? And I'm talking about, even for the literature departments, right? Go back in literature for instance, think about Homer. Homer didn't write The Iliad or The Odyssey. Homer was a guy, a singer in Greece. But this was all traditional music, traditional stories that had been honed over maybe hundreds of years. And Homer's just the guy who happened to be associated with it at the moment it caught on, the moment when it got recorded so to speak. Then you jump forward a couple of thousand years to someone we know better, Shakespeare. Maybe nobody is more revered as an "author" than Shakespeare. But we have nothing other than a handful of signatures, I think maybe 4 signatures, we have nothing in Shakespeare's hand. Nothing. Meaning, we don't have plays in his handwriting that show us that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Which is one of the reasons why you get these brilliant conspiracy theories popping up all the time throughout history. Because, you know, there isn't - there's no smoking gun, so to speak, connecting Shakespeare to Shakespeare. But even if you leave that aside, even if you say okay, you know Shakespeare was Shakespeare, we know that his plays - the ones that were published were written down after the fact, mostly from memory. They weren't written, we don't have a script of any of Shakespeare's plays. We don't have anything like that. We have- someone after the fact sat down (sometimes it was a cast member, sometimes it was just somebody in the audience who went to these plays and sort of took notes) and that person would sit down and write the play up and get it published. And that was publication. And you call it Shakespeares. But how much did that person who wrote it down influence the play?

Talk about Shakespeare from another angle. Those plays were very much the product of dramatic companies, a group of players. And you had someone who you called the writer but those plays were absolutely honed and changed and altered and made into what they were by the company as a whole. Right? It wasn't one writer who said, "you've got to say this" and everybody just fell into line. It just didn't work that way. And then even if you throw all of that aside, there's the fact that so much of Shakespeare is simply plots that he stole from other people, from historical references. Romeo and Juliet wasn't - he didn't invent that story. He took that story and made it into something incredibly special. And don't get me wrong, I am not knocking Shakespeare. Don't walk away from this podcast thinking that. But there's a lot more collaboration going on than you might think.

The fantasy of the author, though, this idea that we must give credit to one person. That's a very interesting idea. Didn't really get going until the novel was invented. The novelist was supposed to be this solitary figure scribbling away.

The same time as the novel is being invented we have the romantic poets. You know the early 1800, late 1700s - Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron. Byron basically invented the idea of the tortured artist, the poet. Wandering alone across a desolate wasteland. And that became what we thought of as art. That became the template for what art was. The product of a single person. That became the dominant idea. The single person as a genius. And that idea grows and grows and actually it comes to take over all of society so that in America...I mean around the same time all of this is happening with the invention of the novel, the beginning of Romanticism, in America you've got the Neo-Classical period. You've got Benjamin Franklin and those guys roaming around and talking about the self-made man, which - whole other episode. But it's an invention, the self-made man. But it's the same kind of concept. It's one man who is a genius and who makes himself into this towering figure. That idea is so pervasive even now. Right? The idea that if you make billions and billions of dollars a year as a CEO, it's because you're some kind of special genius. And that's all a fantasy that gets invented in art so that we can tie the work to a single person.

To some extent that is connected to the idea of the book and specifically to the idea of the novel is that idea begins to become less important. The book, right? Sad to say in some ways, but if you look at the statistics, people are reading fewer and fewer and fewer books every year. The book used to - I mean when I was a kid the book held sway over all of us. The book was the most powerful form of knowledge. And that's just not true anymore. And as the book's power has faded, some of the associations with the book have also faded and so as - you know, if the book was all about - the book was several things. The book was about linear, one page at a time. We don't think that way anymore. We think in terms of a web, right? The world wide web, the internet. We don't think in terms of one thing happens and the next thing and the next thing. We look at a series - I'm getting very esoteric - you look at a series like Orange is the New Black where, you know, all the episodes - you start the episode but then you go way back in time. That's not the way books are supposed to work. Books were supposed to move forward at a steady pace.

​So as pop culture comes about we start to lose the idea of the author and the artist because we don't have an author and an artist in these pop culture things. So, Roland Barthes. You gotta mention this guy. Another important French theorist and especially important to popular culture. One of Barthes very best essays is on "The Art of the Striptease". Anyway, Barthes, in 1967 Barthes write an essay called "The Death of the Author". And part of that is how are things changing but part of it is just this question about - has this always been a fantasy all along? This idea of the author? So, a little bit from the opening of Barthes's essay, Barthes writes "In this story...". He's talking about Balzac, the famous French novelist,

In his story Sarrasine, Balzac, speaking of a castrato disguised as a woman, writes this sentence: “It was Woman, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive fears, her unprovoked bravado, her daring and her delicious delicacy of feeling” Who is speaking in this way? Is it the story’s hero, concerned to ignore the castrato concealed beneath the woman? Is it the man Balzac, endowed by his personal experience with a philosophy of Woman? Is it the author Balzac, professing certain “literary” ideas of femininity? Is it universal wisdom? or romantic psychology? It will always be impossible to know, for the good reason that all writing is itself this special voice, consisting of several indiscernible voices, and that literature is precisely the invention of this voice, to which we cannot assign a specific origin: literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.

And then Barthes says, "Who is speaking in this way?" Who's that sentence supposed to be? Is it the story's hero, concerned to ignore the castrado concealed beneath the woman. Is it the man Balzac, endowed by his personal experience with a philosophy of women? Is it the author, Balzac, professing certain literary ideas of femininity? Is it universal wisdom, that is - is it the culture that is saying this about women? Is it romantic psychology? It will always be impossible to know", Barthes says. "For the good reason that all writing is itself this special voice consisting of several"  - this is key - "several indiscernible voices. And that literature is precisely the invention of this voice to which we cannot assign a specific origin. Literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost beginning with the very identity of the body that writes." 

There is no author. Right? When you read a novel, what you're reading, the voice that is telling that story is just beyond the authors, beyond the authors control. It's become something else, which again is a whole different subject that we gotta get into. 

But all right, so let's take two incredibly influential artists. Let's go back to Shakespeare and The Beatles. In both cases you've got artists whose work literally changes the direction of things. I mean, there are other people who are writing at the time, right? We could talk about The Rolling Stones, we could talk about Elvis, we could talk about Little Richard, we could talk about Chuck Barry. We could talk about all of these artists. But these people are sort of the crystalizing moment when everything literally changes. And we think about these people - Shakespeare, The Beatles - as earth-moving, earth-shattering figures. But we've already talked about - it's not the work of any one person. And, you know, that's clear in the case of The Beatles. You've got 4 guys. You've got George Martin who is producing them. But Barthes goes further than that. He isn't just saying well, you know, these days it's a collaboration. Barthes is saying that an artist's work is the result of the culture and the society that he is in. Like, he is living in this time and he soaks up everything and he spits it out. So that it is really culture that makes that thing and not the band. So if you want to apply it to The Beatles, I mean you can do this with Shakespeare, The Beatles are condensing everybody that came before them, right? We talk about this all the time in terms of racial politics, the appropriation. The Chuck Barrys, the Little Richards, the Robert Johnsons, the people who came before The Beatles and who The Beatles, if you want to be cynical about it, you say The Beatles ripped those people off. The Beatles appropriated that and made it into white music. But it's even deeper than that. It's swimming around out there in the culture and The Beatles just happen to be the figures who pull it all in and who condense it and crystalize it and who turn out something that is greater than the sum of its parts, if you will. And you can say, that makes them brilliant. That makes them musical geniuses. They were able to condense all this down into something. But you can also say it the way Barthes is saying it which is that - does that, maybe The Beatles aren't really the authors at all. Maybe The Beatles are just a conduit and that it's society that's writing these tunes, society that's making this music. 

I heard this story about Don Henley and I do not know if it's true but I want to believe it's true but I was told that the way Don Henley writes his songs is that he would , he kept like a notepad or a sticky pad and he wrote down all the little cultural sayings that he came across. So he keeps sticky pad notes of all these sayings and he puts them up on the wall in his kitchen and when his wall is full of them he sits down and he begins taking the sticky notes off the wall and fusing them into songs. And if you - the reason I like it so well, that story, is because if you go back and listen to Eagles songs, if you listen to Henley songs, that's what they sound like. Is one sort of saying after another that have just been sort of strung together. But if it's true it also is a perfect example of what Barthes is talking about. It's not Henley that is inventing all of these songs. It is Henley who is streaming together the things that society is already saying. So I don't know, maybe popular culture is dislodging that thing that we've had so long. I mean, again, there are people out there - Ricky Gervais - who, you know, who seem to control it, who seem to be the authors but it's a fading thing. It's much more about collaboration now but is that simply pointing out the fact that it's really always been about collaboration? And this idea of one person as the genius is just, is just garbage. 

Anyway, enough for one episode. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you like what you hear, let us know. Follow us on Twitter, on Facebook. Check out our YouTube channel and of course visit us at popcultureacademy.com. And please, please tell your friends. I'll be back next Friday with an all new episode. See you then. ​​​​​

Don't have time to listen to our podcasts? Don't worry. ​Read our "podscripts" here. 

You are listening to the Pop Culture Academy and if you want to get more thoughtful insight into all things pop culture, don't forget to follow us on Twitter and YouTube and check out our webpage at popcultureacademy.com.

Greetings and salutations and welcome to season 2 episode 13 of the Pop Culture Academy where we do all things pop culture with just a bit of an academic slant. I'm your host, MK Adkins, and you may have noticed that we didn't have a show up this past Tuesday. To be honest, we're still playing with the format of the show a bit. It's only the second season and for awhile there it seemed like maybe two shows a week would be a good idea. And so the last month or two we've been playing with that. I think, honestly, that it's time to go back down to just one show a week, at least for now. And that will be, as it always has been, every Friday. That just gives us more time to work out the kinks of the show. To really think about the topics and get things ready in the way that we want to. 

But what has been going on this week since last we spoke: first big question - you know, I've got a show planned soon on children's television, a subject I've written about before. What is going on with kids tv right now though? I know I'm no spring chicken. Look, I've got a 23 year old daughter. I also have a 3 year old daughter. And I know I talk about this with other subjects, I say this all the time, but do you remember when there were just like a couple of kids shows? You know, like it was Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street and Electric Company and that was it. Right? Most of them were on PBS. And then maybe you got a little bit - Nickelodeon kind of got into the game in the early 80s. Fraggle Rock on HBO, right? But it just seems like there's a ridiculous number of kids shows out now. I mean, we don't let our daughter go wild with screen time at all, though, I mean, of course I work in popular culture so she's got to get a little of the good stuff. But really, no child, even if you let her loose to watch anything that she wanted, no child could ever possibly keep up. And there are things that I just don't know whether they qualify as a show. There's a lot of YouTube influence and there's a lot of shows that, you know, YouTube isn't quite the same as a television show. I don't know. Not that there's anything wrong with YouTube but, I mean, so she loves this guy called Blippi. Maybe you've heard of this guy called Blippi. And my wife doesn't allow me to say bad things about Blippi in front of my daughter but, you know, so I can see the appeal, maybe if you're 2. But he's just basically going around to indoor amusement parks and taking us through the ball pit. What is it exactly we're supposed to be getting from that? Nevermind whether it's educational or not. What even is it? And this thing called Tom's Car Wash which has no redeeming values. It is what it says it is. It's a car wash. You watch a car go in. This is a cartoon of course; animated car. It might actually be interesting if we were watching a real car every time. It's animated. You watch this car come in and Tom describes it as it comes in, "it's dirty from whatever" and they clean it. And essentially they clean it - maybe they add some wax and that's the excitement of the episode. Oh we're going to wax this car. But they simply wash the car, they dry the car off, that's it. That's the whole show. ​

So it’s May again, traditionally the time when the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its newest class of amazing artists. Of course, this year is different, as it is with baseball, basketball, car racing, graduations, movie premieres, and parades. The pandemic has shut all that business down and sort of made us long once again for the spectacle that maybe we had begun to grow a little tired of. The Hall’s ceremony has been pushed into November, but I suppose I’m feeling phantom excitement, like an itch on an amputated limb. As usual, I’m excited about all the new members, looking forward to seeing which bands are willing to make up and play a set together and which just can’t seem to get past all the old animosities. Mostly, though, by this time each year I’m usually grousing about who’s been overlooked by the Hall “yet again.” There’s a more positive way to spin this frustration, of course – “I’m really psyched to find out who will be nominated for next year!” The truth, though, is that my attitude tends to be mostly negative. My frustrations have been mitigated somewhat in recent years by the induction of bands whose omission had been leaving people scratching their heads for far too long – Chicago, RUSH, Journey – never the critical darlings, but bands without whom the rock landscape might look considerably different now. There are still plenty of deserving nominees out there, and plenty of time to talk about them before next year. How, for instance, does the Hall continue to go on without Carol King in it? Other snubs include Joy Division, New Order, and FFS Tina Turner. And personally I believe Duran Duran may be one among the most deserving Hall members, though they are rarely even mentioned on “overlooked” lists.

But here’s where my vote would go, if someone bothered to give me one: straight to The B-52s. Think about it for a second before you respond. Some of you – especially if you’re age-challenged -- may be under the misapprehension that the B-52s are a one-hit-wonder – that hit being “Love Shack.” And we could talk a long time about just how good that song really is – the way it perfectly melds Ricky Wilson’s signature guitar riffs, Fred Schneider’s punching commentary, and Kate Pierson’s effervescent vocals; the brilliant way it fuses the down-and-dirty sexualized romance of a “funky little” hangout with the more genuine affection felt for a beloved place.

If you go any deeper with The B52s, maybe you know “Rock Lobster” – pretty good novelty song, you think, and you really like that version Peter does on Family Guy. 

But here’s the thing: no less a luminary than John Lennon confessed that the B-52s were his favorite band. Not a band he sort of liked. Not a band he was pretty into. His favorite band. And, for better or worse, you can kind of hear the connection in some of the Plastic Ono stuff Lennon put together with Yoko. So let’s start with this: I think if John Lennon thinks you’re good, well, you just ought to be in the Hall. And that was way back in the 1970s, well before they’d even thought up “Love Shack.”

But, you know, if Lennon’s not enough for you, there are at least a dozen other excellent reasons why they belong. No band, for instance, has ever fused style and substance better. Going to a B52s concert should be classified as an “experience,” up there with traveling the country as a deadhead or attending the Rocky Horror Picture Show every Halloween – all beehive hairdos and UFOs. And all of that personality that’s oozing out of every members’ pores is deeply rooted in the music itself. The band invented something absolutely singular, a mix of rock and kitsch, free love and deconstruction, surfing and postmodernism, urbane sophistication and small college town. Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson produce a double-barreled sound that on certain notes can make your head ring like a bell – check out the opening notes of “Roam if You Want To.”  And Fred Schneider is simply like no one else. The Sugarcubes tried to emulate their sound, and while that band gave us Bjork (another criminally overlooked artist who belongs in the Hall), Einar Örn Benediktsson’s major contribution to music was to demonstrate just how irreplaceable Schneider really is. Schneider’s words often seem like boxing punches, and he can be completely outrageous – as he is in a classic like “Quiche Lorraine” – in a way that feels oddly natural. And Ricky Wilson actually makes something useful out of surfer riffs.

And while you can’t go wrong with “Love Shack,” many of their best tunes are more understated – “Dead Beat Club” captures teenage angst the way few songs ever have. “Private Idaho” is clever as hell – “Get out of that state you’re in!” “Give Me Back My Man” is aching in its desperation – “I'll give you fish, I'll give you candy, I'll give you everything I have in my hand.” 

But after all this is the Pop Culture Academy, and so let’s talk a little about the B-52s’s depth. No artist does more, other than perhaps the great Andy Warhol himself, to manifest the postmodern condition that Lyotard, Baudrillard, Jameson, and Derrida were describing in the late 60s and 70s. Hell, Derrida wishes he could have done what the B-52s did. Derrida – for those who may not know their postmodern philosophy – invented “deconstruction,” a tool he thought could alert us to the way our language encodes our culture, perpetuating inequalities and hierarchies. If we look carefully, he argued, we can see how simply learning our languages – English, French, Spanish, Italian – turns us into racist, sexist, class-ist  homophobes. 

But the B-52s turn deconstruction into a game, make it palatable for people like you and me who haven’t studied at the Sorbonne. “52 Girls” is no more than what the title says it is – a list of girls names – though the choice of “52” already alerts us to the fact that the song is more than it seems. It’s a kind of homage to all those classic surfer tunes, especially those from the Beach Boys, inspired by girls in bikinis: “Well East coast girls are hip, I really dig those styles they wear, And the Southern girls with the way they talk, They knock me out when I'm down there.” But the B-52s manage to deconstruct those tunes at the same time they offer their respect – “what about these girls’ names?” they ask. And yet even those names become nothing but a song hook, a long list that’s ultimately forgettable.

“Rock Lobster” is good surfing fun as well. And yet within the ridiculousness that seems to float upon the song’s surface, there’s something deeper going on in the way words become sounds; the way the image of the “rock” and the image of the “rock lobster” get confused, reminding us that the name actually points to a fact about these creatures; the way the dog-fish “meows” and the cat-fish “barks.” 

I’ve written elsewhere about the way new wave music not only captured the postmodern aesthetic, both consciously and unconsciously, but how it essentially set the stage for every work of music, television, and film that has been produced since. Not a good bit of it. All of it. The B-52s are one of the crucial components of that transformation. How can they not belong in the Hall?

Perhaps we’re destined to always be frustrated by the Hall. Maybe they can never really get caught up with the great artists of the past, and maybe that’s by design – a clever narrative tool that always keeps us hoping and looking forward to the next round of inductees. But The B-52s seem like a band that is overdue. Here’s hoping the Hall manages to catch up with them soon.

MK Adkins has a Ph.D in English that he occasionally uses to think about literature, but more often uses to think about television, music and film. Adkins is the author of two popular culture books as well as numerous articles and reviews. Until recently, he worked as a college professor but made the decision to devote himself full-time to writing and podcasting in January 2019.

Don't have time to listen to our podcasts? Don't worry. ​Read our "podscripts" here. 

You're listening to the Pop Culture Academy podcast with MK Adkins. And don't forget you can follow us on Twitter and FaceBook. You can find us on YouTube. And of course you can always visit us at www.popcultureacademy.com.

Greetings and salutations and welcome to episode six of the Pop Culture Academy where we do all things pop culture with just a bit, just a bit of an academic slant. Last week when we ended the show I didn't have an episode title in mind for this week. And so I wasn't able to plug it properly. I think I've settled on "Why the Trump Administration is So Good For Art". Now, you know, I know I know, so a guy who's publicly stated that he'd like to do away with the NEH and the NEA and who probably hasn't heard of NPR or PBS which might be a good thing. If he should discover that those organizations exist they may be in trouble. But what's a guy like that got to contribute to the arts? So, just stay with me. I'll explain.

So, by way of explanation I want to begin this episode with a clip from my favorite film, well, you know, I say favorite. It's one of my favorites. I mean I don't know how you are about this but really my favorites in any category can change on any given day. It sort of depends on exactly what category of film we're talking about or what am I trying to accomplish with my pick? Like, am I trying to impress someone with how deep my knowledge is? Do I want to sort of pull out some film that nobody's ever heard of and say, "Oh, this is my favorite"? Am I trying to show someone that I'm hip? Am I trying to prove I'm not hip? Yes, I'm someone with pop credentials who loves my Blockbusters and here's my favorite Blockbuster. But today my favorite movie's The Third Man. Now, if you don't know this movie you really need to. Really. I mean, even if you're younger. Even if you're not into black and white films. You haven't watched anything that was made before, you know, 1985. You owe it to yourself to see this film. And it's a good introduction into classic film if you're not someone who watches a lot of classic film. It's an incredibly important film. It's an example of film noir which is just so cool but influential, so American in terms of film. It comes from such an American form of the novel. The hardboiled noir detective story. And Third Man, also a great example of how black and white directors really really knew how to work in their particular art form. The use of dark and light in this film. The use of shadow. I mean, it's a masterclass in filmmaking. And that's something worth saying, I think. You know, it isn't about art getting better over time necessarily. I think sometimes we get into this mindset of "our art forms are more realistic than the past and that makes them the best". So, naturally, the latest video game, the latest film technology, the latest virtual reality headset, that's all supposed to be the apex of all art. And we look back at something like Donkey Kong, right? And we say, how primitive. How primitive is this? Compared to something like, I don't know - what's the latest? I'm so out of video games these days. But you know something like Arkham Asylum which is, I know - it's a little dated now. If we look at something like Arkham Asylum and we compare it to Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong seems so primitive. Why would - you know - you poor 80s kids, right? You poor kids of the 80s who had to grow up with such primitive technology. And I don't think my oldest daughter who's 22 - I don't think she has ever seen a black and white film, to be quite honest. But every kind of art has its own particular rules. And so if you go back to black and white film, it wasn't that they felt limited. They learned the rules of that form and the masters who worked within those rules, they're as good as any artist you can think of. Just because they're working in a slightly different medium doesn't mean that medium or that product is lesser.

All right, so The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed in 1949. Reed also did Odd Man Out and The Fallen Idol; won Best Director for Oliver in 1968. And, obviously as I say, Reed is a master of light and shadow. This particular film is based on a script by Graham Greene and Greene doesn't show up in many high school or undergraduate english classes and so not a lot of people remember him. But he really is a hugely important British writer of the 20th century. Certainly one of the top 10, I would say, of the 20th century. Maybe higher than that. The way I feel about Greene is that he's kind of an heir to someone like Somerset Maugham. And then kind of an ancestor of John le Carre. So like, he's sort of a link between - I mean there's some mystery, there's some spy focus in Greene sometimes. You get it in this film. You get it in Our Man in Havana which is quite comic but also sort of spy-based. There's something about spies in there but more importantly there's this sort of British, stiff-upper-lip kind of quality to his work, his characters. And so, like I said, I think he makes a nice link between Maugham and John le Carre. The film stars Joseph Cotten who I happen to really like. There's just something really likable about Cotten to me, something very genuine in his acting. It's very smooth. It's very calm and in this film it works out greatly because the guy playing against him is Orson Welles who really could...and well, let's face it...who really does steal the film. But it works as a nice contrast, Welles versus Cotten. And in fact they worked on a number of films together. It had just been eight years since Citizen Kane and Cotten had been in that film as well and they were in, I want to say half a dozen films together. And really, I think, make a nice contrast. Welles is sort of, I don't know, the rage that's in him but that's very controlled versus Cotten who's just totally relaxed all the time. Anyway, but the film is kind of stolen by Orson Welles and there's every, really, there's every reason to think that Welles had a great deal of influence on the making of this film and not just his own part. I mean, I think he's - I don't know why I want to say co-director, I don't know if I want to go that far but certainly had an influence. And so you have to think about the time period, this is another important part of this film, the time period when this gets made. It's 1948-1949 and we're really, we're only three or four years from the end of the war and the world this movie is set in, which is post-WWII, it's really still there as they are making it. They are making this film about a very contemporary moment. 

All right, so before we get to this clip let me set it up and try to do it without - I want to do this without giving too much away. I don't know if I can do that or not. So Joseph Cotten plays a western writer. He writes western novels. He's shown up in Germany really to see an old friend of his named Harry Lime. And this is Berlin just after the war and the city's been divided up by the allies and Russia's closing down it's section of Berlin. And it's not a good situation. And everybody - you know, there's high poverty, it's a destroyed city. And the black market, in particular, is really thriving. And so Cotten's character whose name is Holly Martins, he manages to track Harry down. Right? Again, they were old friends. And they meet very famously in this dark, sort of, well I don't know that it's deserted. I mean, there are people at this - it's a fair grounds - and there are people at the fairgrounds but I guess the way that, again, this black and white sheen to this movie, it feels very dingy. It feels very dim. It feels kind of isolated. They ride up on the ferris wheel which is one of those ferris wheel's that's a car rather than a seat so they are standing up in this ferris wheel. And they are looking down on the people below them and it's rainy and dreary and it's a bombed out city. Now Cotten has heard these terrible things about his old friend Harry Lime, I mean, just terrible things. Apparently Lime sold, among other things, you know and the police are looking for him, right? So among other things Lime sold a bunch of tainted black market penicillin to orphanages. And children died. And so Martins confronts him. Martins says, "How could you do this, Harry? It's the black market. And you're trying to get a fast buck and I get that. But the children, Harry." He says, "The children." And this is the scene and it's one of the most famous in all cinema and personally it's probably my favorite bit of dialogue ever and I think you could make a serious case that this is the most important scene in cinema. 

<playing audio from movie>

Lime: Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there...Would you feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you 20,000 pounds for every dot that stopped would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money? Or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man...free of income tax. Only way you can save money nowadays. 

Martins: Lot of good your money will do you in jail. 

Lime: That jail is in another time zone...There's no proof against me besides you. 

Martins: I should be pretty easy to get rid of. 

Lime: Pretty easy...

Martins: I wouldn't be too sure...

Lime: I carry a gun...I don't think they'd look for a bullet wound after you'd hit that ground...

Martins: They dug up your coffin.

Lime: And found Harbin? Hmm, pity. Oh, Holly, what fools we are, talking to each other this way...As though I would do anything to you - or you to me. You're just a little mixed up about things...in general. Nobody thinks in terms...of human beings. Governments don't, why should we? They talk about the people, and the Proletariat... I talk about the suckers and the mugs...it's the same thing. They have their five year plans and so have I.

Martins: You used to believe in God.

Lime: I still do believe in God, old man... I believe in God and mercy and all that... The dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here...poor devils. What do you believe in? Well, if you ever get Anna out of mess, be kind to her. You'll find she's worth it. I wish I had asked you to bring me some of these tablets from home...Holly, I would like to cut you in, old man. Nobody left in Vienna I can really trust - and we have always done everything together. When you make up your mind, send me a message... I'll meet you any place, any time. And when we do meet, old man, it is you I want to see, not the police. Remember that, won't you?

Don't be so gloomy...After all, it's not that awful. Remember what the fellow said...in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance...In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce?...The cuckoo clock.

So long, Holly.

So, what Lime says here is really a fascinating idea. We talked about last week what separates literature from "literature" and it can be different things. Sometimes it's a stylistic device. Sometimes it's a concept. Like Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, if you know that novel. What makes that book so important - I mean there's several things that make that book important - but right off the bat, right at the beginning of the novel you have this question that is presented to us that Raskolnikov, the central character, asks. And Dostoyevsky gives us an answer to this question but the question really is still hanging out there. We still have this question now and it comes up and I mean it gets molded - this question and this issue gets molded and turned into all sorts of interesting, I don't know, television shows, films these days. And the idea is this - if you're a good person, if you have something important to give to the world, like, in this case if you're going to be a doctor and save lives but you can't do that because you're too poor. You're too poor to afford medical school, if you are in that situation is it okay to kill someone who's sort of useless and kind of mean and then to use their money to accomplish this great thing? You're going to help so many more people than this old woman who's close to death anyway, right? She's going to die soon anyway. And what's she contributing to the world? And if I bump her off and I use the money to fund my brilliant medical career, well you know, isn't that a fair tradeoff? So it's a fascinating idea that Dostoyevsky just sort of comes up with. And The Third Man has this amazing idea too - does horror, horrible circumstances, does that produce better art? Harry says very clearly "horrible times, Italy." Horrible situation. Everybody agrees. People are dying right and left. The people are repressed. The leaders are so corrupt. People are poisoning - it's just a terrible situation. But some amazing art. Whereas Switzerland, lots of peace but not so much art, or philosophy, or music, or literature. Just kind of "okay, we're very happy and we're very boring". 

Now, there are different dimensions to this idea. Can we make it - is it personal for instance? What I mean is -  must you be half mad to make art? Must you be depressed and must your life be miserable to really make great art? How many drunken suicidal artists or musicians or painters do we know from Mozart to Van Gogh to Sylvia Plath to Jack Kerouac? It just seems like that's an important component, perhaps, of personality in art. But this is another story entirely. And I was thinking about the Trump era and the impeachment process that's underway and how chaotic things are and how unhappy a lot of people are. And I don't know if there's so much that's been produced in the last three years. Is that connection going on? Is this negative point in American history, is it producing good art? It may take some time to recognize. You don't always recognize it when it's happening. I do know what some things that 9/11 and the Bush administration and the Iraq war produced. I mean, that was a turning point, it was a turning point in a lot of ways and it set up some interesting contrasts and some interesting conflicts that I think a lot of great artists of that period, that first twenty years - well, we're still in the first twenty years- but that first 10 or fifteen years of the 21st century did produce some fascinating art. I think it starts with a turning point in how we as human beings and we as Americans think. My parents grew up in the shadow of WWII and I grew up during the Cold War. And the thing that mattered most, and of course that period - those periods of course also produced, I mean post WWII we get The Third Man. But I really take a lot of pride in the fact that the 80s, growing up in the shadow of the Cold War produced some really fascinating - particularly music that captures the anxiety people were feeling in different ways. And not always, you know, not every song's about nuclear war, though there are some great songs about nuclear war but that idea of nuclear war sort of filters down into the culture and shows up in, I don't know, "Psycho Killer" by The Talking Heads. This anxiety, this fear then it's not about nuclear war but it sort of spreads out into other ways of being anxious. But anyway, so back to our - so I grew up in that period and in that period, from my grandparents from my parents from me, the idea of anyone collecting your information or spying on what you're doing, knowing what kind of phone calls you're making...When you go to the airport, you know, scanning you, running you through these scanners where someone can essentially see you naked so that they can tell if you're carrying a weapon. In the era that I grew up in and in the 80s and the 70s, no none would have allowed that. I mean people would have just risen up and just absolutely rejected these ideas. And again, part of it has to do with post-modernism. But it's also very tied to this post-9/11 thing. For me, for my parents, freedom and the right to privacy - these were fundamental rights, like more important than life. People had died not to preserve safety for America because really in WWII it wasn't really about safety. It was about freedom. And during the Cold War we were free and the Soviet Union wasn't. And we had freedoms and they didn't. And that was what was important. But 9/11 wasn't about freedom. 9/11 was about safety. And suddenly at that point all we wanted was safety.The whole point of terror is to make you afraid and it worked. We were afraid. And so when I would teach, you know, the last years that I was teaching we'd have these conversations with my students because I hadn't even, by that point, I had not gotten it but I was beginning to - they were universally - they absolutely approved of airport scanners. They thought it was a fantastic idea. And you know we're getting this right now with Edward Snowden who's you know what's his situation. Is Russia going to kick him out? That always brings the debate back up. I mean, to me and to a lot of people of my generation, I think, and certainly my parents generation, the notion that - he blew the whistle on the fact that we were being spied on. But the problem is the generation now, they don't care about being spied on. And part of it's post 9/11, the idea of safety, but part of it's all the technology that's fueled by spying like Facebook and Amazon algorithms that send you exactly the book you need. And if you're of this age, you don't really care if companies are spying on you because freedom isn't our biggest concern. Our biggest concerns are safety and convenience. And if we have those two things we'll give up a little freedom. And that's okay.

But out of all this we also came to question ourselves, in the early 21st century, post 9/11 because the question was what are we willing to do in the name of safety? How much freedom will we give up? And, again, at this point I think we're really pretty much giving it all up. We don't care. But at that moment it was still kind of new. Do we give up freedom - do we give up this fundamental right for safety? And, you know, okay so - and we sort of decided we're willing to give up our own. We certainly didn't seem to mind giving up other people's. So we create these black sites and we decide on using "modified torture" techniques or whatever you want to call it. I should say, I'm not endorsing or condemning this moment. That's a completely different show, a completely different conversation; you can email me and we'll have that conversation if you want. I'm not doing that. What I'm doing is I'm pointing out it was a serious shift in our thinking. It was a change in how we thought and when you have those moments of change art's going to have an interesting response to that. So we went to this place, and I guess it's sort of like the place Dostoyevsky went to in a way, you know, Raskolnikov what are we willing to trade? In his case, are we willing to become a murderer so that we can be a great doctor? And in our case for safety, what are we willing to trade? So we traded. But that worries us a little because we're not the true blue good guys anymore. There's a shift. And it kind of happened when the Cold War was over. I mean, for all those years, starting with WWII, post WWII - think about this, we loved Superman. I mean we could not get enough Superman. Why? Because Superman is all good. And we thought of ourselves as all good. And with the Nazis it was pretty easy. We're good, they're bad. Easy to figure out. Case closed. And Cold War, same thing, right? We were good, Soviets were bad, easy - we were free, they were not, you know, we wanted to spread freedom around the world, they wanted to take over the world and put us under a dictatorship. It's very simple to tell where the lines were; who's good, who's bad. So, Superman works great. But in Bush's white house, in that America, suddenly Superman lost his mojo. Superman didn't seem so great anymore because we weren't all that good anymore. It was okay, we were trying to accept that we weren't all good, but we weren't. And Superman kind of made us feel a little shallow. So, you know, who wants to watch that? And so who rises then? Well, Batman. And not the Michael Keaton Batman, the Val Kilmer Batman, the Christoper Nolan Dark Knight trilogy. And that is a whole other universe with a whole other Batman. And that Batman, I mean it was always there in Batman but Christopher Nolan brings that out in a more dramatic way. Batman will bend the rules to save the day. His motives and his methods are sometimes questionable and better than that, who do we really love in those movies? Because it's not Batman. Batman's really not the most important character in those movies, right? It's not Batman. The guy who gets us, the guy who grabbed us was the Joker. And Heath Ledger just molds that character and changes it for us and he makes him into the perfect post 9/11 villain. We sort of like, in a way, because he's sort of like us, right? He kicks ass and takes names and he isn't interested - he's not motivated by money. He's not a common thief. He's interested in chaos. And somehow these negative antiheroes start to grab us. And they start coming out of the woodwork in droves. I mean, you've got - well let's talk about Jack Bauer from 24.  That - and that one comes from a whole other direction but 24 was a phenomenon because we wanted a hero who kind of reflected us, who didn't mind torturing a few bad guys if it helped people, who didn't mind bending a few civil liberties if it would save the President from assassination. But you get all these antihero characters from House to Dexter to, you know, ultimately Walter White. All of these people who we like because they are shady and part of that, again, part of that is this post 9/11 thing where we really identify with that struggle between doing good but sometimes doing bad if it will have a good outcome. It's an interesting question. And there were other statements around the time, Spielberg's Munich, for instance, is a great commentary on, you know, what is - if a crime is vicious enough, what is acceptable in terms of payback? How far can we go? American Idiot from Green Day was another sort of outgrowth of this in another direction having to do with, well again, freedom and your voice and what we're allowed to say and not say. But if you're going to talk about the par excellence for art in that period there really are only two words - Battlestar Galactica. And quite frankly, if you were able, and you can't obviously now, but if you had been able to see that series in it's context, as it was unfolding in the early days of the Bush administration, I think it's probably in the top two or three shows, television shows, ever made. Now, it doesn't have that context anymore. You can't watch it that way anymore. That moment's past. It doesn't move us in the way it did at that particular moment in history. And that's a whole other question, like, that maybe we should explore in another episode. How much does context count? How much do we miss by not really knowing and feeling and being in the times that Shakespeare's Macbeth was performed in? And if we could watch that play, somehow, in that moment and be in that moment, how much different, how much more amazing would that be? But Battlestar was something truly special. I mean, to be honest, I'm not sure if they knew what they were doing when it all began. I mean they're going back to the original series, it's a remake. And the series was a fascinating concept. That idea that Caprica and the other twelve planets, the other twelve colonies are destroyed in a sneak attack - I mean, did they mean that to suggest 9/11? I'm not sure. They certainly figured out the relationship pretty damn quick. In the first several episodes, already, just I mean like in the first episodes there are questions about who's in charge. Should the military be in charge? This is a military situation, right? Or, should the civilian government be in charge? Does an event like that, 9/11 or a sneak attack on your home planet, does that mean we just turn to martial law? Do we give up our freedom so easily and let ourselves just be locked down because that's what's going to make us safe. And if it's going to make us safe, we'll live in a kind of prison. But, you know, they ask questions - what have we lost if we do that? And then as the series goes on we run into countless questions of just what are we willing to do to survive? What are we willing to give up? What are we willing to give up about our humanity, for instance? Are we willing to torture? And what happens when we find out actually who the bad guys are and that they're way more like us than we thought. Or, what happens when we find out that some of them are us? And what do you do, I mean, that's the real question towards the end of that series, right? What do you do when this thing that you've hated and hated and hated and you turn it around and look at it and you see that, oh god, that's me? I'm that. And who's the bad guy now? And who is the good guy? And the madness and the desperation to survive. But then what do you do with survival if there's no hope? Right? How good is safety if there's no freedom? All these kinds of questions come up. And then, of course, the end of that series absolutely ruins what it was. I mean, it's fine...it was not, it was not satisfying. And of course the ins and outs of what was wrong with it are more than we can get into here. I will say, I put up a blog a month or two ago about finales if you want to go looking for it. It's somewhere on the Pop Culture Academy website. But let me just say, I don't think that the weakness of that finale should undo what the series was. And I'll say it again because I'm not sure - if you haven't seen it, you can't go back and appreciate it without context. I mean, can you - is it a good series? Yes, it will always be a brilliant series. But it's missing something if you go back and watch it now because it's just not in the same context that we were living in.

All right, so I think there have certainly been efforts to deal with the Trump administration or to capture the unease that we feel during the Trump administration. I mean obviously we can look at something like American Horror Story, for instance, and who did that season just after the election or within the year after the election and it was all about the election. But maybe that's too on the nose. Right? It's too much - it says too directly what's bothering it. I was struck recently in watching The Handmaid's Tale which, of course, that began - the early season of that hit just as the Me Too movement was getting started. And it still has terrific resonance with that moment. But I was struck this season in the scene where the Marthas are helping June prepare food packages for the children. I'm trying not to give too much away. In that moment it's just so obvious, right? It suddenly struck me, if you're trying to escape from persecution to another place, if you're trying to cross a border, someone has to make care packages for you. And in that moment I realized that they were saying something about immigration, about crossing borders. And it's not a one to one analogy, which maybe makes it better. Again, some things are too on the nose. The children at the end of the season are welcomed when they cross the border, instead of shut out. And so, it does kind of give you pause to think about the reasons why people choose to try and cross borders rather than simply seeing the situation through your own eyes, think about it in terms of what kind of persecution must someone be facing to make that trip? And if Canada doesn't want refugees, then it's sort of on them to overthrow Gilead, right? Because, again, it's not one to one, because it's not the kids get rejected in the way that immigrants today get rejected at our borders but there is something being said there. There's an analogy being drawn. But I can't really think of another work, movie or an album or a show that's digging as deep as Battlestar did with the Bush administration. And I don't know what that means. I mean, there's bound to be something post-modern about it. If you think about the political progression that has happened and I don't mean it in literal terms, again, I'm not interested in talking about politics. But think about it from the standpoint of being in the matrix. That whole post-modern idea that we've discussed - nothing's real, right? So it's not about talking about politics and who's got the power because there's no power. But we go from having an actor in the white house to then the first president that was so monitored that was so much in the matrix that he couldn't conduct an affair in secrecy. Right? I mean, lots of presidents have had affairs. We are in an age where you can't do that without being caught and he was the first president to live in that age where you were going to get caught. To now we've got this guy, and I mean, what does it mean to move from movie actor to television reality show star? And that's the shift we've undergone in a nutshell. That's postmodernism. So, why don't I just say this at the end of this week's show - what do you think is the artistic response to the last three years? Is there something out there that I am missing? Is someone making a statement that I haven't picked up on, somehow? Somehow I've missed it. I pay a lot of attention to pop culture. I don't get it all. And so I'm curious what you think. Is there something out there that does get it? And let me know what you think. Don't forget that there's the Pop Culture Academy Facebook page where you can give us feedback and let us know what you think. There is Twitter, Pop Culture Academy Twitter account, there's a playlist for the week and there's, you know, obviously on YouTube there's a section for comments. Let us know what you think and particularly on this issue - what do you think is the best art that has come out of the Trump administration?

Katie Adkins co-produces this podcast and manages Pop Culture Academy's social media presence including our website. Also, a special thanks to our east coast correspondent, Dr. J. Lundquist who contributes news items and story ideas and who generally keeps me on track.

You're listening to the Pop Culture Academy podcast with MK Adkins. And don't forget you can follow us on Twitter and FaceBook. You can find us on YouTube. And of course you can always visit us at www.popcultureacademy.com.
​
Greetings and salutations and welcome to another edition of the Pop Culture Academy where we do all things pop culture with just a bit of an academic slant. This is episode 5 of which I have titled "Why Michael McDonald Is So Damn Cool". Now, you know, it occurred to me actually just as I was sitting down to record that there are actually two very cool Michael McDonalds. There's the Michael McDonald that we're talking about today, the musical artist. But there's also the Michael McDonald who was a cast member on the old MadTV series. And also very damn cool but in a completely different way. We're going to focus on the musical artist today. So let's make sure we keep those two separate. 

So, I've got a couple of concerns. One concern is that you might not know who Michael McDonald is, which would make me kind of sad I guess. But really, you know, I get it. I'm 48 years old. Michael McDonald's of another era. Not everyone's lived through the music that I have. I hope that we have some listeners who are younger than 48. And those of you that are my age, you know, not everyone's tried to go back and give themselves the musical education I have. I don't know why I needed to do that but, I do remember when I was a college freshman, the guys in the room next to mine would play this game of trying to be the first person to guess who the artist was playing on the local classic radio station. A song would come on, you know, who could figure it out first. It's a way of teaching yourself, it's a way of going back and picking up on the history of classic rock. And I sort of picked up on that game and I played it for several years and it became, I don't know, it became...here I am. So my other big concern is that a lot of you who do know who Michael McDonald is might be saying, "All right, why would I want to listen to an entire podcast episode on Michael McDonald?" Like, just for example, what's the last important thing Michael McDonald did? I think he did a couple of Motown albums, like a couple of cover albums of Motown tunes and I think that was 10 or 15 years ago. And they were good but, you know, is that the last thing that he did? Why are we talking about him?

All right, well so first off Michael McDonald is cool. Just like the title says. And the fact that you don't realize it, and you don't realize just how cool he is is reason enough to make this episode. Just so that we can make it absolutely clear, his coolness. But the truth is I've got other things in mind to talk about today too, things that sort of intersect with Michael McDonald, if you will. And, he's sort of an entry-way into talking about a few other things. 

So, here's the thing. I go through phases, maybe you do as well, where I'll go back and listen to albums or bands that were important to me at one point in my life but that, for whatever reason, I haven't listened to lately in a serious way. And a couple of months ago I was just feeling The Doobie Brothers. I don't know why. My big Doobie Brothers phase was in my second or third year of college which, again, almost 30 years ago. You know, my Doobie Brothers knowledge isn't as deep as some, probably. Probably somebody out there listening knows them far better than I do. I do know their history. I've certainly worn out their greatest hits albums. I also even listened to a kind of an early 90s album they did called Brotherhood which was -- and they're still putting out albums occasionally, you know. They are very nostalgic and they're still touring. I saw them in the late 90s a couple of times but you know I just moved here from Rapid City and I know up at the Sturgis motorcycle festival that happens every year, the motorcycle rally, that they play almost every year. So I mean they are still very vital in that sense, again it's very nostalgic sort of tour but they're still out there doing their thing.

I don't know if I should admit this but The Doobie Brothers are one of those bands that I came to late and I came to through the singer rather than the band. Like, well I definitely shouldn't admit this - I listened to all my parents - this was an amazing thing I still have these actually - I listened to all my parents' old Beatles 45s. They had the 45 records when I was a kid. Because that's what they had, you know? They had those and they had "Wooly Bully" and they had "Downtown" and so that's what I would listen to. And I gotta admit, I'm ashamed to admit this but I had zero interest in those 45s. I had zero interest in The Beatles. Now, these 45s - this was the early stuff, The Beatles early stuff. That's one way that I - I don't know that that is really an excuse but it's one excuse. And I'm listening to them in the late 70s and the early 80s and I just had no ear for it. That's not what was going on at the time and I just didn't get it. And then in the early 80s I discovered, "discovered", Paul McCartney. Now him I liked. Right? I don't know anything about The Beatles but this McCartney guy, he's quite good. So, when I finally sorted it all out I realized that you're supposed to start with the band and then move to the solo career. But that's the way it happened for me. And that's what happened to me with Michael McDonald as well. I discovered him in high school and from there I started backing up and listening to The Doobies. And I'm not going to get into a long history of The Doobie Brothers or for that matter a long history of Michael McDonald. I don't want to turn this podcast into a sort of biography of the week. But if you know The Doobie Brothers you know they basically had two phases. The first was under Tom Johnston an amazing band leader. But at some point Johnston became ill and the band needed a new front man. And so they went searching and they found Michael McDonald who had been working with Steeley Dan.  I mean that's a pretty good resume. And he came in, brought a very different, a new sound. A little more funk to the sound I guess you might say. Heavier keyboards. Maybe less guitar. So, that second phase lasted until the early 80s and then the whole thing kind of dissolved. And then at some point Tom Johnston came back and reformed the band and every once in awhile Michael McDonald shows up at a concert or two so that's that. And here's what I'll say, I really like Tom Johnston and the music, the sound that he pioneered with The Doobie Brothers. I like all of their early work. I like "China Grove". I like "Listen to the Music", all of that. "Long Train Running". And I think most - my sense of things is that most fans of The Doobie Brothers really prefer his era. They think of it as the sort of the more authentic version of The Doobie Brothers. But, you know, what can I say? I'm partial to McDonald. That's how I came to the band in the first place. And, you know, that's a whole interesting topic and worth a conversation that we don't have time for today but bands that switch lead singers somewhere in the middle of the band's career. The Doobie Brothers are a great example but AC/DC, Van Halen, Chicago to a certain extent though I don't know that anybody was ever really fronting that band. Then there's bands like Joy Division which loses it's lead singer and becomes a completely different band. They become New Order instead of Joy Division. Pink Floyd, another kind of example. Genesis, another example. But I had a different direction in mind for today and let's stick to the original plan. 

All right, so let me go back to this story. So, I was back tracking a little a couple of months ago and listening to The Doobies in both eras. Because I really enjoy both. So I listened to the first greatest hits package and the second greatest hits package, you know, one's Johnston one's McDonald and I'm listening to both. So I'm out mowing the grass one afternoon and "What A Fool Believes" shuffled onto the mix. And I thought, you know as I'm out there mowing the yard I thought what he's doing here, lyrically, just the idea of what he is doing is so brilliant in its way. And I thought this guy deserves his own episode, you know. It's early. It's only the fifth podcast episode but this guy really deserves his own episode. So, let me set this whole thing up a little because there's a couple of larger points, like I said, I want to make by talking about Michael McDonald. And the first one is pretty basic but I do think it's worth talking about. 

My PhD is in English and I taught an awful lot of straight up traditional literature classes over the years like surveys of American literature and classes on the contemporary novel and whatever. And inevitably when I'm teaching a literature class this one question comes up right from the beginning and it comes up over and over again and I try to deal with it at the beginning of the semester but that doesn't - it doesn't necessarily go away and the question is this - what exactly is literature? Now, that question can mean a lot of things. Usually the discussion isn't - I mean, usually the discussion is broader than literature. Usually it encompasses all of what we might call art. Music and literature and art; visual art. And the question is what makes something art? And I think what people usually mean, I mean this is the way I interpret the question, is that, you know, let's say art with a big a, Art. And what separates art from Art? And what separates literature from Literature? You've got to take your voice down a little bit. And actually that's a good question, you know, because if you're in school - I mean I remember being in high school and you don't really know. You don't really know, do you? Some teacher tells you Shakespeare's important or The Scarlet Letter's important or The Great Gatsby is important. And I think we've all had that experience of reading the book, or you know someone like me tells you Andy Warhol is the greatest artist of the twentieth century. And we've all had that experience of - I don't get it. I don't see why this guy, this woman, I don't see why this artist is so important. What's the big deal? Or maybe, maybe we're a little more assertive, right? I mean, I was always fairly passive. Whatever they told me I just sort of nodded and said okay. And I might have hated it. In fact I'm still not very fond of The Scarlet Letter even though I've read it multiple times and I see it's importance but I don't really like it. But they tell me it's important and I nod and I say okay. Because that's just my personality. But maybe you're a little more aggressive and you say, "Nope. I'm not having that. That's not art. That's boring and stupid and I'm not buying it." But whichever style you are, you go through school all those years and you just let them tell you this person or that person is important and you get out into the world and maybe you have some idea of whats what and maybe you don't because they never really have defined it. And so, you don't know. And you know I had this problem a lot because I study popular culture and a lot of my colleagues, like other english teachers, other english professors, english teachers of a certain sort let's just say, they had a hard time swallowing sometimes what I did. There's a certain sort of english teacher who will tell you Shakespeare is the be all, end all of literature and maybe we'll throw in some John Dunn and maybe some Milton, Paradise Lost, but that's as far forward as we're going to go. That's as new and exciting as we're going to go and I'm trying to argue that The Simpsons has literary value and that was a hard pill for that sort of teacher to swallow. And sometimes they - often they just wouldn't. No, that's no, that's of no importance. It's a cartoon, right? It's of no importance. It didn't matter how I phrased it, how I put it, how I tried to explain it they just weren't taking that. So if you study popular culture then it gets really confusing because there's no historical sort of sense of who is important. Who has stood the test of time. Who's going to last. And so it gets really confusing to talk about what's important and what's not. And then that just throws the whole system out of whack. Is an episode of The Kardashians art or literature? I say again, with a big A big L. Are The Kardashians - is an episode of The Kardashians Art? Or, how about an episode of Game of Thrones? How about The Bachelorette? All right, so let me confess something up front that your teachers will not tell you. If you think there's one answer and that all your english professors, all your high school english teachers have this one answer of what literature is, well no. We don't. I mean most of the time we stand up there and profess that we do or we read a definition out of a book and say "This is the definition." But we don't have a definition. There are literally hundreds of directions out there, hundreds of different definitions of what literature is. Everybody's got their own. Some people will tell you. And I don't know that I completely disagree with this idea, that really classifying and categorizing things as art or literature is actually elite, very elitist. You know, doing that sort of activity is a way of saying - it's just kind of a way of being able to say "I know more than you. I know what's important. And if you think The Kardashians is an important show, well you're just ignorant. If you think The Simpsons is important, well, you know, you're just uneducated." Or whatever. And actually people who say this notion that categorizing is elitist, that's a completely legitimate way to look at the whole thing. And, like I said, part of me totally accepts it. Accepts that idea. If you like something and you find value in it, then it's important. Period. And you shouldn't let anyone tell you differently. No matter what degrees they may have. And make no mistake, there are all sorts of snobs, and particularly in academia and sort of the intellectual circles. There are all sorts of elites and snobs. They don't have to be professors. You know someone - the guy that's cooler than everyone else. The guy that only listens to deep deep underground music. Artists that people just have never heard of, and they'll tell you straight up that The Doobie Brothers is just commercial crap. And you know, maybe you love Elvis. Not like hip young Elvis but like Las Vegas, way past his prime, Elvis. Or maybe you like Barbara Streisand or Barry Manilow or Clay Aiken or whoever it is. There's always going to be someone over your shoulder that says, "Oh, that's not art. You're an idiot for liking that. How could you possibly like that?" Elitism is just, I don't know, maybe it's part of human nature. And it doesn't have to be a professor. It can just be that guy you know who thinks he knows everything about music there is to know. So I did have an answer for that question though. I sort of made it up one semester but I got really attached to it over the years and so I'll give you that answer. And here's - this is my answer to the question of what separates Art and art. I did that backwards. What separates art and Art? And my answer is - does the artist or the work do something original? Something - and I don't mean they like shatter the world necessarily but do they do something that makes you see the world in a completely new way? Now, again, that sounds like a hard standard to live up to. Did you change art forever? That's not exactly what I'm saying. I mean, maybe that standard is hard, but if you look at most artists who people label important or great or if you look at artworks that stood the test of time and are still seen as classics, they usually have that quality in one way or another. They give you an idea or a feeling that you just hadn't encountered before.

So, let me give you my favorite example. And of course at this point you tuned in to talk about popular culture and hearing that it was going to be about Michael McDonald was already a disappointment and now I'm really off track because you know, where's the pop culture? But I promise you it's in here somewhere and I will make the connection. I promise. But let's talk about poetry. Oh my god, he's going into poetry. So one of my favorite poets is a guy named William Carlos Williams. I wouldn't call him a poetry superstar by any means but he's an important enough guy, right in the early 20th century. Was a doctor. Wrote poems in his spare time. So, all right, Williams wrote several great poems and the one that - if you've encountered him in an english class before you might remember - the one that usually comes up is "The Red Wheelbarrow". "So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow, glazed with rain water beside the white chickens." Right? That's the whole poem. But my favorite is a poem called "This Is Just To Say", also fairly short. And here's how it goes, "I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast. Forgive me. They were delicious. So sweet. And so cold." Now, if you write that out on a sheet of paper, just as like a sentence, a couple sentences, it looks like something your college roommate left in a note on the fridge. Let me read it again just so you can get that sort of post-it note feeling: "I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast. Forgive me, they were delicious. So sweet and so cold." And my students would say, and maybe you would say, that - and they're not wrong - this seems pretty basic. Pretty simple. Not like something you'd call art. All right but stop and think about the poem just for a minute. What's it saying? So literally it says I have eaten your plums, sorry. But that's not quite right, is it? It isn't just that I ate your plums, sorry. There are some other things in there that sort of complicate that basic idea. First of all, why does he have to say "which you were probably saving for breakfast'? I mean, that seems sort of like a dick move, right? Oh, those plums, the special ones you were saving for breakfast? Yeah, I ate those. And then there's the last sentence - "Forgive me. They were delicious, so sweet and so cold". Wait, what? And the first thing my students say is - when I point it out these extra little tidbits in the poem - they'll say "Oh, you know, he's just really descriptive because he's a poet and that's how they talk." But that's not true. Don't do that. Read it the way it's written and imagine your response if someone said that to you. It might be easy to say the roommate's a jerk. The roommate's just a jerk. But he's not quite - he's not just saying "Oh yeah man, those plums you were saving so special? Man those were awesome. Too bad for you." All right so let me read it one more time, just to kind of to think about it once more. I know it feels so much like literature class, doesn't it? "I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast. Forgive me. They were delicious, so sweet and so cold." 

I have eaten 
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
​and so cold

So, there's an apology in there. But it's kind of a weird apology. Like, I shouldn't have done this and I really am sorry but at the same time they were just so damn good. We've all been in that position, I think. Where we're sorry for something but not sorry. But if you think about it, that's a really complicated emotion to feel. I'm sorry for something but I'm not really sorry. I'm sorry and yet I enjoyed it. And it's a complicated emotion and it's even more complicated to describe. And somehow in just a few words Williams manages to pull that complicated emotion off. And I would say that's Literature, with a big L. He's captured a feeling that no one else had captured. And that most of us, I mean I would have said, you know, if you just told me I'm going to try to capture this feeling of sorry but not sorry, I'd of said you couldn't do it. But he finds a way. 

So one of my points in this episode is just to sort of say that here's what marks important works (literature, art), here's what separates those from less important works. Again, I think - I don't want to get too far into saying some are good and some are bad but if you're going to do that, this is one way to do it. 

But then what I want to do is use that argument, here's what I think literature is, to make a bigger argument. That there are lots of really important moments out there in pop culture. In rock music, for example, which is what we're talking about today, there are lots of artists who are doing or who have done some amazing things. Who've invented themes that weren't out there before or captured feelings that just hadn't been captured before. Or, and Michael McDonald's one of those guys. And  I think that makes him worth talking about. Now, certainly he's not the only guy out there - the only artist out there worth talking about in this way. There's tons of great stuff that's been produced in the last fifty or sixty years since we entered what I'd call sort of the age of pop culture. But every once in awhile I listen to Michael McDonald and he just kind of floors me. I'm always so astonished and it's like the same two or three songs, you know. I don't - it's like William Carlos Williams - I don't think Michael McDonald is a major artist on the level with, I don't know, Andy Warhol or The Beatles or Bob Dylan. I mean, I like his sound and he's fine as far as he goes but then there are just those two or three songs that always just floor me.

So let me start with the one that gets me every time. And I just can't think of another song that gets me in the way that this one does. Not quite in the way that this song does. It's unique for me. And it's a Doobie Brothers song, "What A Fool Believes" which is, again, it's a Michael McDonald tune. At some point in their career with Michael McDonald The Doobie Brothers were essentially just a backing band for him. And I think this is one of those kinds of songs. So it's really a Michael McDonald tune. All right, so let me say a couple of things first because there are other little gems that festoon Michael McDonald beyond just this one song. You know how I said last week that The Cars were in the dictionary under new wave band? Like, they are the definition of new wave band? Well Michael McDonald is in the dictionary under whiskey tenor. There's nobody, nobody that has a voice quite like his. And he found something special as a keyboard player that I don't really hear in anyone else except there's kind of a similarity to Stevie Wonder, though they're not really the same. It's some sort of syncopation, beats on the offbeat. But not like one or two beats on the - like he keeps the whole beat with chords on the offbeat. And I'll probably get in trouble for playing this but I can't say that without giving an example. So, let me just throw this example out here. <music example>

All right, so that's from The Doobie Brothers' song "You Belong To Me" but you can hear the same thing in other songs like "Minute by Minute", for example. And I'll add this - I think, this is going to sound really, you know, is this really important but I kind of feel like it is, I think he did something special in the 70s and 80s with the word "fool". And he uses it a lot. Like it becomes this sort of go-to word for him. And it means what fool means; I mean if you look up the definition it means what fool means but it means something slightly different too, in his music. In a way that I don't know how I can completely explain. If I had more time to focus on this I would but the word fool is somehow wrapped up in one of his major themes which is this sort of desperation as a lover. The lover that will do anything for you and who you'll probably walk away from anyway but he would give you anything. And for that reason he is a fool. And it's got all sorts of meanings that go into that. But, so anyway I think that's pretty cool. 

So there's a lot worth talking about. But it's the story and the emotion that comes with the story, that's what gets me every time. And I mean every time, no matter how many times I listen to it, I can listen to it two or three times in a row, it still just gets me every time. All right, so here are the lyrics to "What A Fool Believes": He came from somewhere back in her long ago, the sentimental fool don't see, trying hard to recreate what had yet to be created. Once in her life she musters a smile, for his nostalgic tale. Never coming near what he wanted to say. Only to realize it never really was. She has a place in his life. He never made her think twice. As he rises to her apology, anybody else would surely know he's watching her go. 

So, so here's the story. Guy runs into girl he knew in high school. I mean, it doesn't say high school but that he knew before, knew whenever. And he was so in love with her, right? She, as the song said, she had a place in his life. And as soon as he sees her he's sentimental, thinking back on that time. And so he tries to say something vaguely romantic to take her back to that time too but here's the thing, the song also says "he never made her think twice". So, she manages to rise to the occasion, she gives him a little smile, you know, she's indulgent of his nostalgia. But in that moment when she does that he realizes his mistake. That all this time it was just him that had a crush on her. And I don't know if you know that feeling but I know, I know exactly what he's talking about. Just precisely. I've been there. You know, there were those girls in high school that I idolized in some way but that I, and I fancied to myself that we were. You know, we weren't - I wasn't a stalker. I didn't think we were romantically involved but I fancied to myself that we were friends. And that maybe if I had made the effort we could have been involved. But that's not true. Right? That's a nostalgic fantasy. But whether you've been there or not, here's the thing. Who imagines that scene? If you're, think about pop music that you know and what kinds of scenes you're given.Who imagines that scene? Who captures that precise moment as the subject of a pop song? Most songs are like, right, I love you and you don't love me. Or, you love me and I don't love you. Or, you're gone and boy do I miss you. This is so much more complex than that. The emotion that we're trying to get at here is so much more subtle and so much harder to capture. And yet he totally pulls it off. And this is the best example, but it's not the only time that he does that. There's something in the song "Minute By Minute" where it's a relationship that has gone bad but they're trying to hold onto it minute by minute. But there's a lot of their past that helps them hold on to it but you can't hold onto the past, minute by minute. That's a contradiction in terms. There's some very complicated emotions.

In "You Belong To Me" is another relationship that seems to be going south. The woman has begun sort of dressing provocatively, dressing sensually, sexually so that men will notice her. And the speaker says, "You don't have to do that. I notice you." It's some complicated adult emotions. It's not just a typical teeny bopper love song. And in both these songs and "What A Fool Believes", the speaker Michael McDonald, I guess you'd say, he's the loser. He's the fool. Right? And he plays that part. Only he's not exactly the loser. Because Sting does this thing and maybe we'll talk about him one of these days, he does this thing where he's lost around women. Just utter - the character that he plays is just completely lost. And in song after song after song he writes about this guy who just can't, just can't get it together. And that's not what this is. This guy's sophisticated. In McDonald's songs. He's like smooth 70s sophisticated. But he's just a touch out of his league.

In fact it reminds me of that Lionel Richie song, the one with The Commodores, "Sail On". Another of my all-time favorite songs. You know, I'm pretty damn cool but you know she's still just too much for me. And I find that theme in a world where the go-to pose is "look how cool I am", to be able to say, I am cool but I'm just not up to your level. And the subtle way that McDonald captures it, I don't know. I'd call that Literature. And you know my point here, and I deliberately didn't give you someone like Bob Dylan, you know someone who - Bob Dylan won a Nobel prize for literature, though that's a discussion we ought to - so many of my colleagues so unhappy with that decision. But that's a different - that's another different episode. But I didn't give you Bob Dylan. I didn't give you The Beatles. Or even The Police or Peter Gabriel or Tupac or whoever. It's just Michael McDonald. Right? The guy that you may not even remember. And a couple of songs that he did with The Doobie Brothers. 

But first off, you know, my point - one of my points is maybe we should be paying more attention to Michael McDonald. Maybe he's cool enough that he deserves a little more love than he typically gets. But beyond that, the point is even if this guy, this guy that you don't listen to anymore and that not many people really even remember much anymore, even that guy has this amazing literary quality in his music. And if that guy has it, that should tell you just how much is going on in pop culture. It is worth talking about in a deeper perspective. I mean and from both sides of the equation. Right? If you're a casual listener and you tend to just let the music wash over you and you don't think about what's being said or you don't think about how it's being said or how the music's being presented to you, if you're that person, I think it's important to sort of revise your thinking. To think about it in what we call, a slightly academic way. To think about the depth that's going on there and not just let it wash over you. Because there are some amazing themes and ideas and feelings and emotions that are being sort of put together in these songs. But then from the opposite perspective if you're one of those sort of literary elites or academic elites who think that pop culture is beneath notice, well, you know, I also have a message for you. That's just not true. There are some incredibly deep things going on in popular culture and that makes it worth talking about. 

Katie Adkins co-produces this podcast and manages Pop Culture Academy's social media presence including our website. Also a special thanks to our east coast correspondent, Dr. J. Lundquist who contributes news items and story ideas and generally keeps me on track. And remember, you can turn on your TV, you can turn on your radio, turn on your PS4, your Xbox but that doesn't mean you should turn off your brain. ​​​​​