On the surface, films such as Seven, Forrest Gump, Natural Born Killers, and Pulp Fiction, and TV shows such as Seinfeld have little in common. But Thomas Hibbs, a distinguished professor of Ethics and Culture at Baylor University, says they do: they represent, to varying degrees, the influence of nihilism on American pop culture. As Michael Medved once wrote (and Hibbs quotes), we have no other culture but popular culture, and popular culture is Hollywood, especially television culture.
Hibbs' book was released in 1999, and needless to say, it's been a long four years since then. While the spirit of unity and patriotism that defined the country after September 11, 20001 has receded somewhat on the left, we're not quite where we were back in nihilistic '90s--not quite. On the other hand, as Charles Oliver wrote in his review of Hibbs' book in Reason magazine, popular culture in the '90s wasn't quite the world of nihilism that Hibbs portrays in his book, either:
Hibbs and other critics of popular culture assume that a person's taste in art reflects his deeply held values, and that this is true for a society as well. If many Americans devour nihilistic entertainment, then, it is because they are seeking a reflection of the views they already hold.One benefit of Hibbs' book is that it reminds us just how prescient philosophers such as Nietzsche and Hannah Arendt were. Hibbs' first chapter reminds us just how potent Nietzsche's vision of the twentieth century was. Nietzsche's most famous utterance, that God is dead, is well remembered. But what he said afterwards was equally as important: that with God and religion pushed to the background, or eliminated entirely, there would be no governor on man's most base instincts, and war and death on a scale never before seen would occur--and he was right, as Europe and Asia spent much of the 20th century locked alternately in bloody combat and its preparations, killing its innocents, and usurping their freedoms through authoritarian control. With God dead in Germany, Russia and China, politics and bureaucracy became the religion of choice, and bloodshed its communial chalice.There may be some truth to that assumption. If someone listens only to harsh, misogynistic music, watches only dark, nihilistic films, and plays only violent video games, it could be (though not necessarily) cause for alarm. And if a culture is dominated by decadent, nihilistic popular culture, that too may be reason to worry. But what are we to make of a person who was moved by Schindler's List and who also enjoyed The Silence of the Lambs? Or of someone who laughs at The Simpsons or Seinfeld and cries during Touched by an Angel?
More important, what are we to make of a culture that allows all of these shows and movies to be hits? Maybe such persons, and cultures, suffer from basic spiritual conflicts and have a mixed view of how life is or should be. Or perhaps the occasional nihilistic film helps a spiritually healthy person, or society, confront the occasional fear that life is meaningless and, by facing that fear, overcome it.
Article comments
1 - Bob Hawkins
The Jack Benny radio show was a show about nothing. Exactly as much as "Seinfeld", since they're the same show. (Star: a stand-up comedian playing himself. Regular cast: a gang of neurotics, including one beautiful woman. Recurring one-joke characters. Repeat a joke 3 times in a show. Admittedly, the Benny show was more anarchic and post-modernist.) The Benny show was top-rated in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Was the audience nihilistic all that time?
2 - Ed Driscoll
Bob,
You're absolutely right--there's a long tradition of comedies "about nothing". You could include the anarchy of the best of the Marx Brothers' pictures, or Bing and Bob's "Road" movies to the list as well.
But there's also a long tradition of American television sit-coms having certain formulas: the characters usually try to "grow a little" by overcoming some sort of moral dilemma in each episode, and the shows were usually oriented around a family environment. This tradition runs through all-American shows from Ozzie & Harriet to Happy Days, and even an apparently subversive show like M*A*S*H played by those rules as well.
Hibbs argues that Seinfeld's creators and writers' deliberately dynamited those rules, as simultaneously, numerous movies flirted with nihilism in the 1990s as well.
Here's an article that focuses a little bit more on Hibbs thoughts about the Seinfeld TV series, than I apparently did above.
In any case, while I'm not sure I fully agree with his conclusions, it's an interesting book, and an enjoyable read.
Regards,
Ed
3 - Eric Olsen
Fascinating and important Ed, great job. I would add that "being" about nothing isn't the same thing as "believing" in nothing, which is the actual meaning of nihilism, and even seemingly amoral picaresques like Forrest Gump may not take a stand on the big issues, but certainly do on interpersonal issues, celebrating friendship, loyalty and family, while dramatically demonstrating the instant karma results of a life led nihilistically.