#usculture — Public Fediverse posts

When you read stuff like this, it’s good to keep in mind that all of this is a choice.

Why Being Middle-Aged Sucks So Much for Americans (and No One Else)
https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-being-middle-aged-sucks-so-much-for-americans-and-no-one-else/

#aging #americandream #unitedstates #individualism #uspolitics #usculture

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/sep/14/my-wife-and-i-had-couples-therapy-on-tv-it-nearly-wrecked-our-marriage

Painful reading.

My first thought before reading the article was to wonder why on earth this couple had agreed to have their couples therapy televised.

Then I read that the couple made very little money, so the offer of a free sessions with a therapist who regularly charges $700 an hour must have been difficult to resist. As the husband/author writes, "I wanted to save my marriage. I was desperate for help."

I won't dissect the whole article but will instead note a couple of more general thoughts.

Much of the unhappiness in this marriage can be traced to the continual changes in residence, prompted in turn by scarce job prospects and insecurity in employment. One of the most ugly consequences of the neoliberal political economy pushed by "family values" conservatives is not just the wreckage of marriages by economic insecurity, but the insidious pressure on couples turn inwards and blame each other for problems generated by social forces.

Contra Margaret Thatcher, there IS such a thing as society, and a deeply inequitable society can warp intimate relationships and destroy families.

Fitting in horribly with this antisocial individualism is the deference accorded to "therapy" by so many Americans . All too often a mishmash of self help nostrums, poorly grounded popular psychology, and moralistic bullying is offered as a panacea to both individual and social problems.

Of course, psychotherapists have a legitimate function in modern society, but, in the US in particular, "therapy" has become something like a religion to a significant portion of the population. Consequently I often - as I do now - feel the stirrings of the functional equivalent of anticlericalism within my breast.

I am not recommending a turn to the "traditional" way of life advocated by conservatives. I would just plead for a turn to the social rather than the constant reduction of all problems to those of individual psychology.

Here, the combination of therapy with voyeuristic TV, itself a product of a ratings chase shaped by neoliberal values, turns out to be disastrous.

#CouplesTherapy #Therapy #Relationships #USCulture #Neoliberalism

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/sep/14/my-wife-and-i-had-couples-therapy-on-tv-it-nearly-wrecked-our-marriage

Painful reading.

My first thought before reading the article was to wonder why on earth this couple had agreed to have their couples therapy televised.

Then I read that the couple made very little money, so the offer of a free sessions with a therapist who regularly charges $700 an hour must have been difficult to resist. As the husband/author writes, "I wanted to save my marriage. I was desperate for help."

I won't dissect the whole article but will instead note a couple of more general thoughts.

Much of the unhappiness in this marriage can be traced to the continual changes in residence, prompted in turn by scarce job prospects and insecurity in employment. One of the most ugly consequences of the neoliberal political economy pushed by "family values" conservatives is not just the wreckage of marriages by economic insecurity, but the insidious pressure on couples turn inwards and blame each other for problems generated by social forces.

Contra Margaret Thatcher, there IS such a thing as society, and a deeply inequitable society can warp intimate relationships and destroy families.

Fitting in horribly with this antisocial individualism is the deference accorded to "therapy" by so many Americans . All too often a mishmash of self help nostrums, poorly grounded popular psychology, and moralistic bullying is offered as a panacea to both individual and social problems.

Of course, psychotherapists have a legitimate function in modern society, but, in the US in particular, "therapy" has become something like a religion to a significant portion of the population. Consequently I often - as I do now - feel the stirrings of the functional equivalent of anticlericalism within my breast.

I am not recommending a turn to the "traditional" way of life advocated by conservatives. I would just plead for a turn to the social rather than the constant reduction of all problems to those of individual psychology.

Here, the combination of therapy with voyeuristic TV, itself a product of a ratings chase shaped by neoliberal values, turns out to be disastrous.

#CouplesTherapy #Therapy #Relationships #USCulture #Neoliberalism

🧵 3/3

...Chris Brown -- Back to Sleep
https://youtu.be/OQLuhelCaDQ?si=xdbJNEJ2rT_Aqbx7

The songs do differ, so it's not a case of plagiarism, but it's quite clear that "Crash" draws on the older song.

Three lines of thought came to mind.

In the first place, I wondered - not for the first time - how my feelings about Kpop would change if I listened to more western popular music.

A quick look at the Wikipedia entry on "Back to Sleep" made it clear to me how well known the song had been on its release in 2015. I felt taken aback; am I the only "Crash" listener not to have been aware of the songs' similarities? What would have been my initial reaction to "Crash" had I heard the Chris Brown song first?

Of course Kpop recycles western popular music, just as western popular music in the past (certainly) and in the present (probably) recycles both its own products and music from other sources. Consequently, my feelings are not those of the viewer abashed when the painting one has admired turns out to be a forgery, but rather those of a reader who, on turning from a mass market paperback version of a beloved text to the annotated scholarly edition, discovers all the sources and allusions previously unnoticed.

These thoughts on background knowledge reminded me of a consideration about our responses to music and art in general: just as perception is never simply an impression via the senses on a tabula rasa, so we never look at the visual arts with an "innocent eye" or listen to music without pre-existing concepts, sensibilities, and memories. That tabula full of ideas, far from being an obstacle to our disinterested appreciation, is what what makes our aesthetic experience possible. Without the tabula plena, we would be hard put to recognize the art and the music within our visual and aural experience.

My final thought concerned the lyrics and visuals of the Chris Brown MV. "Crash" was a B side for which no MV was made, but even so one can see from the stage how it differed in feel from the erotically charged American video. In addition, the Korean lyrics have nothing like the explicit sexual language of "Back to Sleep". As such, a comparison reveals a striking difference between South Korea and the USA with regard to the representation of sex in popular culture. Whether one is "better" than the other is a question that interests me less than why these two cultures differ so much in this respect.

#Kpop #RandB #RnB #ChrisBrown #BackToSleep #Crash #Aesthetics #PopularCulture #AmericanCulture #USCulture #SouthKoreanCulture #Korea #Sex