Life Worth Living
I didn't really like American Splendor all that much, although I suppose it's worth watching. However, one thing sticks in my mind. Harvey has a coworker who is a big fan of "Revenge of the Nerds," I think because he likes to see outcasts win. Harvey points out that the real outcasts in society aren't the sort of quasi-nerds who get college degrees, but the really weird people who aren't welcome in mainstream institutions.
I think this is true on at least two levels. First, in my own life, I've come to resent the glib "weirdness" that is commonly celebrated on television shows, movies, etc. Walk a day in my shoes, and see what it's like to be weird. See if you still want to celebrate it.
I'm fortunate in that my weirdness hasn't (yet) precluded me from enjoying some of the better institutions of modern life. I was thinking about the labor market in the US, and I can't figure out whether I'm optimistic or pessimistic. In some ways the labor market is quite good.
However, it strikes me that it imposes a very specific "interface" (for lack of a better word). For a variety of reasons, it's important to be clean, presentable, reliable, prompt, etc. Obviously these have always been valuable traits, but I think much more so now than in the past. My sense is that 100 years ago if a man was strong and willing to work hard, the other shit didn't matter.
I think this kind of thing works greatly to the advantage of middle class people, because their status and their attitudes about work match the expectations of employers. It's not that they're better workers, necessarily, just that they fit the paradigm. So for instance, I'm told that many workers in South America are willing to work hard but don't understand our insistence on promptness. Promptness is the kind of thing that has come to be important in our economy, and it's become part of our understanding of what it means to be employed. I imagine it's not too hard to adapt, but I think this might help explain why marginal populations in the US do worse than you might expect. Their "weirdness" alienates them from the mainstream economy, and it's a vicious circle.
As a side note, this is one possible argument against the minimum wage. If it's really important to develop an understanding of the employer-employee relationship, and poor young people are priced out of the market by the minimum wage, they might suffer a permanent adverse effect on employability.
I think this is true on at least two levels. First, in my own life, I've come to resent the glib "weirdness" that is commonly celebrated on television shows, movies, etc. Walk a day in my shoes, and see what it's like to be weird. See if you still want to celebrate it.
I'm fortunate in that my weirdness hasn't (yet) precluded me from enjoying some of the better institutions of modern life. I was thinking about the labor market in the US, and I can't figure out whether I'm optimistic or pessimistic. In some ways the labor market is quite good.
However, it strikes me that it imposes a very specific "interface" (for lack of a better word). For a variety of reasons, it's important to be clean, presentable, reliable, prompt, etc. Obviously these have always been valuable traits, but I think much more so now than in the past. My sense is that 100 years ago if a man was strong and willing to work hard, the other shit didn't matter.
I think this kind of thing works greatly to the advantage of middle class people, because their status and their attitudes about work match the expectations of employers. It's not that they're better workers, necessarily, just that they fit the paradigm. So for instance, I'm told that many workers in South America are willing to work hard but don't understand our insistence on promptness. Promptness is the kind of thing that has come to be important in our economy, and it's become part of our understanding of what it means to be employed. I imagine it's not too hard to adapt, but I think this might help explain why marginal populations in the US do worse than you might expect. Their "weirdness" alienates them from the mainstream economy, and it's a vicious circle.
As a side note, this is one possible argument against the minimum wage. If it's really important to develop an understanding of the employer-employee relationship, and poor young people are priced out of the market by the minimum wage, they might suffer a permanent adverse effect on employability.
posted by James | 12:27 PM
2 Comments:
You're right that the "weirdness" and "quirkiness" that you say is celebrated in mainstream sitcoms and such isn't true weirdness. It's that slight deviation from the norm that makes those people or traits interesting/fun (think about the immense popularity of Seinfeld or Friends) in ways that the extreme, unbalanced forms wouldn't. Like, maybe it's funny if a girl is airheaded, but if she was airheaded AND mean, that wouldn't fly. Also note that the people in these shows are generally very physically attractive, which makes their massive character deficiencies more amenable.
Also, people enjoy those shows as passive viewers who watch the different personalities interact in carefully constructed stories that make everything fit together well. If you actually had to live with characters like those in real life, it's more likely you would feel annoyance rather than amusement.
Normality isn't normative, but it's what people desire.
i'm not sure that sitcom weirdness is "slight" so much as it is "asymmetrical."
the token weirdnesses on Seinfeld and Friends were by and large accepted by the outside world without ramification: the wacky folks behaved wackily, but they were not treated as such. oh, the magic of fiction.
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