I wanted to like this but found it Consistently disappointing. While I agree with the critique of the society of the spectacle the question is if Llosa has anything to add, or a new direction to take the critique in? It didn’t seem to me that he did.
His critiques of post modern philosophy and contemporary art are full of the same boogie men that conservatives have been ranting about for decades, and he has nothing to add. For example, he writes that Derrida “relativized notions of truth and value turning them into fictions...separating literature from reality and confining it to an autonomous world of texts that refer to other texts without ever relating to lived experience.” This is a very familiar straw man, but what’s noteworthy is that Llosa wrote this in 2012, not 1972. Earlier critics who wrote with such fear of post structuralism might have been forgiven as there was an extent to which Derrida’s work was being worked through in the 70s and 80s. But by 2012 one would have to ignore the majority of Derrida’s writing and tenaciously cling to a simple minded reactionary stance to write such things. If early in the book the reader is wondering if Llosa might be a reactionary, by the time one reaches chapters such as “A brief Discourse on Culture” and “Forbidden to Forbid” ( only the second and third chapters) there can be no doubt. Familiar old arguments come out with little variation. In particular his lament at the loss of objective standards of quality and insistence that craft must be at the center of art making. “...there are no longer any objective criteria that make it possible to qualify or disqualify something as a work of art or situate it within a hierarchy.” The lack of critical engagement with the past here is stunning and his easy acceptance of supposedly objective criteria lacks intellectual rigor. At best he seems naive, at worst he is deeply ignorant of art, art history and the very culture he hopes to defend. Don’t get me wrong, craft is powerful and deeply enjoyable, and if feels good to have standards against which to measure things, even if those standards are always flawed. But Llosa is never able to strike the balance in which one acknowledges the value of craft while also being honest enough to admit the important ways art has always been conceptual and that the concepts at work in the art of the past few decades are just as important as displays of technical skill in older art. Of course, if we are alert we are going to ask about the very idea of skill, what forms it’s inside and outside and why? Llosa isn’t interested in taking a deep dive into the intellectual structures at work in the arts and culture. He is here to take sides, to celebrate the good old days of early modernism and decry how bad things have gotten today; ironically, in doing so Llosa participates in the same kind of superficial thinking that he condemns in the culture at large. We don’t need this. What we need is an intellectually honest deep engagement with culture, an engagement that can be skeptical of current art at one moment and describe its strengthens at the next. We need analysis and insight not cheerleading and trash talking. We need cultural critics good enough to look at contemporary art and see the various things it has to tell us about ourselves now, and no, “it’s a scam” isn’t the message of the totality of artistic output today. For Llosa contemporary art and culture demonstrate one thing: that the past was better. We’d do well not to take his claims seriously.
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Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2020
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Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2015
“What do we mean by the civilization of the spectacle? The civilization of a world in which pride of place, in terms of scale of values, is given to entertainment, and where having a good time, escaping boredom, is the universal passion. To have this goal in life is perfectly legitimate, of course…. But converting this natural propensity for enjoying oneself into a supreme value has unexpected consequences: it leads to a culture becoming banal, frivolity becoming widespread and, in the field of news coverage, it leads to the spread of irresponsible journalism based on gossip and scandal….systematically and imperceptibly, not being bored, avoiding anything that might be disturbing, worrying or distressing, became for increasing number both at the pinnacle and at the base of the social pyramid, a generational mandate..”
“Stupidity has become the ruling value of postmodern life, and politics is one of its main victims.”
While not a believer, Llosa values religious education as essential for understanding our cultural inheritance.
“To ban entirely all forms of religious education in state schools would be to bring up the new generations with a deficient culture and deprive them of basic tools to understanding their history, their tradition, and enjoy the art, literature and thought of the West. Western culture is imbued with religious ideas, beliefs, images, festivities and customs. To cut out this rich inheritance from the education of the new generations would be to deliver them, bound hand and foot, to the civilization of the spectacle, to frivolity, superficiality, ignorance, gossip and bad taste. A non-sectarian, objective and responsible education, which explains the hegemonic role of Christianity in the creation and evolution of the culture of the West, with all its divisions and secessions, its wars, its historical impact, its achievements, its excesses, its saints, its mystics, its martyrs, and the ways in which all this has had an influence, both good and bad, on history, philosophy, architecture, art and literature, is indispensable if we want to avoid culture degenerating at the rate it is doing and having the world in the future divided between functional illiterates and ignorant and insensitive specialists.”
His final thoughts include the following.
“Never before have we lived in an age so rich in scientific knowledge and technological discoveries; never have we been better equipped to defeat illness, ignorance and poverty, and yet perhaps we have never been so confused about certain basic questions such as what we are doing on this lightless planet of ours, if mere survival is the sole aim that justifies life, if concepts such as spirit, ideals, pleasure, love, solidarity, art, creation, beauty, soul, transcendence still have meaning and, if so, what these meanings might be. The raison d’être of culture was to give an answer to these questions. Today it is exonerated from such responsibility, since we have turned it into something much more superficial and voluble: a form of entertainment or an esoteric and obscurantist game for self-regarding academics and intellectuals who turn their backs on society.”
This is book that would bring a group alive with discussion of current issues.
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A Searing Critique of Modern Culture and its Banality
By Edward A. Schroder on September 16, 2015
Mario Vargas Llosa (b.1936) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010. He is a Peruvian novelist, politician, journalist and college professor. A classical liberal by conviction he commands great respect in Latin America. His latest book, Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays on Spectacle and Society, is an unsparing criticism of modern and postmodern culture. It is brilliant in its analysis of the disease of banality that pervades most of our media and politics. He helpfully expounds the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism, multiculturalism, pornography, political correctness and the limits of tolerance. A few quotes illustrate his concerns.By Edward A. Schroder on September 16, 2015
“What do we mean by the civilization of the spectacle? The civilization of a world in which pride of place, in terms of scale of values, is given to entertainment, and where having a good time, escaping boredom, is the universal passion. To have this goal in life is perfectly legitimate, of course…. But converting this natural propensity for enjoying oneself into a supreme value has unexpected consequences: it leads to a culture becoming banal, frivolity becoming widespread and, in the field of news coverage, it leads to the spread of irresponsible journalism based on gossip and scandal….systematically and imperceptibly, not being bored, avoiding anything that might be disturbing, worrying or distressing, became for increasing number both at the pinnacle and at the base of the social pyramid, a generational mandate..”
“Stupidity has become the ruling value of postmodern life, and politics is one of its main victims.”
While not a believer, Llosa values religious education as essential for understanding our cultural inheritance.
“To ban entirely all forms of religious education in state schools would be to bring up the new generations with a deficient culture and deprive them of basic tools to understanding their history, their tradition, and enjoy the art, literature and thought of the West. Western culture is imbued with religious ideas, beliefs, images, festivities and customs. To cut out this rich inheritance from the education of the new generations would be to deliver them, bound hand and foot, to the civilization of the spectacle, to frivolity, superficiality, ignorance, gossip and bad taste. A non-sectarian, objective and responsible education, which explains the hegemonic role of Christianity in the creation and evolution of the culture of the West, with all its divisions and secessions, its wars, its historical impact, its achievements, its excesses, its saints, its mystics, its martyrs, and the ways in which all this has had an influence, both good and bad, on history, philosophy, architecture, art and literature, is indispensable if we want to avoid culture degenerating at the rate it is doing and having the world in the future divided between functional illiterates and ignorant and insensitive specialists.”
His final thoughts include the following.
“Never before have we lived in an age so rich in scientific knowledge and technological discoveries; never have we been better equipped to defeat illness, ignorance and poverty, and yet perhaps we have never been so confused about certain basic questions such as what we are doing on this lightless planet of ours, if mere survival is the sole aim that justifies life, if concepts such as spirit, ideals, pleasure, love, solidarity, art, creation, beauty, soul, transcendence still have meaning and, if so, what these meanings might be. The raison d’être of culture was to give an answer to these questions. Today it is exonerated from such responsibility, since we have turned it into something much more superficial and voluble: a form of entertainment or an esoteric and obscurantist game for self-regarding academics and intellectuals who turn their backs on society.”
This is book that would bring a group alive with discussion of current issues.
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Top reviews from other countries
John G
Culture in the age of the spectacle.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 29, 2015Verified Purchase
M.Broom
I read this thinking this would be an intelligent extension and development of the question of The Spectacle ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 19, 2016Verified Purchase
Lian Duan
Publisher's or translator's problem
Reviewed in Canada on September 2, 2020Verified Purchase
Amazon Customer
Highly recommended
Reviewed in Canada on June 1, 2016Verified Purchase
Judicaël M.
Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on August 30, 2015Verified Purchase
