Decoder Ring | Is Culture Stuck?

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Slow Burn | Decoder Ring: "Is Culture Stuck?"

Host: Willa Paskin
Guest: W. David Marx, author and cultural critic
Date: January 28, 2026
Theme: Examining whether Western pop culture has become stagnant, failing to innovate with the frequency and depth seen in the 20th century, despite vast technological changes and an explosion in content.

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Episode Overview

Willa Paskin explores the contentious idea that Western culture, particularly pop culture, is stuck—repeating itself, recycling the past, and failing to generate the kind of radical newness or artistic innovation seen in previous generations. The central argument is examined through a lively conversation with W. David Marx, whose book "Blank Space" diagnoses the apparent lack of bold cultural change and asks what, if anything, can—or should—be done to revitalize creativity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Generation Gap and Musical "Sameness"

• Opening anecdote: Willa describes her daughter singing Kelis's "Milkshake" (2003) as if it were current, showcasing today's blurred generational lines in music and culture ([01:21]).
• Contrast to the past:
  • In the mid-late 20th century, each generation's culture—music, fashion, art—was visibly and audibly distinct from its predecessor ([02:42]-[03:50]).
  • "Every era was radically different from what preceded it." – Willa Paskin ([03:20])
• Current landscape:
  • Everything’s available, trends cycle quickly, and "nothing feels quite new, but nothing feels quite dated either."
  • The phenomenon of nostalgia and recycled IP dominates film, music, and fashion ([04:55]-[06:30]).

2. W. David Marx’s Argument: Is Culture Stagnant?

• The "Blank Space" thesis:
  • Marx argues that while there is more cultural content than ever, the rate and depth of change have slowed dramatically ([07:33], [08:52]).
  • "The 21st century delivers [entertainment]...But is our capacity for enjoyment expanding? Are we being given a sense of wonder from culture the way that we used to?" – W. David Marx ([07:46])
• Historical examples:
  • The Beatles’ rapid reinvention transformed global pop music in less than a decade; such radical, visible change is rare now ([10:05]).
  • The 20th century’s rapid change set unrealistic expectations for perpetual novelty ([13:45], [14:33]).

3. Are We Fetishizing the 20th Century?

• Willa questions whether the 20th century is anomalous, with its expectation of continual progress ([13:45]).
• Marx: For centuries, cultural change was discouraged; the 20th century, thanks to avant-garde art and counterculture, told young people their ideas could replace the old ([13:58]-[16:08]).

4. Shifting Role of Cultural Gatekeepers

• How taste and legacy are made: Popular does not always mean lasting or important ([16:37]–[18:46]).
  • Tony Orlando was hugely popular but is now forgotten; Kraftwerk had little contemporaneous fame but reshaped modern music ([16:44]-[17:42]).
  • Cultural narratives are built over time, often by critics and "culturally literate" communities, not the mainstream ([18:25]-[19:09]).
• Current breakdown:
  • The old dialogue between tastemakers, critics, and creators shaping legacies has weakened or fragmented ([19:50]).

5. The Internet's Complicated Legacy

• High hopes for digital culture:
  • The Internet promised a democratization of creativity, with niche interests flourishing ([22:05]-[23:05]).
  • “Instead of the bounty that we were promised...something else has occurred.” – Willa Paskin ([23:05])
• What really happened:
  • Mainstream tastes now dominate digital spaces; the promise of endless, innovative niche art has, paradoxically, resulted in homogenization ([23:29]).
  • Platforms reward content that appeals to large audiences—makeup tutorials, shopping hauls, quick entertainment ([24:24]-[24:35]).
  • TikTok and memes, for all their novelty, rarely reach the depth of traditional art forms due to bite-sized formats and algorithmic incentives ([25:01]–[26:22]).

6. The Flattening of High and Low Culture

• Omnivore culture:
  • People now sample everything, feeling there's no real difference between high art and entertainment ([30:09]).
  • “If we flatten everything...you’re obviously going to live in a world where the entertainment dominates the art.” – W. David Marx ([30:56])
• Consequences:
  • Without social status granted to challenging forms, “easy” art is preferred by default ([31:13]).

7. Culture’s Political and Social Feedback Loops

• Transgression in art:
  • Culture has historically innovated by pushing against whatever is mainstream or hegemonic ([31:46]).
  • Now both left and right tend to reject an avant-garde, elitist ethos:
    • Conservatives often eschew progressive experimentation.
    • Progressives may see elitist art as anti-inclusion ([33:29]).
• Retromania and reaction:
  • Nostalgia isn’t just aesthetic, but reflects broader political/cultural conservatism ([31:17]).

8. Can Innovation Return?

• Ecosystems matter:
  • Marx argues real cultural innovation often starts at the margins and spreads—innovators don’t need to be many, just passionate ([33:37]-[35:04]).
  • Trap music as example: from a small Atlanta scene to global dominance ([33:47]).
• Personal agency:
  • Paskin notes that breaking one's own consumption patterns—even by choosing new music rather than letting algorithms decide—can enrich experience and support cultural health ([35:04]-[35:59]).
  • “We have to do something. We have to think about it, we have to care, and we have to want it. And if we want it, I think we can change it....The culture is good if you want it.” – W. David Marx ([36:34])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the present's perpetual recycling:
  • "It's like we're in a kind of forever present where nothing feels quite new, but nothing feels quite dated either." – Willa Paskin ([05:54])
• Cultural progress vs. popularity:
  • "What is popular is not necessarily the most representative part of that time period." – W. David Marx ([17:10])
• On the impact of democratized platforms:
  • "So the distribution and the tools we have democratized, but that did not lead to an explosion of more art." – W. David Marx ([24:35])
• The role of critics and "culturally literate" people:
  • "Those people think more deeply about culture. And so they are catered to by a group of critics who are supposed to be... giving it context and explaining what's going on." – W. David Marx ([19:10])
• On the flattening of value in art:
  • "If we flatten everything and say there is really no difference between high and low and no difference between art and entertainment, then you're obviously going to live in a world where entertainment dominates the art." – W. David Marx ([30:56])
• On optimism and personal agency:
  • "If people who really care about Culture just come together and start saying, I believe that cultural invention is a social good... That may be enough just to create the activity that ends up still being innovative across the entire system." – W. David Marx ([35:04])
• On cultural intervention:
  • "We have to think about it, we have to care, and we have to want it. And if we want it, I think we can change it... The culture is good if you want it." – W. David Marx ([36:35])

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00–01:21 – Opening anecdote: generational confusion over pop hits ("Milkshake" story)
• 03:20–07:33 – Defining the problem: generational churn vs. contemporary sameness
• 07:33–10:05 – Marx introduces the "Blank Space" theory
• 10:05–13:23 – The Beatles and the expectation of rapid cultural transformation
• 16:44–18:46 – How popularity does not determine legacy; critics’ role in shaping what endures
• 19:50–23:29 – Rise and impact of the Internet on creativity and taste
• 24:24–26:22 – YouTube, TikTok, and memes vs. depth in art
• 30:09–31:13 – The omnivore dilemma and flattening of cultural status
• 31:17–33:29 – Culture’s relationship to politics and nostalgia
• 33:37–35:04 – How marginal innovation (e.g., trap music) can change mainstream culture
• 35:04–36:35 – Agency, optimism, and the ongoing need for conscious cultural intervention

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Conclusion

"Is Culture Stuck?" offers a nuanced, engaging exploration of whether contemporary pop culture is truly stagnant or just suffering comparison with a unique 20th-century burst of innovation. Willa Paskin and W. David Marx deftly dissect the roles of technology, economics, gatekeeping, and shifting values in shaping creativity. While the prognosis isn’t gleeful, the episode ultimately proposes individual curiosity, critical taste-making, and the cultivation of small, passionate communities as ways to re-inject vitality into the cultural ecosystem.

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Transcript

[Willa Paskin]

Mom, I saw Dylan's dad make dinner like actually cook and it was straight fire. He said it was Blue Apron assemble and bake. All the ingredients showed up pre chopped and he just laid it out on a baking sheet and no cap. Dinner was on the table in like 25 minutes. Apparently it's chef design and it has like over 40 grams of protein. That's a lot, right? So maybe we try it. Just saying. You can be the next Dylan's dad. Blue Apron get 50% off your first two orders plus free shipping with code. Listen 50 terms and conditions apply. Visit blue apron.com terms for more the new year brings new health goals and wealth goals Protecting your identity is an important step. Your info is in endless places that could expose you to identity theft leading to lost funds. LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Resolve to make identity, health and wealth part of your New Year's goals. With Lifelock, save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com Specialoffer terms apply foreign. Thing happened to me a couple of months ago. I was in the car with one of my children. She's 10 years old and she started out of the blue, not off the radio or anything, singing a song that I did not know she knew.

[W. David Marx]

My milkshake brings all the boys to.

[Willa Paskin]

The yard and they're like, this is better than yours. Damn right. My daughter was not born when this song, Milkshake by Kelis was first released in 2003 and became an inescapable top 10 hit. But of course I was. So I started to sing along. And when I started to sing, my daughter looked at me in true surprise. She could not believe that I knew this song. The song that as far as she was concerned, was a new song for young people, not an old song for old people like her mother. Turns out she knew milkshake because it had been used in a gap at being danced to by the girl group Cat's Eye. The commercial spiked streams of the song and kicked off a viral dance challenge that had reached fifth graders across the world. I've thought about this moment frequently since it happened. I listened to a lot of my parents music as a kid and I liked a lot of it. But I don't think I once mistook their music for my music, for contemporary music, for music for young people. And that's because for much of the 20th century, every generation's music was very obviously different than what came before. In 1947. The kids and adults alike were listening to this.

[W. David Marx]

When I go to sleep I never count sheep I count all the charms about Linda.

[Willa Paskin]

But by 1967, when those kids had grown up, their kids were listening to this.

[W. David Marx]

Good sense, innocence, gripple of mankind dead kings of many things I can confine.

[Willa Paskin]

And then the next set of kids in 1977, to this. And by 1987, it was this. And by 1990 97, it was this. Every era was radically different from what preceded it. And this isn't just about music, movies, art, clothes. It all changed. And then we crossed over into the 21st century and something happened. There have, of course, been trends and subgenres over the past 25 years, to say nothing of massive technological transformations. But culture itself, it hasn't been so different. And a song from 2003 about metaphorical milkshakes could sound brand new to my daughter. There are lots of people wringing their hands about this, saying something has gone wrong, a sameness has descended. New movies are based on old intellectual property characters and stories from decades past that are still popular. TV shows are also based on old ip or there's some barely new spin in on true crime or reality competition or a doctor show. Fashion trends are cycling so fast, anything could be in. And then there is music. The artists commanding the most money are rockers from past decades licensing their back catalogs. And if you want a hit, you don't have to dig deep to find some perfect sample. You can just take the hook of a pre existing hit that's not even that old. That's how 2006's young folks were by Peter, Bjorn and John became this from the soundtrack of the sequel Top Maverick. It's like we're in a kind of forever present where nothing feels quite new, but nothing feels quite dated either. What's going on? This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. It's a weird time for culture. There's more of it than ever before. It's more accessible than ever before, but I find myself often just reaching for that which is available, whatever's on my phone or my Spotify or Netflix. This is stuff that I sometimes find funny and interesting and comforting, but I just as often find mindless and forgettable or worse. It's in this context that I have been fascinated by an ongoing debate about whether our culture has grown stagnant. The argument is that culture used to move and change and challenge us at a rate that it has just ceased to, but now it's basically playing the same song over and over again. It's an argument that suggests, in other words, that not challenging oneself, artistically speaking, might not just be a personal failing of mine, but a structural and collective one. And I wanted to talk this argument through. So today on Decoder Ring, is culture stuck? The new year brings new health goals and wealth goals. Protecting your identity is an important step. Your info is in endless places that could expose you to identity theft leading to lost funds. LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Resolve to make identity, health and wealth part of your New year's goals. With LifeLock, save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com SpecialOffer Terms apply. So, like I said, I've been paying a lot of attention to this debate about whether culture is spinning its wheels. And there is one writer in particular who thinks, yeah, pretty much the whole.

[W. David Marx]

Point of art used to be to challenge the way you see the world so much that it expands the way you can see and value the world.

[Willa Paskin]

The author and culture critic W. David Marx believes something has gone awry.

[W. David Marx]

And so when you look at can I be entertained on a daily basis through what I see on social media memes, maybe a good TV show once in a while, no question at all. The 21st century delivers. But is our capacity for enjoyment expanding? Are we seeing the world in different ways? Are we being given a sense of wonder from culture the way that we used to?

[Willa Paskin]

David thinks no. At the end of last year, he published a book called Blank Space that makes the argument that there is a blank space in the 21st century where cultural innovation should be. I don't agree with David about everything, but I find his thinking productively polemical. I love a strong opinion, and I wanted to talk through his and what he sees happening with culture, why and what we might do about it. I just want to start by defining our terms here. We're all coming off the sort of a year end list frenzy when you were kind of confronted with how much culture there is, that's good. So when you say that the 21st century is for culture, what on earth are you talking about?

[W. David Marx]

Yeah, I mean, so if you think about culture in its broadest sense of just the way we live, obviously the way we live has changed and there's a lot of interesting things going on. If you look at it in sheer pop cultural terms, are there interesting things going on in pop culture? No question at all. And so to say that culture stagnating is more of a point about our expectations for cultural change and the rate of cultural change and the depth of cultural change. When you go back and look at the 60s and 70s and 80s, you can chart the difference between. Between these eras by the way people dress and the way that songs sound and the way that films look. And so you get this sense that the culture is just creating and adding to the canon, that we have this canon of amazing cultural experiences and it's constantly adding to it. So when you get to the 21st century, the question is culture changing? Of course it's changing, but it's changing at a rate and a depth that feels disappointing to a lot of people. And we're spending a lot of our time going back to the works and in the styles of those previous decades because they feel actually more authentic and more valuable than the work that's being created now. And so when you start repeating yourselves, you start worrying about, are humans okay? Have we kind of maxed out everything we can do?

[Willa Paskin]

Like, what is a good example of how it used to work?

[W. David Marx]

The Beatles are the most canonical example and maybe the most obvious. If you look at the Beatles career, they start in the early 60s doing a rip off of American RB music. And then within a couple years, they had added in all these new influences and by Sergeant Peppers in 1967. So, you know, basically five years after their major debut, they are making a wild, psychedelic concept album that brings in references to Music hall and 1920s Brass, experimental tape loops, all these different things, and bringing it together and trying to maximize what an album could be. And then immediately, because they were ripped off so much, went then to roots music. And that all happened in this tiny, tiny span of time. And so if you look at the music charts, you'll notice that every stylistic convention follows from what the Beatles are doing. And so everything kind of sounds different. And then also if you just look at the 70s or 80s, the 80s feels nothing like the 70s. The late 80s feels nothing like the early 80s. So those time periods just have their own sound and feel in a way that the 21st century. I think by the 2010s, everyone started noticing things are just not changing at the same rate.

[Willa Paskin]

So the title of your book is Blank Space, which is both a reference to, of course, this sort of like, blank space in the culture, but it is also, cheekily, a very popular Taylor Swift song. I've got a blank space, baby and I'll write your name. I mean, how do you see her figuring into sort of all the themes and stuff we've been talking about.

[W. David Marx]

I think Taylor Swift is representative of this in that she is very, very popular now. She's maybe the most important American musical artist. If you go back to the late 2000s, she was one of the most important artists. And she has maintained that in a way that I think artists in the 20th century weren't able to. But more interestingly, I think Taylor Swift this year alone has had two books written about her, one of which is about her as a poetic genius, one is about her as a business genius. And they both define her genius as being able to create things that her audience wants, rather than, I think, what the old definition of genius used to be, which is to create something that the world's never seen, that needs translation. And it feels difficult, and people don't immediately understand it, but it spawns all this new activity that's trying to go and take those ideas and do new things with it. Taylor Swift is always at the end of an innovation cycle. She's always using sounds and chord progressions that other people have used and already succeeded with. And so if Pharrell does Happy and that's a hit, it might seem crazy, what I'm about to say. She does shake it off and takes the kind of same sounds.

[Willa Paskin]

I say I'm too late, got nothing in my brain.

[W. David Marx]

That's obviously been very successful for her. But I think it's also the strategy of a lot of cultural creators in the 21st century. And the strategy that really defines culture at the moment, not the way that we defined culture in the 20th century, was looking at people who were always doing new things.

[Willa Paskin]

Why do we have such a thing about fetishizing the 20th century? Like, what if the 20th century was the anomaly? What if, you know, we have this idea of progress and it's fake? And it was just. It happened for a while, and it's over now.

[W. David Marx]

You know, for many centuries, the idea was that there was a perfect way of doing things, and you really shouldn't change the culture, that no one is supposed to bend from it. And what really happened in the 20th century because of avant garde art, but then also things like subcultures and countercultures, there became a sense that youth culture and artists were sweeping in all these changes to the culture. There's been a lot of publicity lately, for one reason or another, about the attitudes of the younger generation, almost as if they are a race apart. And it appears that some of them.

[Willa Paskin]

Would like to be.

[W. David Marx]

And so you get this sense of 20th century culture where I'M going to find some new way to make art that's going to completely devalue the previous ways of making art. And it's going to expand what art can do. It's not simply that there's something new, but the new thing makes the old thing uncool. When Elvis and then the Beatles showed up with rock and roll, then jazz music was just out. Jazz was uncool. The Beatles didn't listen to jazz. They didn't reference jazz. Young people weren't listening and dancing to jazz anymore. Hip hop very much was that same model where you had a subcultural group of people who said, we don't like what's going on in culture. We're going to make our own culture from the margins of society. And these are the breaks.

[Willa Paskin]

Break it up, break it up, break it up.

[W. David Marx]

Immediately gets valued by downtown New York for being so kind of rebellious and outsiders. Then moves on to MTV spreads. Follow me into a solo get in the flow Every teenager around the United States suddenly thinks, wow, hip hop is so much cooler than rock. By the 90s, it really takes over youth aesthetics. And then you get to the 21st century, rock is really dead. And hip hop takes over as the dominant form. So your question of why do we care about so much in the 20th century is because our expectations of cultural change were set in this period, and it was exciting. All these things feel new, and they feel yours as young people. And so, again, that's our expectation, is that we have these new art forms that become a place for humans to show their potential and to expand on the human spirit.

[Willa Paskin]

Right. I mean, the thing is, though, that we don't always know right away. Right. Like, in a particular moment, there's always things. There have always been things that we don't recognize. And it only comes with time that we see how original, important they were. And conversely, there are always and have always been things that are extraordinarily popular, that don't age that well, that we basically, like, don't rate soon after they are popular. Like, I'm thinking in your book, you talk about Tony Orlando.

[W. David Marx]

Yes. Who I think had a number one hit and nobody listens to at all anymore. And you don't even hear reference very often.

[Willa Paskin]

What?

[W. David Marx]

High yellow rhythm Round the old world tree it's been three long years do you still want me? And then you contrast that with Kraftwerk, the German electronic group who were a minor group in the 1970s, but has become one of the most important musical artists of the 20th century. Because they more or Less bred. The thing that became electronic music. Culture is always a narrative that we're changing. And what is popular is not necessarily the most representative part of that time period. So when we think about the 70s, we don't think about Tony Orlando, even though that's the way people in the 70s probably thought about the 70s. And so some of the question about the 21st century is, is this just a narrative problem? Which is if we're saying culture is doomed because Smurfs2 is a hit movie.

[Willa Paskin]

Ray Bill is not paying attention to whatever the small movie that inspires people in 20 years is.

[W. David Marx]

Exactly. So what we really should be doing is over indexing the cultural invention that people are doing that will go on to be influential as the story of our times. And so some of what is going on is not just that the wrong things are popular. It's just that we're talking and we're building our cultural narrative around popular things rather than the things that are the most potentially innovative.

[Willa Paskin]

Although what you're saying is that this is a thing that unfolds through time. And like, from that moment, you wouldn't have been able to predict. Like, no one's gonna care about Tony Orlando. And lots of people are gonna think they have to listen to Kraft work. You know, like, you wouldn't have known that.

[W. David Marx]

We're like, you would know that. You would know that if you read music critics. Because music critics said Tony Orlando is beneath contempt. And what you should be listening to is what Brian Eno's doing with David Bowie. Because that's really important. Even if that sells no records.

[Willa Paskin]

When you're like, you would have known. It's like, who's you? Like, who are the people in the late 1970s that were like, shitting on Tony Orlando? And sure, Kraftwerk was cool. Cause they read music magazines. I think we have an idea in our mind of who that is. But like, was it. How many people Was it really?

[W. David Marx]

I would say it's the same group of people who listen to podcasts on Slate about culture and cultural dynamics.

[Willa Paskin]

So very small. A very small group of people.

[W. David Marx]

David, I'm talking to you right now. So the people who care about seeking out interesting culture or wanting to know more about it, or wanting to have cultural literacy. Those people think more deeply about culture. And so they are catered to by a group of critics who are supposed to be going out there and listening to things and not only evaluating it, but giving it context and explaining what's going on. And so there's this dialogue. And for A long time. That dialogue between the people who really cared about culture and. And the critics was the thing that created the narrative whether what they were interested in was popular or not.

[Willa Paskin]

That's how David says things used to work. So what does he think changed? And can we just blame the Internet that when we come back, As ever, when we're thinking about why something might have changed in the 21st century, there's an obvious culprit, the Internet. The Internet changed and disrupted so many things, including culture. And maybe we're still just digging out of that. We don't really like to sit with the fact that the Internet is actually still pretty new. And so I put that to David. Maybe we just need more time to build culture back up to something similarly complex. Maybe we just need some time to get used to this Internet world. Yeah. Like, we just might be in just, like, uncharted territory, which is maybe too soon to say did. You don't find that convincing, though.

[W. David Marx]

I would say that the advent of mass media and technology and industrial society in the early 20th century also was a lot of change very quickly and really disrupted the lives of people around the world. And looking at that, you had all these avant garde artists say, wow, technology is massively disrupting the way society works. We have to also have it disrupt art. And so you have cubism coming out of the theories of Einstein and theoretical physics, and then futurism is responding to industrial society. And then you have things like Dada and surrealism that are responding to Freudianism. And so you have these amigurd artists take that rapid, disorienting change and say, then art must be more disorienting. And the 21st century has been people saying, wow, the Internet is disorienting all of our lives. How can I make more money from this?

[Willa Paskin]

Right.

[W. David Marx]

Or art that appeals to the most people possible. So now that I have an audience that's not just 40 people at a club down the street, and it's 40 million potential people or 400 million. How do I make something that can connect to 400 million people rather than to 40 of my friends?

[Willa Paskin]

One of the things that I think is so interesting about now is that if you go back to, like, the 90s or the 2000s, if you had to predict what the Internet would have done, no one was like, it's gonna make us stagnant. Like, everyone was like, we're gonna have access to everything ever, and it's gonna make us so creative. Like, at the tip of our fingers will be this knowledge that Our forebears had to like, go to libraries for, you know, or like other countries. Like, we're just gonna all have it and everyone's gonna be able to do so much amazing stuff, right?

[W. David Marx]

And the potential of blogs and websites was that you could bypass traditional gatekeepers who would obviously say, well, that's too niche to write about. And so if you could suddenly use the Internet to allow everyone to publish and then everyone to access that, there would be this incredible flourishing of diverse opinions and diverse, different cultural forms. And I think that did happen. And that made the Internet very exciting in the early 21st century with hundreds.

[Willa Paskin]

Of thousands of registered users. There are blogs for relapsed Catholics, blogs to support the Midwest conservative journal, screensaver, blogs of kitchen faucets, and of course, Britney Spears. Not all blogs appeal to all bloggers. And that's the point. Instead of the bounty that we were promised, like creativity that seemed so clearly in the offing, something else has occurred. Like, what actually happened.

[W. David Marx]

One of the major changes, obviously was that everyone got the Internet and they got it through their phone. And the Internet started being for everyone instead of just this very closed off set of nerds. And they brought their own tastes and interests to these platforms. And so they things that were popular in real life became popular online. And so no longer is the dominant content niche content. The dominant content is mainstream content or kind of wannabe mainstream content. YouTube is the greatest example, I think, of this. YouTube promised that you could take a film and digitize it and show it to anyone around the world. What we're really doing is creating a stage for everyone, from the personal content to the professional content. And now everyone, you know, has their time in the spotlight. But then what kind of video content develops on YouTube and becomes popular? It is not small features and short films and avant garde things and indie things. It is people showing off their shopping.

[Willa Paskin]

We are in Walmart, gonna walk around and see what we can find today.

[W. David Marx]

It is cooking videos, it is makeup videos.

[Willa Paskin]

I prefer skin tint over foundation just because I like the lighter feel of it. And foundation's just now.

[W. David Marx]

All those are interesting genres and very helpful to people, but they're very different than the kind of artistic content that was created in the 90s under this idea of indie film. So the distribution and the tools we have democratized, but that did not lead to an explosion of more art.

[Willa Paskin]

I think in general you find like TikTok videos. You're like, I'm not sure this is, is like the best place to like make and express art. But it also strikes me that it is something really innovative and new that young people find cool. Like that the technology might be scratching some of that same itch that we would want art to scratch, even though it's not like a one to one comparison. But it's like, oh, the thing we're invested in is like this totally new way of communicating and this new way of expressing ourselves. And Even if each TikTok video doesn't rise to the level of some incredible album or film or whatever, it's still like for young people doing what it's supposed to be doing, which is like a language and a communication and a way of being. That's like way cooler than what the old people are up to.

[W. David Marx]

I think that is the best case for the way to think about cultural innovation in the 21st century, which is if you look at film and TV and music, those aren't the right areas to look at, right? That the best area to look at is what are kids making online? And I would say memes have been definitional and representative of 21st century culture. They're interesting the way that just people take a meme and apply it to all these different fields and make it political commentary and humor and all that. But I guess as you said, they don't have the depth of a novel or an album.

[Willa Paskin]

And give them time though, maybe it needs like to cook. You know, it's like in 50 years someone will be doing something good. It won't be TikTok anymore.

[W. David Marx]

You know, I think that's totally. There is potential there. And so the question is, okay, you have these new art forms, they at the moment do not have the kind of complexity and weirdness to them that people of different generations can revisit and take something new from every single time. There's just some art forms that have more potential for complexity and ambiguity. And at the moment, a short form video could. But because of the way that they're presented to us through this algorithm, it's very unlikely we're going to see something that is difficult. We're much more likely to see something that is easy to comprehend immediately. The technological platforms themselves are set up to serve you things that are immediately understandable in a way that culture in the 20th century was often. Here's something that you're not going to understand at all, but elites are telling you that you need to strive to understand it.

[Willa Paskin]

Reading between the lines, you're pro gatekeeper. I think I might be pro gatekeeper, but I feel like it's. You're not supposed to say that.

[W. David Marx]

You know, it's funny, because the Internet promised the destruction of gatekeeping. And I would say Even in the 90s, if you were interested in India or alternative culture, you also hated gatekeepers because you believed that the gatekeepers were the people preventing your favorite thing from being more popular. So I don't think there's ever been a time where people say, I love gatekeeping. There just is a time now where it's. If we have no gatekeepers at all.

[Willa Paskin]

Well, no, no, there is gatekeeping. It's just the platform itself. Like, the people directing you are the platforms, but they have totally different incentives and concerns than whoever was directing you, whoever the gatekeeper of the past was.

[W. David Marx]

Exactly. I think that that is a major value shift of the 21st century, which is that by making everything data and generally feeling that we want culture to be democratic and inclusive, that you start using the data to make decisions about value and say, well, if this is popular, something must be good about it. And so much of 90s culture was in direct opposition. I mean, it's called alternative culture because there's an alternative to what the mainstream was. And the mainstream was seen as terrible and bad. And we have to make our own things that will be relatively unpopular in order to do something good in the world and change the human mind or whatever it is.

[Willa Paskin]

Like, this, to me, is almost like the most black and white change, which is like the absolute disdain there was for popular culture, which in hindsight, seems wedded to all these much more, you know, like, homophobic and racist and unsavory, unacceptable things. But that, like, the point of view is like, if you were cool, you were like, what is on TV is, like, Family Ties. Like, it's bad.

[W. David Marx]

I'm an adult now. I got 18 years under this belt. I think there was a sense that the 90s was so cynical, and yet there seems to be something even more cynical about our era that we believe that the maximum thing that art could do is entertain the most people, that the only thing that good art can do is be a bop.

[Willa Paskin]

I think part of the reason I'm so interested in this is because I feel like two sides in myself about these questions, which is like, I love a bop.

[W. David Marx]

Yeah.

[Willa Paskin]

I love a TV show that, like, I'm like, what's gonna happen next? You know, Like, I love. So, like, I. When I got interested in all of culture because, like, I was obsessed with, like, 90210, I don't think, like, 90210 is, like, art. You know, but I loved it. I guess I feel in me both things so much. Like, I would like culture to be better and more challenging, more interesting, but also like on a day for day basis, like, not only am I not choosing some of that stuff, like, I kind of. Sometimes I like that other stuff, you know.

[W. David Marx]

So the metaphor that's been used since the 90s for this is this idea of omnivore culture. And that is a great way of living because you're appreciating everything that you are taking value from so many things. But we also have this, I think, democratic, inclusive instinct. If you are a liberal person, which is to say this low art, and I'm putting that in scare quotes, the low art appeals to the most people and brings them great joy. Why are we trying to take this joy away from them? And so I'm very, very sympathetic to that too. But if we flatten everything and say there is really no difference between high and low and no difference between art and entertainment, then you're obviously going to live in a world where the entertainment dominates the art. Because naturally most people do not want to have to slog through a 900 page experimental novel.

[Willa Paskin]

Right. So you're saying it's like, if there's not status to the 900 page novel, then the 900 page novel is really screwed. And we are in a situation where we basically are like, there's no difference. You can like what's easy, you can like what's hard. No one's going to like what's hard. So then everyone will just like what's easy.

[W. David Marx]

Yes.

[Willa Paskin]

So one of the things about this idea that we're in a period of relative cultural stagnation is that it seems to really map onto like kind of the overall revanchism of our moment. Like, basically there's something conservative inherently about, like, not making new culture. And we're in this moment where, like, there's a lot of looking back, like, not just in a retromania, like, I want different genes way, but a lot of like, oh, we want to go back to some fantasy America, like, is that part of what's happening? Just that people don't want to make what's new?

[W. David Marx]

So culture has this mechanism that whatever is seen as hegemonic and mainstream, it inspires transgression against it as what young people are aiming for. And so for a long time in the 20th century, what was hegemonic was this kind of patriarchal, conservative society. And so you had grunge bands being transgressive by Fighting against the conservative power structure. The future is now. Let's go register. The problem is, once this sense of political correctness had become dominant in the professional class, the power structure was seen as being liberal and inclusive. And so Vice magazine in the early 21st century in New York still had a kind of punk rock edge to it, but it had this kind of toxic masculinity at the heart of it, as their form of transgression. My name is Gavin McInnes. I am a conservative, liberal, neolibertarian, anarchist hippie.

[Willa Paskin]

I get into all sorts of shenanigans.

[W. David Marx]

But what we should see with Nazi tropes or use racist words, that's us being progressive in a sense. And so that really starts in the early 21st century. It's just continued since then. The issue with the rise of this kind of conservative transgressivism is that the content and the form of the art itself is not in any way progressive, and they don't care. And so the conservative side is not interested in cultural progress, and then the left side isn't interested in cultural progress either at this point, because the idea of some sort of elitist art is seen as an anti inclusive, anti democratic thing. And so I think both sides of the political debate are very uncomfortable with the avant garde philosophy that drove art in the 20th century.

[Willa Paskin]

That avant garde spirit is obviously important to you, I think, safe to say. So how do you. I mean, how do you think we get it back?

[W. David Marx]

So the question is not how do we completely change the cultural industry so the best things float to the top? It's simply to think about culture as an ecosystem in which there is mass culture and there are artists and there are people on the fringes, like the artists and subcultures and countercultures, who are pioneering new work that then goes on to innovate the entire system and move the entire system to new things. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. So in the case of Trap, Trap comes out of a relatively marginal scene in Atlanta for rap, changes the sound of rap, then changes the sound of country music and changes the sound of pop music and changes the sound of basically all music being created around the world. So that seems to be an example of where the whole ecosystem shifts. And what's interesting about that model is that that scene on the fringes doesn't have to be that big. It just has to be a small group of people who are really excited about something. And that's what I find, still a source of optimism, which is that if people who really care about Culture just come together and start saying, I believe that cultural invention is a social good. I'm going to use my time and my money to promote things that feel inventive over things that aren't inventive. That may be enough just to create the activity that ends up still being innovative across the entire system.

[Willa Paskin]

I think the reason that I find your work invigorating is because it's like, a reminder that even if we can't change the structural forces of the Internet, it doesn't take that many people to make something interesting happen for other people who care about something interesting. And kind of all that it takes for one personally, like, for me personally, is to, like, literally just not let Spotify pick the next song. You know, like, I just have to go read about some records that, like, someone who listens to a lot more music than me says are good, and then I can hear them and, like, just trying to break out of the box of, like, just doing the same old thing is kind of like, it may not be enough writ large, but, like, it's enough to radically enrich, like, my own cultural consumption. And, like, people are doing stuff. There's not being rewarded or platformed in the same way.

[W. David Marx]

My book has been described as thoroughly pessimistic, and I don't think that's true. I think my general feeling is we've been on autopilot for 25 years and not thinking about these issues and not thinking that cultural intervention is needed for cultural health. We just think that the Internet's going to solve all this or, you know, what's good rises to the top. We have a democratic system. It requires some sort of intervention. And a lot of the natural structures that let great things rise at the top, and some of them were bad in the sense of being elitist or snobbish or pretentious, but those mechanisms are gone. So we have to do something. We have to think about it, we have to care, and we have to want it. And if we want it, I think we can't change it. You know, John Lennon's John and Yoko's war is over if you want it. Always seems so hopelessly naive because it's not that simple. But I think for culture, maybe it is that simple. The culture is good if you want it.

[Willa Paskin]

Whether you agree with David about the state of culture writ large or not, it is always good to hold the good stuff close. Close. This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. If you aren't already a Slate plus member, please subscribe now from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or visit slate.com decodaring+ to get access. Wherever you listen, Slate+ members get access to our bonus episodes and they get to hear our show and every other Slate podcast without any ads. They are also meaningfully contributing and supporting to our work. This episode was produced by Max Friedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by me, Katie shepherd and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. We had editing help from Josh Levine and Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical director. W. David Marx's Blank Space A Cultural History of the 21st Century is, in addition to being about all the things we discussed, a lively and fun year by year history of the culture of this century. Go read it. I also really enjoy his sometimes exasperated and exacting Substack Culture and Owner's Manual. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at decodering slate.com or give us a call at 347-460-7281. We love hearing from you and we'll see you in two weeks.