Having put up that quote in favour of your argument, however, I will now argue that it is, in fact, bunk.

First of all, I think there’s a strange definition of “youth” at play here, since the average age of video game players is 29. There was a time when that might be construed as adult culture…

But, in any case, if there is X amount of space in a (young) person’s mind for certain types of entertainments/art, video games surely take it from the space previously devoted to movies and television. An 2004 Entertainment Software Association survey confirms this. The survey “found that 52% of people who have increased their game-play time have done so at the expense of watching TV, while 47% go to the movies less in favor of playing games,” according to a USA Today article. (The box office slump — specifically in big video-game-esque blockbusters — could be seen as an effect of this.)

As far as I’m concerned, music plays a bigger role in the “youth culture” — if there is such a thing — now than it did a decade ago, with more music easily available than ever before and harddrives and iPods and mySpace chock full of it. Thanks to media fragmentation and the slow death of programmed media, however, music will never seem as central as it did in the days of the Beatles, when everybody loved the same band.

Anyway, music is always a part of video games (and movies and television shows) in a way video games could never be a part of music. They’re friends, not enemies, and music has the upper hand.

Scott’s post reminds me of a thesis I started kicking around recently about how pre/post/punk culture wasn’t really just a musical thing but a big pile of “trash aesthetic” hobbyism crashing together - TV, B-movies, cars, science fiction, conspiracy theory, comix, etc. - which you could argue was already a divorce from 1960s music-central youth culture: Datapanik in the Year Zero.

My next thought belongs in a blog post rather than comments chatter.

I would argue, Carl, with the idea that music–or any other one thing in particular, incl. video games–has even been “central” to youth culture for at least a few decades. It’s a battlefield of competing technologies and ideas and temptations out there, with mere shifting of priorities and moments (of various artifacts) rather than full-on cultural takeover by any one thing. Music people (people who define themselves largely by the music they listen to–or don’t listen to)–myself included–often forget that the culture *doesn’t* revolve around their great passion (though there are milestone points of public-private convergence, for sure). (The people who forget or ignore this, by the way, often turn out to be the best critics, because they truly believe the world needs to know!) This is not to suggest that music isn’t one of the Big Things, but rather, that it’s not, and hasn’t been for a while, the Biggest Thing–culturally speaking. MTV I think is kind of symbolic of this (”music television” = hardly any shows at all about music) (glib example, granted), but the fragmentation occurred well before that. So I guess I don’t see video games as “usurping” anything, really, just budding in along with dozens of other things for space and basking in the glow of some here-and-now spotlight.

A key book on the subject, if you’re interested: R. Meltzer’s *Gulcher*, the 1972 followup to his (1968) *Aesthetics of Rock*. In the former, he essentially claims that rock and roll contained the universe–that everything was (ultimately) subsumed into rock and roll (speaking of the Rat Pack, he has a great bit in there about how it was impossible in ‘68 or whatever to NOT hear Sinatra–a well known rock hater–as “rock and roll”). In *Gulcher*, rock and roll exists on equal footing with bottle cap collecting, boxing, comics, and much else.

Sorry if I’m straying way off topic here as well.

>> I do think that games take up a lot of the mental space music (and movies etc.) might once have occupied.

This “feels” true (speaking as a late-30s non-gamer myself), but it seems hard to quantify or support. Do “kids today” REALLY care less about music, or expect different things from it, even if they are more into video games than kids used to be?

It’s logical to assume that there’s X amount of mental space designated for “pop culture,” but does it really work like that? Maybe you could argue that there are only X dollars available for cultural consumption, and therefore that sales stats would tell us something, but in the post-Napster era I’m not even sure that’s true.

>> I’m not talking about hardcore gamers or hardcore music fans - I’m talking about the average fan, the vast majority of the under-30 population,

This also seems amorphous to me. What defines an “average fan”? When I was 20 the “average music fans,” the vast majority of the student population, were the people who hit the student pub every weekend to listen to acoustic covers of Space Oddity and Comfortably Numb. To me, it seems more interesting & worthwhile to talk about what music means to the people who take it most seriously.

I fear I’m sounding cranky, and I don’t mean to. Like I said, probably just knee-jerk skepticism. But I guess I need some convincing that exposure to one cultural form (video games) would necessarily have any effect on one’s interaction with another (music).

And about the whole comic book thing vis a vis relatability, points of entry, etc…. Talk to any comic book geek (at least of a 1970s and early 1980s vintage — I haven’t kept up with superhero comics since then and can’t speak to what they’re like now) and they’ll tell you that Marvel comics were vastly superior to and more sophisticated than DC comics. This is because the DC characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) were usually just blank slates, essentially do-gooder videogame avatars, whereas the genius of Marvel was to saddle their characters (Spider-Man, X-Men, Daredevil, etc.) with real-world problems, neuroses, and vanities.

I’m not a fan of emo or anything, but it does make for better narrative, I guess. And I suppose I’m not a fan of emo because I don’t look to music for narrative at all — I’d be curious as to whether others do.

The other genius of Marvel (and now I’m totally getting off-topic) was in realizing that if a 16-year-old gets bitten by a radioactive spider, develops weird powers, and decides to be a superhero, he’s not going to call himself “Spider-Boy,” he’s going to call himself “Spider-MAN.” All the teenage DC characters had names like “Lightning Lad” or “Elemental Boy” or whatever. But what teenager in ther world would choose to self-identify as a child?

Where that fits into all this, I have no idea. Probably nowhere. Sorry about that.

When it comes to Chuck D., obviously he’s not supposed to be similar to the listener - he’s supposed to be someone to look up to. He’s the leader, you’re the follower. But there’s plenty of entry points for identification there - P.E. being all about ripping the masks off hypocritical society, rebelling against authority, kicking out the jams and taking back what’s yours. Time-honoured teenage subjects - rebel without a cause, plus cause - with a late-eighties identity-politics twist.

But I don’t want to go too far arguing music has changed in this way, as the bigger point was about the effect of the diminished interest in music in favour of games. What Owen’s talking about is the more intriguing counterargument. As a non-gamer it’s difficult for me to judge, but I’m curious what others think.

I don’t buy the notion that gamers aren’t people who would have been into music in the past. I’m not talking about hardcore gamers or hardcore music fans - I’m talking about the average fan, the vast majority of the under-30 population, and I do think that games take up a lot of the mental space music (and movies etc.) might once have occupied. (And a lot of the Internet diversions that aren’t games have, I think, deep-structural similarities to games.)

I’m not claiming games are a scourge, I just think that if you acknowledge them as a dominant force, it’s worth talking about how they alter the climate - always the consequence of taking culture seriously.

It is tempting to examine games based on plot and larger social observations; this is the trap that many censorship groups fall into. Your suggestion that gaming is “teenagers inhabiting avatars” is apt, but there is much more to gaming than the competition and the super-self.

For example, the game-as-art possibilities are enormous. Gaming stimulates the mind in ways other mediums do not, and the artistry is deeper than the artifice of “what the game is about”. Each genre of gaming has a specific language, a set of traditions that a game can either observe, improve upon or entirely ignore… exactly like music harmony.

And the game-as-art view extends to game criticism as well. You should read the top 100 games at http://www.ign.com. (IGN is the Pitchfork of videogames… it has lofty journalistic aspirations, and similarly receives heavy criticism and enormous readership.)

The art community tends not to pay any attention until the game becomes “meta-”. Cory Archangel (and others) are brilliant conceptualists in their own right, but have little or nothing to do with actual gaming theory.

Also, Carl, you owe me a phone call.

But here’s a thought - is 50 really more distant from the aspirations and feelings of his audience, white and black, than Chuck D? Did Chuck D spit rhymes about teen love? I would posit that 50’s a lot closer than Chuck ever was. Chuck D was a role model, an articulate man with a well-organized mind and a focus to his anger - does this sound like someone a teenager is going to closely identify with? 50 is smooth and smug and triumphalistic - more like a comic book character. He reflects what kids want to be; Chuck D reflects what they should be. (And Flav reflects more what they actually are - goofy and messed up and more clownish than cool.)

[More] people are listening to [more] music which is not expressive of their own inner emotional lives.

If so…

This bugs me too, but I also react against it (”I love ‘Sk8er Boi’! wtf is wrong with that!”). After evaluating my feelings I kinda suspect that my initial reponse is a lingering rockism, and nothing much more. These are different kind of pleasures [music that makes you dance, music that resonates with your emotional life, music that makes you feel a disconnected other-person's joy/sorrow/anger/success, &c], and it’s not that one is better than the other (or even that it’s okay for people to enjoy one and not the other), just that each have their place. “Post-expressive” music does seem to be booming, but I think my reaction against it is similar to my reaction against house music — and neither seems justified except as mere preference.

btw, post redesign (?), the comment ‘preview’ page looks funny.

oh and dubious congratulations on being nominated for ‘Best Canadian Media Blog’

http://cba.myblahg.com/

Seriously, great post.

I’m with you on the Rat Pack. And on the writer’s job of providing the listener with an entry point, either emotional or social-experiential; either “I love you / I’m heartbroken,” or, “school is dull, work is boring” — all those great Chuck Berry songs. (Really great.) In either case, there’s an emotional angle. The statement “Work is dull” reflects a definite emotional state.

And I’m all for emotional content.

As for whether the kids are alright — I left videogames behind after Space Invaders, but I dug Space Invaders (and, less so, Pong); Space Invaders preferable at least in part because it was something to do with my buds at the 7/11, not something to do with my family on the TV. And I always thought the alarmism about video games was funny, because most of the complaints against it could have been made about novels. “Cuts you off from real life, fantasy world, waste of time, off in your own head.” I always liked to imagine illiterate parents of the Gutenberg generation grumpificating about this “reading” fad. “Johnny spends all his time indoors, nose in a book. How unhealthy!”

(Not to equate literacy with videogames; just in this amusing possible parallel. There’s more to reading than escapism. Some people argue that games sharpen analytical and decision-making skills, with the demands for quick thinking and the multiple choices at any moment. Possibly. Wasn’t really there with Space Invaders.)

Dawn of post-expressive popular music: the Beatles. Not all their stuff, but a substantial percentage. From “I thought that you would realize that if I ran away from you that you would want me to, but I got a big surprise,” to, “the movement you need is on your shoulder,” they had a lot of lyrics that provided no emotional entry point, at least to this Beatle-loving listener. (Lovely songs both, but lyrics shmyrics.) I don’t post a blanket complaint about non-denotative lyrics; I love “I am the walrus,” which is rich with emotional entryways. My complaint is against casual, throw-away, sloppy almost-sense. (Same complaint against Paul Simon. No way for me to imagine that anybody has a strong feeling about Kodachrome or Me & Julio, apart from the nice music.)

Sorry to ramble — lots in there, Mr. Z. Thanks.