99 Red Balloons
This morning, during my almost daily trip to the coffee stand down the street, just before my morning walk, I heard the old Nena song, 99 Red Balloons, playing. I love that song, as does nearly everyone who was young and concious during the height of the Cold War.
These days, it's hard to imagine a pop song transcending the myriads of American youth cultures to hit home in such a poignant way. The pop music culture is so generally devoid of values beyond the superficial that most thoughtful artists shy away from producing pop music. These aren't the days of the Talking Heads, the Police, or even U2. Even if some amazing and intelligent pop artist came along, their music would be culturally shunned by those who have fled the empty fandom of pop music. But I digress (and too soon!).
During my walk, I got to thinking about 99 Red Balloons and what makes it so great. It's a sexy song, but there are a lot of sexy songs. You can dance to it, but there are a lot of songs you can dance to. What makes 99 Red Balloons so great is that it's sexy, you can dance to it, and it perfectly captures the insanity of life in a world in which nuclear annihilation isn't just scary -- it's a very real possibility.
Of course, there's a vast chasm of difference between scary and threatening. It's just as likely or more that all or nearly all the people I know will die as the result of an asteroid collision with the Earth as it is that you will die from a terrorist attack. But many more people are scared of terrorism. So much so that our last presidential election was almost surely decided by that fear.
But nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union nearly happened. Several times over. In the early 80s, a Soviet satellite malfunction resulted in blips on a Russian military computer screen representing multiple launches from a U.S. nuclear missile Silo. Fortunately for all of us, the acting colonel, Stan Petrov, believed that the blips were errors.
Now, it should be mentioned that tensions between the USSR and nearly everyone else in the world were high. The Soviets would do things like blast passenger planes out of the sky that accidentally flew into their airspace. It was also well known that prominent Western intellectual leaders really did suggest after WWII that Western forces should simply nuke Russia out of existence before they developed the bomb themselves. And the cultural divide between communism and free market philosophy was immense (if you've never seen a Russian immigrant break into tears when describing their move to the U.S., you've probably either never met a Russian immigrant who moved here during the Cold War, or you're too young to have had that conversation with such an adult from the 80s). Nuclear threats were common, both publicly and privately. The Petrov story is only one of several near-misses.
At the same time, Americans were enjoying a standard of living never dreamed of by any society or empire in the world. With the feminist revolution in full swing, many families enjoyed two incomes -- sometimes two professional incomes. Many American preteens and teenagers found themselves raising themselves -- latchkey kids -- in a wealthy, but frightening world.
I'll leave you to ponder the nihilistic psychological implications. If you can't, there's nothing to read here anyhow.
It takes years to sort through the effects of an important historic era. Art would not be so important were it otherwise. The art of an era that survives in its greatness is the art that cuts through the crap to express something important that simply hasn't been sorted out in a straight-forward way (let's not quibble with this pseudo-definition of great art).
So, I'm walking around this morning, pondering Nena's one great hit. The red balloon that shows up on the radar. The generals who don't make the Petrov decision. A modern society annihilated. Triggered by a red balloon.
And that's what teenagers danced to in the early 80s. Because that's what people do -- live life when nothing makes sense. Let it out, in the face of a mad world of adults who can't cooperate...to save their own lives. Or their childrens.
I know this is long, but I'm getting to the point. In our own minds, we perform an amazing shorthand of thoughts, and all these thoughts can happen in a few seconds. Unwinding them can take a world of words, and I'm still not even sure how to say what I'm about to say.
Here we are in a world in which terrorism is the new nuclear annihilation. But there's a big difference. Terrorism is almost nonexistent to us. We Americans aren't going to die because of terrorism. A scattered few, like drivers on the New Jersey Turnpike. But it's not something we need to worry about on a daily basis. But terrorism is somehow connected to things we really do and really should worry about. Terrorism has its own geopolitical conciousness. There are all the buzzword-like Orwellian fears like the spiraling police-state we're in. Our youth can be forced to go to strange wars. Our entire structure of laws is being rewritten to allow American troops to combat citizens (a whole generation of children is growing up not knowing how important to American heritage and culture that prohibition has been). We've seen chemical weapons used on Americans (children included) in the streets of Portland during a nonviolent protest.
And there is real fear that conflicts between Muslims and other cultures around the world could spin out of control. The consequences to the global economy would hit hard, even in America which is shielded by so much of the conflict. The spending and liabilities of our governments have soared past 80% of our GDP and are rising (the St. Louis Federal Reserve has already announced bankruptcy of the Federal Government). The great savior known as America could get lost in its very own real turmoil.
Then again, we might just find a way out of all this like we did the Cold War.
All that said, and there are 417 books worth of analysis I could include to make the point more clear (that we live in an age with survival consequences of our species), I get to the point:
Where's the song?! Where's the pop song that sums it all up that we can dance to? Can there be one? Or has our culture simply shattered that possibility? Can any piece of art transcend the differences between the points-of-views different youths are indoctrinated into in order to bring them together to dance?
Who could write that song?
These days, it's hard to imagine a pop song transcending the myriads of American youth cultures to hit home in such a poignant way. The pop music culture is so generally devoid of values beyond the superficial that most thoughtful artists shy away from producing pop music. These aren't the days of the Talking Heads, the Police, or even U2. Even if some amazing and intelligent pop artist came along, their music would be culturally shunned by those who have fled the empty fandom of pop music. But I digress (and too soon!).
During my walk, I got to thinking about 99 Red Balloons and what makes it so great. It's a sexy song, but there are a lot of sexy songs. You can dance to it, but there are a lot of songs you can dance to. What makes 99 Red Balloons so great is that it's sexy, you can dance to it, and it perfectly captures the insanity of life in a world in which nuclear annihilation isn't just scary -- it's a very real possibility.
Of course, there's a vast chasm of difference between scary and threatening. It's just as likely or more that all or nearly all the people I know will die as the result of an asteroid collision with the Earth as it is that you will die from a terrorist attack. But many more people are scared of terrorism. So much so that our last presidential election was almost surely decided by that fear.
But nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union nearly happened. Several times over. In the early 80s, a Soviet satellite malfunction resulted in blips on a Russian military computer screen representing multiple launches from a U.S. nuclear missile Silo. Fortunately for all of us, the acting colonel, Stan Petrov, believed that the blips were errors.
Now, it should be mentioned that tensions between the USSR and nearly everyone else in the world were high. The Soviets would do things like blast passenger planes out of the sky that accidentally flew into their airspace. It was also well known that prominent Western intellectual leaders really did suggest after WWII that Western forces should simply nuke Russia out of existence before they developed the bomb themselves. And the cultural divide between communism and free market philosophy was immense (if you've never seen a Russian immigrant break into tears when describing their move to the U.S., you've probably either never met a Russian immigrant who moved here during the Cold War, or you're too young to have had that conversation with such an adult from the 80s). Nuclear threats were common, both publicly and privately. The Petrov story is only one of several near-misses.
At the same time, Americans were enjoying a standard of living never dreamed of by any society or empire in the world. With the feminist revolution in full swing, many families enjoyed two incomes -- sometimes two professional incomes. Many American preteens and teenagers found themselves raising themselves -- latchkey kids -- in a wealthy, but frightening world.
I'll leave you to ponder the nihilistic psychological implications. If you can't, there's nothing to read here anyhow.
It takes years to sort through the effects of an important historic era. Art would not be so important were it otherwise. The art of an era that survives in its greatness is the art that cuts through the crap to express something important that simply hasn't been sorted out in a straight-forward way (let's not quibble with this pseudo-definition of great art).
So, I'm walking around this morning, pondering Nena's one great hit. The red balloon that shows up on the radar. The generals who don't make the Petrov decision. A modern society annihilated. Triggered by a red balloon.
And that's what teenagers danced to in the early 80s. Because that's what people do -- live life when nothing makes sense. Let it out, in the face of a mad world of adults who can't cooperate...to save their own lives. Or their childrens.
I know this is long, but I'm getting to the point. In our own minds, we perform an amazing shorthand of thoughts, and all these thoughts can happen in a few seconds. Unwinding them can take a world of words, and I'm still not even sure how to say what I'm about to say.
Here we are in a world in which terrorism is the new nuclear annihilation. But there's a big difference. Terrorism is almost nonexistent to us. We Americans aren't going to die because of terrorism. A scattered few, like drivers on the New Jersey Turnpike. But it's not something we need to worry about on a daily basis. But terrorism is somehow connected to things we really do and really should worry about. Terrorism has its own geopolitical conciousness. There are all the buzzword-like Orwellian fears like the spiraling police-state we're in. Our youth can be forced to go to strange wars. Our entire structure of laws is being rewritten to allow American troops to combat citizens (a whole generation of children is growing up not knowing how important to American heritage and culture that prohibition has been). We've seen chemical weapons used on Americans (children included) in the streets of Portland during a nonviolent protest.
And there is real fear that conflicts between Muslims and other cultures around the world could spin out of control. The consequences to the global economy would hit hard, even in America which is shielded by so much of the conflict. The spending and liabilities of our governments have soared past 80% of our GDP and are rising (the St. Louis Federal Reserve has already announced bankruptcy of the Federal Government). The great savior known as America could get lost in its very own real turmoil.
Then again, we might just find a way out of all this like we did the Cold War.
All that said, and there are 417 books worth of analysis I could include to make the point more clear (that we live in an age with survival consequences of our species), I get to the point:
Where's the song?! Where's the pop song that sums it all up that we can dance to? Can there be one? Or has our culture simply shattered that possibility? Can any piece of art transcend the differences between the points-of-views different youths are indoctrinated into in order to bring them together to dance?
Who could write that song?