Personal Stereo by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow;

Author:Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781501322822
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2019-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

A nonstop masturbational fantasy

Individualism is a roomy concept, embodying several kindred but distinct meanings. In addition to the ideas of self-reliance and limited government, another interpretation of the word involves self-indulgence.

While left-leaning critics such as Jack Straw perceived the Walkman as a symptom of a right-wing retreat from social responsibility, cultural conservatives were no fonder of it. To them, it represented individualism, too, but with different emphases. They were more concerned about the decline of the family and institutional affiliations, as well as what they saw as the related culture of instant gratification.

Over the course of the 1970s, the number of single-parent families in the United States increased by 69 percent, owing to more divorces, fewer remarriages, and a rise in the percentage of children born to unmarried mothers. In the wry words of a 1982 commentary on the American family in the Economist, “The nuclear family sometimes seems no more popular now than the nuclear bomb.” 43

The changing status of the family registered differently depending on your political outlook. Due to changes in divorce law and social mores, more women were empowered to leave abusive or unsatisfying marriages; men and women were freer to forgo marriage and family life altogether. To liberals, then—to proponents of women’s and gay rights in particular—the statistics in some ways reflected progress. And yet, the family, for all its restrictiveness and failings, had long been a source of stability and connection. So, to conservatives, its decline was worrisome—especially for children growing up with just one parent.

At the same time, human company was becoming less and less necessary for recreation. On August 1, 1981, MTV aired its first video: “Video Killed the Radio Star,” by the Buggles. Along with the popularity of video games, MTV was part of a trend of mediated, incessantly available entertainment for young people.

To conservatives, this trend seemed connected to familial disintegration. For one thing, the penchant for instant gratification seemed related to the decline of marriage and the rise of divorce: it was more tempting to sleep around than to commit, easier to bail on a relationship than stick it out. And without the traditional family structure—dad as breadwinner, mom as homemaker—“latchkey kids” were left with more time to themselves, and they had access to the technology to amuse themselves.

“Isolation seems to symbolize the members of this generation,” wrote a sociology professor in the New York Times. He told his students, “If I had to conjure up an image representing their generation, it would be someone playing a video game, someone wearing a Walkman. Alone. Detached. Having no connections with other people.” The students laughed but agreed. 44

In 1987, Allan Bloom, a professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, published The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students, which became a surprise bestseller and propelled its author into celebrity. Bloom was a lover of Shakespeare and Plato with expensive taste. In 1988, at a talk at Harvard, he famously greeted the crowd, “Fellow elitists,” to rapturous applause.

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