Slate's "The New Classics" Poll

Roger Federer, I've seen him. And The Wire. I know that Black Eyed Peas song. And that's about it.

what a bizarre list

x-post You've probably heard of the iPod.

LOL, yes, overlooked that one!

Wallaloadacodswallop

kinda get a "Album of Year: Your Hard Drive" vibe from this list

The guy who picked the Star Wars kid video doesn't even bother to try to explain why it will endure for the ages.

The High Line and Brooklyn Bridge Park are nice picks, although I don't know if I see them becoming iconic outside NYC the way other city landmarks are -- too hard to reduce to a simple image. But there is something that feels very right now about them.

got no idea what will survive our era - neither does slate - but xtian marclay's 'the clock' is my favorite artifact on that list

why would bob dylan's memoir of the 20th century be seen as an 'essential document' of the 21st?

without getting too omg regeneration in detroit, yeah you hope that they might come to be significant, might portend other stuff in the same mould. does anyone have any other suggestions for things that might actually outlast & become cultural touchstones, things that aren't the mac/pc commercials.
xp

i feel like the clock is a weird pick, bc suggesting that it's a surviving relic sorta seems to assume that it would be a key representation of like reappropriation & post-modern repurposing of existing material to explore whatever present concerns we had. & that seems a lot to pin on it, more than on say richard prince or whoever.

i find marclay's work in general more sensual and immersive than prince's post-modern commentary

Federer and "I Gotta Feeling" the only two I can unreservedly get behind. Voted Federer.

The most enduring books, shows, movies, and ideas since 2000

^ which one of these is Federer?

i find marclay's work in general more sensual and immersive than prince's post-modern commentary

― chief rocker frankie crocker (m coleman), Tuesday, 8 November 2011 11:49 (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh sure. i'm just saying who gets to be a figurehead for it (fuck knows if it's prince, i'm not great w/art history), that i can't see specifically why the clock & why marclay would be the ambassadors for it. i love marclay, but don't know what it is about the piece that would epitomise something generational.

think federer is filed under religious experience/ideas

Can't play tennis against an idea iirc

xxp

totally agree. this whole list is random, the internet equivalent of that print magazine space-filler the "what's hot/what's not" list

the Federer name will persist long after we forget how to spell Novak Djokovic. Nadal and Djokovic are great. Federer is a paragon.

Hmmmmmm

Federer = Thesis
Nadal = Antithesis
Djokovic = Synthesis

Maybe if he'd done a Borg and retired at the top, a paragon looks less like a paragon if he keeps getting beat

it's an interesting question though. i think i tend to think about it more w/things that are slept on that will be prized later (i always think the howling hex will be a kinda 13th floor elevators thing, one day, feted after the fact) rather than things that endure and define.

The Wire is the one that I already think of as being a defining document of our time

but maybe it is only the murder one of 2021

the Federer name will persist long after we forget how to spell Novak Djokovic

only a moron who could never spell Novak Djokovic in the first place would say this

Federer seems a strange one to pick. If you're looking for an iconic sportsman then Beckham would be a better fit,in the way that celebrity, commerce, fashion and sport intesect. No doubt Federer's a greater sportsman, but he doesn't have the cultural impact that Becks has.

Beckham doesn't have a DFW article on him

I thought Federer was a NASCAR driver.

Yeah, it's America, just be thankful it's not some basketball or baseball player

Beckham doesn't have a DFW article on him

― Number None, Tuesday, 8 November 2011 12:15 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i was kinda referencing this upthread, but, not knowing anything about federer, is this maybe kinda just a shortcut in diagnosing some kind of cultural cachet? i can see the argument for beckham, & don't know whether you'd just have the option to be like 'oh well of course there's the essay' to make that argument for RF.

FWIW Beckham wouldn't come anywhere near a list of the greatest football players ever whereas Federer would be at or near the top of most people's tennis lists

beckham has never won the biggest prize in his sport

(which is why team sports suck/are barely proper sports)

I know you hate football lex but that has no relevance to Beckham's status. He's just not that good

I've had more enjoyment looking at women in UGGs than any of these.

The Wire is a close second, but part of the reason that I loved it so much in the early 2000s was homesickness and nostalgia, and I recently realized that now that I'm back in Maryland, long streetscapes of boarded-up rowhouses just doesn't tug at the old heartstrings anymore.

You could make a good argument for including Leo Messi actually (or his Barcelona team). It's quite likely he'll go on to be the greatest player ever.

I know four of these. Love "Gotta Feeling" and only a (very) casual tennis fan, but I'm enough of a sports fan in general to call it a tie at the top. Then Chronicles, which was puzzling. Then, well behind, Mulholland Drive. Quite a random, silly list.

I think I was the only person in the world who thought the Wire was a snooze. I tried, I really did. I got about 9 episodes into the first series but it requires so much attention, not to mention concentration, for me to even understand who everyone is and what's going on. If I looked away for a moment it would descend into confusion and impenetrable accents. Plus it's SLOW. Episodes seem to last an hour - I don't have that kidn of time! I think what happened was the doorbell rang halfway through an episode, I got distracted, thought about winding to the place I got cut off and just thought pfffff...

I get that this is probably a problem with me and the way I understand screen narratives, but is it worth me persevering? I know a lot of people say it really starts picking up around the second or third series...?

Mulholland Drive feels like a 90s flick to me. I love it though.

I mean, that's kind of long and slow and difficult to understand. But I don't really get along with shows where everyone seems to be called a variation on "McCoffee" and speaks without moving their mouth.

I've accepted that I'm in a very small minority that doesn't like Mulholland Drive.

I don't think persevering with The Wire would be likely to change your opinion dog latin. I mean it gets better but it's still the same show

and the second season introduces a whole new cast of characters to be confused by!

I like this article (note: article, not list). An almost unanswerable question answered in interesting, sometimes unpredictable ways. To call it random or silly is to miss the point as badly as all the commenters going "Where's Pixar/Harry Potter/Cloud Atlas/whatever?" It's an invitation to think about the process by which things become era-defining classics and how hard it is to make that call when you're still inside that era. The Wire, Federer and the iPod seem pretty unassailable to me but I enjoy the more whimsical choices just as much. (Admittedly they vary in quality: I like Chronicles but don't think the case is persuasive; I don't like I Gotta Feeling but I love the argument.) Seems crazy to complain about critics having opinions instead of just being humble consensus-harvesters. Every time I'm involved in pulling together a list there's the same complaint and I give the same defence: it's not written on tablets of stone, this isn't the Library of Congress, it's just an entertaining way to open up a debate.

it would be nice to hear / it would be interesting to compile analogues/antecedents for these - like i think 'classics' is maybe a lil underdefined, & it's easier to understand i gotta feeling if we're like "it's the twenty first century's scatman" or w/e

They forgot about Rebecca Black amirite

I don't have any objection to the idea--it has the same odds-and-ends feel as Marcus's "Real Life" column--I just think the choices are random to the point of being meaningless. You're right, it's hard to do from inside the moment, and I just glanced at the list without reading the accompanying article. Lists invite carping; I'm sure we've all been on both ends of that, it's just part of the exercise.

http://stuffflypeoplelike.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/uggs-shorts-232x300.jpg

uggs define this era in the worst possible way

There are individual prizes in football anyway, world player of the year etc. If Beckham was good enough he would have won them. He wasn't, so he didn't

but if his club teammates weren't good enough he may never have got those. it's so wrong that in any proper sport, which should be an expression of pure human talent and ability, you should be dependent on teammates to win things. in individual sports it's on you and only you and that is the way it should be.

― all i see is angels in my eyes (lex pretend), Tuesday, November 8, 2011 6:26 PM (8 seconds ago) Bookmark

Au contraire. You can turn this around and say that it's an even higher achievement to shine as a good player with 10 other people around you who aren't that good.

If only Slate would've realised this article would lead to Lex ranting against team-sport again ;_;

But he married a pop star, Federer only married (eventually!) another tennis player

"pure human talent and ability" are expressed in team sports thru players' ability to work with their team-mates in a way that looks psychic at its best, individual sports don't have that element.

there are very few truly great players that don't end up on great teams (and end up winning things) anyway. The cream rises to the top

there's a reductive element to your argument lex that implies that we can judge who is the "best" in any sport purely on a table of medals won, and that doesn't seem to bear true in any sport other than athletics maybe. almost every sport, individual or team, has an aesthetic element which means that sometimes the "purest" or most beautiful player won't be the most successful.

Exactly, I mean what's Paddy McCourt ever won?

The FAI Cup, thank you very much

almost every sport, individual or team, has an aesthetic element which means that sometimes the "purest" or most beautiful player won't be the most successful.

don't i know it with my stupid favourite tennis players ;_;

but no, as much as i love watching the "clever" and "tactical" players slice and dice the bashers, sports is ultimately about winning and only winning. as much pleasure as simply watching anastasia myskina play was, by far the best moment in her career as a fan was when she actually WON the french open.

Then she got knocked up by an ice hockey player ;_;

oh cool we're talking about soccer

Then she got knocked up by an ice hockey player ;_;

that was the first one, she's now pregnant with her THIRD BOY, but i think the father of the 2nd and 3rd kids is a russian ambassador's son

Crikey!

this article does that awful thing multiple times when they basically say "whether or not you like this thing... it is objectively good and important," and that's supposed to like preemptively dissuade any disagreement

also, people who were around for them: were pop culture publications in the 60s, 70s, 80s ever so obsessed with determining their modern canons or painfully struggling to find out how their era will be remembered?

they didn't have the internet back then

Mulholland Drive is the only entry worth noting here

I am still lolling at "Clearview typeface" tbh

some of this stuff (star wars kid, bob dylan chronicles, i'm a mac/pc commercials...) hasn't even survived until 2011, let alone into the future

Yeah, but I think theres a difference between "no longer being produced" and "no longer being remembered". I have a strong feeling that if you started talking TV ad campaigns with your average American, the Mac/PC ads would come up in short order.

People have pretty much forgotten the Star Wars kid though, yeah. Dylan's Chronicles will be huge all over again whenever (if?) the second volume comes out.

I understand not caring about tennis but pooh-poohing Federer is kind of insane.

i think mac/pc has already passed out of the zeitgeist. like, yes, if you brainstorm some memorable commercial campaigns that'll come up (probably alongside the old spice guy, dos equis guy, geico cavemen, whatever) and that'll be less and less true until like ten years from now the only place it'll be remembered will be on the question "this dispute was personified by Justin Long and John Hodgman in a widespread advertising campaign" for Trivial Pursuit 2000s.

The "Where's the Beef?" ads are still remembered, but they are far from "classic."

... if "Where's the Beef?" ads aren't "classic", what are they?

yeah 30 second advertisements in general are firmly middlebrow enough that anything that popular = classic

I agree that most of this is bullshit, but I think a good q is 'what *should* be on this list?' what things are closest to being 'inarguable' classics?

slate is so worthless

imo like twenty things from a decade are really "classic" so Wendy's ads don't cut it. "You're a Redneck if..." jokes would also be classic.

voted Leo Messi.

Lex, Beckham won the Premier League and Champion's league with Man Utd. The Champion's League is the highest prize in club football. He most certainly did not go unrewarded.

― Number None, Tuesday, 8 November 2011 17:23 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he also won La Liga.

also isn't Star Wars kid from like 5 years before youtube existed?

why is there a font on this list

Looks like Slate is doing their own poll on this, with the iPod and the Wire way ahead of everything else.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2011/11/07/the_slate_new_classics_which_will_stand_the_test_of_time_.html

he also won La Liga.

what on earth is la liga? is it a wind?

i look askance at machines like the ipod being classed alongside works of art. i hate the way people seem so keen to worship at apple's corporate altar. it's a fucking tool, you may as well deify your fucking spade

Devices kinda defy the whole "stand the test of time" criteria since they will inevitably be replaced by some other thing and cast aside. Perhaps people will be listening to "I Gotta Feeling" 100 years from now, but it won't be on an iPod.

is it a wind?

Excellent

Unless I'm misreading it then the list isn't about what's the best from the past 10 years, I don't think even the most rabid BEPs fan would say that 'I Gotta Feeling' is the best piece of music so far this century, but what will be used as a shorthand for future generations to identify this time. In that respect a 'tool' can be as much a paradigm of its time as a piece of music or work of literature. Ipod seems pretty unassailable in that respect, as much as a Model T-Ford was in the 1910s, a transistor radio in the 60s or a Walkman in the 80s.

Simon Cowell to poll.

iPod to win in a walk.

lol @ everyone huffpuffing angrily abt uggs upthread

They offend my delicate aesthetic sensibilities on a daily basis.

ie they massively turn you on but you're too square to admit it I CAN SEE THROUGH THIS PROTESTETH-TOO-MUCH CHARADE

itt ppl want to bone some boots

hiya, all. as the guy who contributed the Taborn item to the discussion, I'd be curious to see more folks here (aside from Eazy, upthread) engage with the second one of the article's two musical entries. I don't mean to suggest that a jazz album is going to summarize our era all of a sudden; as Dana noted in her mulholland dr. bit, that monocultural form of era-definition is more or less dead anyway.

but I do think that, as long as jazz survives, people will be into Taborn. and that he'll long represent a "way in" to this era's sound for people who, say, think of themselves as preferring other experimental forms of music (be they pop- or noise- or "classical"-derived) to jazz. (tried to flick at that with the Jason Moran quote from my reporting notebook, too, if only to make the entry less dependent upon "this is my favorite thing right now" argumentation, etc.)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I was not the only UGG voter! Can't control-f for "UGG" on a thread with hundreds of suggest ban buttons on it, so maybe this got brought up before. I had two more thoughts on the matter:

1.) Maybe UGGs are like cilantro and some people are just scientifically predisposed to perceive them as ugly.

2.) What are UGG-haters' perceptions of "hipster mullets"?

http://scallywagandvagabond.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/mul9.jpg

That Craig Taborn album is great so if this thread achieved nothing else etc thanks!

xp That's more of a horseshoe crab than a mullet tbh.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_YQDD3k5TDIs/TC4dUIGzbZI/AAAAAAAAB7Q/hzTNBPUS_bA/s1600/image728364.jpg