I loved the wit of this photograph – surely one of the best interpretive photographs of the year? –
The photograph interprets the gist of an essay to be found on the Economist ‘Intelligent Life’ website. The essay challenges the idea that we have been ‘dumbed down’
Where you can make direct comparisons, the serious end of a market is holding up as well as or better than the popular one. Take television. There certainly is no shortage of chewing gum for the eyes. But a clever quiz show such as “QI”, which one might have expected to have lasted a season, is now in its sixth year on BBC2. The even more upmarket radio programme “In Our Time” was the BBC’s first podcast, in 2004, and it was an instant hit. Janice Hadlow, the new controller of BBC2, recently told the BBC staff magazine: “I want to see intelligence in popular programming. It’s good to see it cropping up in all sorts of different places–not just those programmes where you might expect it.”
Is the bottom line simply that more and more are enjoying more and more forms and types of culture – a case of not dumbing down but of becoming even more post-modern, a case of 32 flavours transforming into 64?
Soul Needs - One Garden 