Popularity
Wherein Our
Heroine Does Not Aspire to Being One of the Cool Kids.
It seems that the mass market might be
slowly inching away from the Arts and Crafts movement. We can all let out a
sigh of relief now. Can we hope Yoga might be
next?
I am not "cool,"
particularly. I have no aspirations to "hip," either. I never moaned things
like, "The Replacements will never be good again now that 'everybody else' has
discovered them." But sometimes things - especially simple yet difficult things
- can get swamped by the market, run over and flattened by commerce, until they
are unrecognizable and their names become synonyms for "cheap crap," "trendy
silliness," or
"pretension."
And so, two
things I love have been subject to that treatment over the last several years:
Yoga and Arts and Crafts homes. I do well and truly welcome any and all who
want to try Yoga. Some of the byproducts of its popularity have benefited me in
little ways - it is easier to find appropriate clothing, for instance ("aha!
shallow!" --snicker away - but try to do inversions in a tee-shirt without
exposing yourself to the world and get back to me). But then I hear about
people who have tried yoga and been injured because their teacher encouraged
them to "push" (or didn't discourage them from strain). The popularity of Yoga
has led people with poor training and a "feel the burn" mindset to flood the
ranks of instructors. For Americans who were raised on the President's physical
fitness scores and have a "more = better" attitude inculcated in them, this
seems right and good. But it's a recipe for disaster (or at least injury and
frustration) in Yoga.
Obviously, the popularity of
bungalows and Stickley-style furniture doesn't lead to injury. But the iconic
images of solid wood married with densely textured fabric has achieved a kind of
enervating sameness in the mass marketplace. When it has mediocre or poor
quality, it is downright depressing. William Morris dreamed of mass-marketing,
but his pipe dream included a high quality that is not necessarily the hallmark
of the machine-milled knockoffs. The purveyors of "Home Fashions" seem to have
gone on to retro, Tiki, and kitsch in their quest for getting people to buy yet
another coffee table. That is fine - let the cheap Tiffany imitations sink into
history, and let the tides of fashion run on to the next design
fad.
I, for one, hope it means
I can someday afford a real Stickley chair.
Posted: Tuesday - September 14, 2004 at 08:10 AM
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