If you feel like threatening to kill me, at least use proper fucking English.

I’m 18 still in high school and me and all of my friends love the Doors and I beleive Jim Morrison’s Music will continue to be popular with all generations because you don’t have to be born when the music was popular to love it, you just have to be able to connect with it

And even if it’s not cool, his words do still live on…I’m 20 and have listened to the Doors all my life. And for the record, screw the box office, I love Oliver Stone’s movie…it’s fantastic.

Literature from the 2nd half of the 20th century? My best guesses: Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, J.R.R. Tolkien.

By-the-by one: if I had known you were an 80s metal fan, we could have had a great talk at LACon IV. Next time.

As to ‘eternal’ coolness: it’s a bit like the way other things are considered ‘attractive’ by the general populace across the ages. Compare today’s superslim catwalk supermodels with the 17th Century Rubenesque voluptousness, not to mention all the myriad ways the fashion of the day changes, coming back to previous sensibilities several times.

So indeed: one should not try.

As an example of long-lasting coolness you mention Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley and Jim Morrison. Well, they at least died in relative wealth. Compare two of my compatriots: Rembrandt van Rijn and Vincent van Gogh: both died in poverty, yet their art has lived on for several centuries.

And before you start to protest that we’re talking *pop culture* here, let me give you a number from the Dutch Golden Age (Rembrandt’s time). I was visiting the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam with my sister who had come over from Melbourne (Australia), and I bought a book in the souvenir shop. It mentioned the number of paintings that were made during the Dutch Golden Age (roughly the 17th Century).

How many paintings were made in the Dutch Golden Century (in Holland alone)? My sister and I thought a couple of thousand, maybe over ten thousand.

Now hold your breath…

*FIVE MILLION*

Approximately. That’s a number larger than the people that lived in Holland at that time. It would be the equivalent of — say — two hundred million novels written in the USA in the 20th Century. Or two hundred million albums recorded. If that’s not *popular* culture, then please tell me what is…;-)

Anyway, at that time, while considered a master, Rembrandt still died in poverty. Yet his art still lives on 400 years later. So, the simple answer (which is actually very complicated) is: produce the best art you can, and let history sort it out.

Wasn’t Shakespeare considered a hack in his time? But he was popular, and is until this day. There’s just no telling.

Therefore, artists should:

a) do what they feel is best; and

b) take the whole popularity thing with a large pinch of salt.

By-the-by 2: I like to think that one of the strong points of heavy metal was that it didn’t take itself too seriously. Cue to Spinal Tap: that was (is) brilliant, and every decent metal/rock fan loves it (and sometimes I wish SF would have the same sense of humour).

So when I read that the US ‘Dancing with the Stars’ opens with a butchered version of “Ballroom Blitz”, I nearly pissed my pants laughing.

Great post.

Pop culture dies, and it’s a depressing spectacle to watch for those who stick around to see it.

Let’s call it Sturgeon’s Law combined with evolution in action: 99.99% of pop culture will die over a sufficient span of time. Some will survive, though. And now I’m going to make myself immortally silly, but here’s my guess:

The Beatles and Rush.

Terry Pratchett and Stephen King.

Now who said I didn’t have a sense of humour…;-)

That’s what I get for posting this on a blog mostly catering to SF people. Of all the actors you could have chosen, William Shatner is the example you give of long-lasting coolness?

Glad to hear that Jim Morrison’s still kickin’. When I was in college, about ten years before you, people gave me strange looks when I played The Doors. The Oliver Stone movie tanked, if I remember correctly, and I haven’t seen a lot of references to Morrison in the pop culture over the past decade or so. Maybe his reputation has more legs than I thought.