teenage dream: The First Wall brought to by The Void Incorporated was an immersion into the fantasy itself. It entertained delusion, excess and the intoxicating promise that through belief, ambition and performance one could become the greatest thing since Sliced Bread. It inhabited the teenage dream without yet asking where it came from.
teenage dream: The First Wall brought to by The Void Incorporated was an immersion into the fantasy itself. It entertained delusion, excess and the intoxicating promise that through belief, ambition and performance one could become the greatest thing since Sliced Bread. It inhabited the teenage dream without yet asking where it came from.
If post-war social change and the globalisation of culture gave birth to the teenager, then the rise of mass media between the 1980s and the Y2K was where this cultural innovation came of age. Through mass media and popular culture, ideas of self-transformation and optimisation became globally imaginable. For the first time, millions of people could not only witness extraordinary lives but imagine themselves living them.
This premise has never simply been “believe and you’ll become a star”, it is “believe, work, preserve and your dreams can come true”. This is more than the notion in James 2:17 of “faith without works is dead. It is the teenage dream: a globalised mutation of the American Dream, which through mass media, popular culture and celebrity has produced a new modern secular gospel.
If post-war social change and the globalisation of culture gave birth to the teenager, then the rise of mass media between the 1980s and the Y2K was where this cultural innovation came of age. Through mass media and popular culture, ideas of self-transformation and optimisation became globally imaginable. For the first time, millions of people could not only witness extraordinary lives but imagine themselves living them.
This premise has never simply been “believe and you’ll become a star”, it is “believe, work, preserve and your dreams can come true”. This is more than the notion in James 2:17 of “faith without works is dead. It is the teenage dream: a globalised mutation of the American Dream, which through mass media, popular culture and celebrity has produced a new modern secular gospel.