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January 26, 2006
The voice of the neuter
Van Der Leun has an interesting take on LA Times columnist Joel Stein, one that requires listening to his voice (available thanks to Radioblogger and Hugh Hewitt's devastating interview).
If you focus on [Stein's voice], you realize that you hear this voice every day if you bounce around a bit in our larger cities buying this or ordering that, and in general running into young people in the "service" sector -- be it coffee shop, video store, department store, boutique, bookstore, or office cube farm. It's a kind of voice that was seldom heard anywhere but now seems to be everywhere.
It is the voice of the neuter.
I mean that in the grammatical sense:
"a. Neither masculine nor feminine in gender.
"b. Neither active nor passive; intransitive,"and in the biological sense:
"a. Biology Having undeveloped or imperfectly developed sexual organs: the neuter caste in social insects.
"b. Botany Having no pistils or stamens; asexual.
"c. Zoology Sexually undeveloped."You hear this soft, inflected tone everywhere that young people below, roughly, 35 congregate. As flat as the bottles of spring water they carry and affectless as algae, it tends to always trend towards a slight rising question at the end of even simple declarative sentences. It has no timbre to it and no edge of assertion in it.
The voice whisps across your ears as if the speaker is in a state of perpetual uncertainty with every utterance. It is as if, male or female, there is no foundation or soul within the speaker on which the voice can rest and rise. As a result, it has a misty quality to it that denies it any unique character at all. It is the Valley Girl variation of the voices that Prufrock hears:
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
It's parting wistful wish for you is that you "Have a good one.". . .
No, it is only to say that this new voice that we hear throughout the land from so many of the young betokens a weaker and less certain brand of citizen than we have been used to in our history. Neither male nor female, neither gay nor straight, neither ... well, not anything substantive really. A generation finely tuned to irony and nothingness and tone deaf to duty and soul. If you can write in this tone, and Stein can, you can become a third level columnist for the Los Angeles Times. With a little luck, over time, you might even rise to the level of second string columnist for Vanity Fair. Should the country so lose its mind and elect another Clinton, you could even become a White House speech writer.
Exactly! I've seen Stein on TV, and he has the affect of a teen. Listen to him and tell me Van Der Leun's wrong.
As I commented on Van Der Leun's site, it's a less in-your-face form of the argument presented by Kim Du Toit in his essay, The Pussification of the Western Male.
The other place I've noticed it, aside from the local Starbucks, is in what passes for today's movie stars.
Gable, Cooper, Tracy, Cagney, Bogart, McQueen, Mitchum, Peck; from their first screen appearances, they were men, guys that reminded us of our fathers and their friends.
Today? Keeanu, Pitt, Cruise. Eternal college-age young adults.
Tom Cruise is older now than Bogart was in Casablanca. Steve McQueen was only 31 when he took part in the Great Escape.
Our culture no longer prizes "men." Or is this just another Red State/Blue State divide?
Posted by Mike Lief at January 26, 2006 08:02 AM
Comments
Three thank yous in order: For the comment, for the link and for the pointer to Du Toit.
Posted by: Van der Leun at January 26, 2006 11:54 AM