5/9/2023 0 Comments Bloom the western canon![]() And now “canon” has migrated from noun to adjective, giving the word thunder and muscle and curatorial certitude. “Battlestar Galactica” and “The Simpsons,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and the DC and Marvel universes - they’re canonical, too. ![]() That consecration has spread from academia to, say, Reddit, where fans gather around movies, TV dramas, video games and comic books the way the academy threw its weight behind Dostoyevsky, Joyce, Faulkner and Updike. Traditionally, the people drawing up our cultural canons have been an elite group of scholars and critics who embraced a work of art and sent it aloft to some deifying realm. It’s Jane Austen, the Beatles, Miles Davis, Andy Warhol and Beyoncé. That is, of course, what a canon is - a settled matter. It places a work, a person or an idea beyond reproach. The phrase didn’t originate on the internet but is of the internet and its wing of antidiscursive discourse. You need not only to certify it but also to forestall decertification. ![]() You need to dome it under a force field so that other people’s grubby hands, opinions and inferior fandoms can’t stain or disrespect it. ![]() You need to take that thing, wrap it in plastic or put it on a pedestal. You have to take that thing - album, author, song, movie, show - and do more than love it. Sometimes, it’s not enough to love something. ![]()
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