One of the sometimes infuriating things about living in Portland, Oregon, is the double-edged sword of the reverence for the word "independent". Indie movies, indie music, and especially indie food are the only truly respected means of cultural conveyance, so you better recognize . . . and blessed be.
On the positive side of things, it is fun to love something sort of small an unappreciated. When your favorite band has only 12 fans, then you can actually buy the artists a beer and shoot the breeze with them for an hour after their set. Likewise, loving locally run restaurants supported by their own farm fills you with not only your weight in quinoa, but also a sense of supporting local economy while at the same time not infecting your body with any scary little multi-syllabic carcinogens. Also? "The Kids Are All Right" was right- ALL men that cook for and own farm-to-plate restaurants look like Mark Ruffalo . . . unfortunately for my libido, many of them are also gay, but they are all that hot.
The negative side of things is that you are practically shunned if you love anything considered to be popular by the masses. No Lady Gaga, no Rihanna, no Justin Timberlake movies or music, no movies with Ben Stiller where he does comedy (WHO THE HELL WANTS TO SEE "GREENBERG"??!!) "Indie" cred is valued so much here that people that used to be indie but decided to actually capitalize on their talent because they, I don't know, wanted to stop sleeping on their sister's futon, are relegated to the status of the "unclean" and our once-strong love of them is shoved into a dark place at the back of our collective broken hearts. The minute Death Cab for Cutie went mainstream and Ben Gibbard married the sister-of-Bones (I dare not speak the Manic Pixie Dream Girl's name, lest she make herself known and adork my brains out), I was forced to burn my copies of "Something About Airplanes" and "We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes". And by burn, I mean erase from my hard drive. Never mind that their one of their breakout hits "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" is a really gorgeous (creepy) love song- I AM NOT ALLOWED TO LOVE IT BECAUSE THEY WEAR ARMANI NOW.
Because I am just unhealthy enough to always love the thing that I am told I cannot have, and because I am tired of having to have an "experience" in a dingy jazz bar with a fusion band just so that I can get some driving tunes, I find that I have thrown myself pretty aggressively into pop culture in my late twenties. Unabashedly, I consider myself to be a Gleek (although I am less of a practicing one since that giant bug took up residence in Finn's ass in the middle of season 2), I cheered aloud when Ron and Hermione finally kissed in the last Harry Potter movie, and in the spring, "F*** You" by Cee Lo Green became the most played song on my iTunes. Yes, I will have some Kool-Aid- and I will sip it slowly from my McDonald's promotional cup for the movie "Puss 'n Boots" while you attempt to sound out the ingredients of my radioactive beverage listed on the side of its brightly colored packaging.
In choosing to be closed-minded, my Portlandian brethren and sistren (?) fail to recognize a few things:
1) Not all pop culture is bad. Pop culture=/=horse plops, it simply means that the appeal is broad. Jay-Z, Adele, Natalie Portman in "The Black Swan", the Coen Brothers producing westerns, the guys that thought up Outback Steakhouse's Bloomin' Onion- you cannot tell me that just because you don't like it that they are not amazingly talented individuals that excel at their craft. The fact that other people recognize their talents as well should not stop you from loving them. And you should really try the Bloomin' Onion, guys- it's a deep-fried onion you can eat like fries!
2) Organic, natural, indie. Stripped of most claims to glitz. It is not bad to sometimes want sequins over organic cotton. When I want to shake my ass like an escaped lunatic from a dancing asylum (just go with it), I am not going to turn on Pink Martini- it's Shakira and Wyclef, bitch! He is absolutely right, my hips are not lying, and you better get your half-animal/half-man self over here and dance it up too- I don't care if your skinny jeans inhibit movement below the belly button.
What I hope that this little vignette has done is show that I AM open-minded when it comes to the culture of pop. I don't get the appeal for everything- I kind of think that Katy Perry should just get it over with and call all of her songs "I Have Big Tits"- but I see its value, and I am not at the level of hater that my similarly ZIP coded American Apparel-clad kindred may seem to imply.
Also- do you have any idea how huge a corporation The North Face is?
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