Sunglasses, awesome, for real, and no problem
by Bob on May 7, 2007
Everyone seems to be wearing sunglasses these days. Mostly when they don't need them. One imagines people are thinking they look cool in them, or want some insulation from the world for whatever reason that might be.
That's not what sunglasses were invented for. They were invented to protect our eyes from excessive light and direct sun. Not for hiding or simply to be cool.
Clearly, someone might have an eye disease or condition for which excessive light might be harmful and thereby need to wear sunglasses. But by far, that is the exception.
Admittedly, in the Beat Generation and beyond, especially in the 1950s, in jazz clubs, musicians used to wear sunglasses to look cool, although they were playing in a dark, smoky night club venue. Like the Village Vanguard in New York City's Greenwich Village. Also, direct light from the spotlights may have bothered people.
And movie stars and famous personalities like to wear them under the thin veil of pretending to not want to be noticed in common company as they are famous and so far up in the heavens above normal people. Hmm. Usually doesn't work.
And I once went to a lecture by the American author, Norman Mailer, at the university where I was lecturing, and Mr. Mailer asked that no one, especially in the press pool, take flash photographs since he was developing serious cataracts. His lecture was rather quite brilliant. He wasn't wearing sunglasses. It wasn't proper or necessary.
But there is a massive industry in selling expensive sunglasses. And people have so many pairs to wear, just as they have hats. But one isn't sure why it is so pressing to wear them as a fashion fixture. One thinks it might be for elevation of ego and for feeling otherwise important. Or to be ultra cool.
Methinks they look silly for the most part. Like bumblebee eyes, or they eyes of a fly or other insect. Especially since eye contact is so very important in interpersonal relations. Most people look at the eyes first when they meet a person. So one wonders to what end people wear these sunglasses hiding their most important interpersonal asset.
I once had a lovely conversation with one of my university graduate students in a jazz club and restaurant in Greenwich Village in New York City. She had been raised in another culture in Southeast Asia in a smaller village. She said to me that I looked at someone's lips when they were talking instead of looking in their eyes. This was fascinating because it was true and likely cultural. It was hard to look at the speaker's eyes and not the lips. Again, very interesting. And imagine if one looks at the eyes of the speaker rather than the lips, and the speaker is wearing dark, to-be-cool sunglasses !
Sunglasses just seem to be a uber-fashion statement, to be uber-cool at the expense of hiding one of the most important communicative and personal things we have, our eyes.
And ultra-cool people wearing sunglasses, otherwise physiologically unnecessary, say things like "Awesome!" or "For real?" or even "No problem". That latter response, "No problem", is commonly used especially as an answer to a thank you from another person -- instead of the more proper and fitting "You're welcome".
So we have language being affected by uber-coolness and amplified by the hedonism and fashion of sunglasses.
The response "No problem" has its place. But it is not, emphatically not, a proper substitute for a "You're welcome". It has become equivalent in common parlance, but that is unfortunate. "No problem" is quite a bit more insensitive and interpersonally non-committal as a response. And even somewhat empty and devoid of emotion, and seemingly an expedient.
But, as the great Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs wrote, "Language is a virus from outer space" and as such, like any virus, mutates and is not controllable, despite the volumes of the official dictionary of the erudite academies and official rules of proper usage. On a street corner people will say what they wish to and use language in any fashion they might want, despite common usage. So what is then and would seem a linguistic aberration eventually becomes an accepted phrase in the dictionary by sheer force of usage and even peer pressure. So something being "bad" means "good", and something being "nasty" means "attractive". And meanings seem to flip senses in some cases every so many years.
So, that's "no problem" ultimately, since language is an open evolving organism.
But "Awesome!" which terribly over-used, and typically used as a knee-jerk response, takes away from a proper usage which would mean that something or someone is worthy of awe which is a very powerful praise. So a powerful phrase in the language becomes diluted. We lose a good powerful word in this distillation. And that there are very few things worthy of true awe.
"For real" is even a more puzzling usage. A typical exchange would be: "Hey I bought some new shoes today!" with the response "For real?". Well, that has to be what they call a nonce phrase or even just a place-holder. One surmises that it is equivalent to the phrase "Really?".
Of course, we know reality and for-real-ness is a very tricky philosophical meditation and differentiation, especially from Descartes to Bishop Berkeley. And Herman Hesse who wrote that "there is no reality except the one contained within us". I don't recall his labeling it as Solipsism. But Hesse did make a very powerful and profound statement that we should all at the very least, take notice of. Whether we agree or not, or realising it is un-mutual to think so, it is quickly becoming a way of life in the post-industrial, technocratic and technology-driven world of the 21st century.
And Hesse wrote the novel "Steppenwolf" which was excellent. And from the 1960s rock band, Steppenwolf, we had their lead singer, John Kay, with cool shades on all the time.
So, suspending all intellectual rhetoric and academic reverence, we accept Burroughs' point that language is a virus.
But one is still puzzled and dismayed by the sunglasses issue. One misses the eyes.
We are reminded also of the interesting 1987 song by Timbuk3, "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades". And also a 1983 song dedicated to sunglasses by Corey Hart, "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night". Both had kind of interesting music videos.
Ours it not to expect an answer to why things are as they are. But it is worth thinking about.
Personally, I think the eyes have it. But I can't help but watch the lips.
So it goes.