Kicking the Bucket List [View all]

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Cultural Comment
September 11, 2014
Kicking the Bucket List
By Rebecca Mead

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The concept of the bucket list—places one wants to visit, experiences one wants to undergo, and accomplishments one wants to master before dying—has gained widespread cultural currency, and that the President should talk of having one should not be surprising. (One does wonder at the downgrading of his aspirations, from “Become President” and “Eradicate Al Qaeda” to “Have dinner with Renzo Piano” and “Tour the Colosseum.”) Exactly who coined the phrase is obscure, but the term entered the popular consciousness decisively in 2007, with the release of the movie “Bucket List.” Starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as geriatric terminal-cancer patients who undertake an implausible valedictory tour of excess—skydiving, visiting the Taj Mahal, and getting to the foothills of Everest—the film grossed more than a hundred and seventy-five million dollars, despite scathing reviews. The idea rapidly spread to a younger generation: in 2010, MTV’s “The Buried Life” featured three fresh-faced Canadian guys travelling across America and checking items off their list, among them “Streak a stadium and get away with it,” “Throw the most badass party ever,” and “Spend a night in jail.”

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This is the YOLO-ization of cultural experience, whereby the pursuit of fleeting novelty is granted greater value than a patient dedication to an enduring attention—an attention which might ultimately enlarge the self, and not just pad one’s experiential résumé. The notion of the bucket list legitimizes this diminished conception of the value of repeated exposure to art and culture. Rather, it privileges a restless consumption, a hungry appetite for the new. I’ve seen Stonehenge. Next?

What if, instead, we compiled a different kind of list, not of goals to be crossed out but of touchstones to be sought out over and over, with our understanding deepening as we draw nearer to death? These places, experiences, or cultural objects might be those we can only revisit in remembrance—we may never get back to the Louvre—but that doesn’t mean we’re done with them. The greatest artistic and cultural works, like an unaccountable sun rising between ancient stones, are indelible, with the power to induce enduring wonder if we stand still long enough to see.