Ignoring Popular Cultural

[IdleRich]

(I wrote this post in response to something someone said in another thread but I realised it was too much of a digression for that thread and so I deleted that post and wrote it here cos I do want to discuss this issue)

What thing that interests me is the degree to which music that you hear in shops etc registers with people. Some people are at the most open end of the spectrum and soak it up like a sponge, they hear music in a shop or a taxi as actively as they would a tune that they have deliberately put on their own stereo at home, while some don't hear such things at all. And, as with many things, most people's reactions are in-between. They do hear songs and register other things fed to them in public but not in the same way as they would with a thing that they actually went out and bought in a shop and brought back and opened up and placed lovingly on the gramophone.

I've come to think about this a lot because I've realised that (my other half) Liza lies at one end of this and is possibly the most extreme example of which I've ever been aware. I've been trying to work out - or perhaps just decide - whether this is a good thing or not. This phenomenon is not just restricted to music, one time it particularly struck me was when that film with Thomas Hardy playing both Kray Twins was coming out. The film was greatly hyped and it had been mentioned in articles in newspapers and on telly programmes, plus of course there were billboards everywhere, trailers in the cinema and adverts in magazines and on tv - in fact, to my mind, the saturation was so great I felt it ought to have been impossible for anyone who lived in the UK and who could read to be unaware of the imminent release of this film. But the two of us were stood at a bus stop and a bus stopped right in front of us, held up by traffic for a good five minutes a couple of metres from our noses, the entire side covered in a huge advert for the film. As the bus drove off I casually made some conversation along the lines of "I wonder how different the two roles he plays will be?" and she said "Who?" - and a few moments of conversation revealed that she had no idea about the film's existence, and furthermore, she had not read the advert which, only a few seconds before, had filled our entire field of vision. This fascinated me, her ability to quite literally not see things that didn't interest her. And once I'd seen it once I was able to notice it more and more; I quickly grasped that she was the only person in the world who had never heard Get Lucky - of course she had heard it in a million bars and shops etc, but she didn't know it, didn't know Daft Punk had a new album out.... in one sense she doesn't know anything about what is going on at all.


But at the same time she spends ages digging for obscure experimental dance-music and finding weird tunes that no-one else knows with bizarre beats that still make people dance. In some sense I find this degree of compartmentalisation fascinating and possibly useful for what she does. This ability to ignore - to simply not hear - what she considers (or finds) uninteresting and trivial is useful I guess, but personally I think that being that blind to the majority of popular culture would leave me feeling totally untethered...

 

[forclosure]

its compartmentalising and also the splitting of information as far as private companies dictating the news people online having their own individual lenses so there's no one commonly held opnion anymore, streaming and playlists taking over from albums and physical media

and a whole bunch of other things people have already dedicated time to, talked about and written about aswell

 

[boxedjoy]

twenty five years ago we had five TV channels, the radio, occasional access to dial-up internet and the entertainment supplement in the weekend newspapers. I watched The Chart Show and Top Of The Pops and that's how I knew what was going on - but everything was bundled together, so if I wanted to see some weird lava-lamp graphics set to speed garage or a nu-grunge rock band make their TV performance debut I also had to sit through a Spice Girls video premiere or Boyzone lip-synching their way through their latest hit. In fact, it's disinegenuous to pretend that it happened like that - to begin with I was probably tuning in hoping to hear the pop hits and being enticed by the more curious stuff that I was exposed to through these routes.

anyway now I don't have to encounter stuff I'm not interested in because there are always other options available. I have a little black box I carry everywhere with me and it allows me access to 99.9% of music I could ever want to hear so why would I ever sit with a music programme on and listen to things I know aren't for me?

I do think it's important to try to keep up with stuff in the world. That song from the Disney film about Bruno that's been number one for three months - I'm not ever going to sit in my house and listen to it of my own volition. But it's obviously a cultural phenomenon at this point, so I think it's useful to have a passing familiarity so if I find myself talking to kids or hearing it at a wedding disco etc I don't feel completely removed from the conversation.

 

[WashYourHands]

 

[IdleRich]

twenty five years ago we had five TV channels, the radio, occasional access to dial-up internet and the entertainment supplement in the weekend newspapers. I watched The Chart Show and Top Of The Pops and that's how I knew what was going on - but everything was bundled together, so if I wanted to see some weird lava-lamp graphics set to speed garage or a nu-grunge rock band make their TV performance debut I also had to sit through a Spice Girls video premiere or Boyzone lip-synching their way through their latest hit. In fact, it's disinegenuous to pretend that it happened like that - to begin with I was probably tuning in hoping to hear the pop hits and being enticed by the more curious stuff that I was exposed to through these routes.

Yeah. This is the experience of many of us I reckon. In my time on earth so far, over the years that add up to be me, I have met quite a few people as adults who could fairly be called "music geeks" (I certainly don't intend this descriptor to be understood negatively by the way). Among them are some that I got to know well and who became my friends - and of course, when people are friends, eventually you talk about your lives, even your childhood. And we always had some similar experiences of sitting by the radio for hours on end with a tape recorder set up to record and paused, our thumbs hovering over the pause button, ready to strike like a snake the second "Kid" Jensen - or Bruno Brooks or whichever particular moron was at the controls that day - said something that could be construed to mean that the next track was gonna something on my "Utter killers to be recorded" list.

Or, what Liza told me was that when she was a kid, once MTV became available in Russia it was a period of unfathomable excitement. She had a
friend whose parents had the channel and when the school holidays came around they would spend it in her friend's place glued to MTV, desperately hoping to hear something by My Bloody Valentine or Spacemen 3 or whatever. They would work in shifts so as to make sure that someone was always watching. There was no chance that it could sneak past them by emerging from its lair and doing its single weekly play at 0430 cos they were always tirelessly watching like some kind of highly trained army sniper who can sit unmoving for days, prepared to go without food and shit in their pants as long as they finally got the shot off (nb, there is no suggestion here that Liza or her friend shat their pants while waiting for The Cure to sing Lullaby - she has never told me anything about that happening - though come to think of it, she never told me that it didn't happen either, so read into that what you will).

So Liza and I have often discussed this similarity in our behaviour when very young, and also we have talked about how to hear the songs you liked you had to sit through loads of stuff you didn't, How youtube and spotify have completely removed this - you can go straight to what you want to hear and have no need to interact with all this other dross in any way whatsoever. And obviously the present situation is miles better - of course some will make some argument about how we had to earn the experience of hearing a good song, about how suffering for it was good for our souls.... but I'm not sure that that is true. BUT there was this cross-pollination thing that happened, you learned about stuff which now you would completely swerve past and never have to interact with. And often enough you found out about good stuff that way I guess.

But I'm digressing into a hugely different issue now, about how we consumed music in general.....

 

[IdleRich]

... though I guess it is possible that this experience is what led Liza to her current ability to simply not hear most stuff that is on.

By the way, I'm not necessarily saying that this is a good skill. It's not really a filter or anything cos it is not based on merit, it kicks in before that and means that things become invisible to her at such an early stage that she does not remove only bad songs. She is simply unaware of everything except that which she seeks out (or which she hears in a club or at the house of someone she respects etc).

She doesn't do this bit basically, for better or worse she is not keeping up with stuff in the world.

I do think it's important to try to keep up with stuff in the world. That song from the Disney film about Bruno that's been number one for three months - I'm not ever going to sit in my house and listen to it of my own volition. But it's obviously a cultural phenomenon at this point, so I think it's useful to have a passing familiarity so if I find myself talking to kids or hearing it at a wedding disco etc I don't feel completely removed from the conversation.

Neither am I of course either. But I am not as far removed from it all as she is. Like I say, she is an extreme example.
But this phrase "i think it's important to try to keep up with stuff in the world" - is it? Why so? I mean, I think I agree with you - but why?

 

[boxedjoy]

I don't want to live in a bubble. At a basic level - I don't want to meet people and hear about their passions and feel they're completely alien to me, even if those passions are things that don't instinctively appeal to me or enter my worldview. It's awkward and hard to force it when you're clueless in the role of the person hearing about it. It's dispiriting and pointless when you're sharing enthusiasm for something when someone is looking at you as if you're speaking a different language altogether. When Frozen came out and I was working with young kids I realised very quickly I was going to have to learn who Elsa and Anna were if I was to have any hope of bridging the gap with them, for example. I think it's just a culturally decent thing to do - try to engage with the world around you so you can be a part of it, and hope the world around you will meet you on your terms at some level.

I also think that there's a lot of culture that reflects who we are as society. What we value and why. I'm not an active Twitter user but I do think it can be useful to occasionally check what topics are trending and what people have to say about them. My opinions are not always fixed, I can't always be right or insightful, and sometimes you can have your mindset and attitude shaped by a cultural artifact that enables you to see the world a bit differently.

 

[catalog]

Boxedjoy is love yyou

 

[IdleRich]

I don't want to live in a bubble. At a basic level - I don't want to meet people and hear about their passions and feel they're completely alien to me, even if those passions are things that don't instinctively appeal to me or enter my worldview. It's awkward and hard to force it when you're clueless in the role of the person hearing about it. It's dispiriting and pointless when you're sharing enthusiasm for something when someone is looking at ⁷you as if you're speaking a different language altogether. When Frozen came out and I was working with young kids I realised very quickly I was going to have to learn who Elsa and Anna were if I was to have any hope of bridging the gap with them, for example. I think it's just a culturally decent thing to do - try to engage with the world around you so you can be a part of it, and hope the world around you will meet you on your terms at some level.

I also think that there's a lot of culture that reflects who we are as society. What we value and why. I'm not an active Twitter user but I do think it can be useful to occasionally check what topics are trending and what people have to say about them. My opinions are not always fixed, I can't always be right or insightful, and sometimes you can have your mindset and attitude shaped by a cultural artifact that enables you to see the world a bit differently.

I agree that I don't want to live in a bubble (though maybe some do) but, as an aside, I do wonder about number ones in that I think it is generally recognised that they are not as culturally important as they used to be. I don't think that that is cos I'm an old man moaning about how Christmas Trees are not as they used to be, I do truly believe that the cultural centre has shifted - though that doesn't in any way challenge your central point that these mini cultural centres (whatever they may be) provide meeting points that people who are strangers can find in common and discuss. Or they should anyway. I suspect that our society is now more fractured with more channels and interests and so on, and fewer things which unite the whole nation in watching or listening. But even if that is the case and common ground with larger groups does become harder and harder to find, then perhaps the ones that come closest to that grow in importance.

 

[boxedjoy]

I mean the other thing is it's very easy for me to play a three-minute pop song and have an opinion on it so I can join in the conversation. I don't play video games or go see films (the cost: payoff ratio just isn't high enough for me) so there's huge parts of the broader cultural conversation I'm just switched off to. Games aren't as big a deal because my pals aren't huge gamers and it tends to be things like Football Manager rather than fully immersive worlds, but I do find myself sitting in the pub awkwardly trying to find a way in because I haven't been in a cinema since 2010. I'll be the first to admit I've self-selected out of that conversation and so lots of references etc are wasted on me. "Maybe the real Batman is inside us all" maybe but you're asking me to commit to several hours watching something that's not appealing to me on first impressions so I guess I will never know.