Cultural literacy, I likes it!

[blamebrampton]

I had a strange discussion with a person on the internet (god forbid!) over the concept of cultural literacy. Her thesis was that it wasn't important, that popular culture was more useful, and that no one could agree on what one needed to know to be culturally literate anyway.

We exchanged a number of comments, and she was a thoroughly decent person to argue with, but I can't help thinking that we come from opposing starting positions on this one. To start with, she's literally half my age. But she also went to school all through the period where one text was interchangeable with another, whereas I went to school in the days when you had to learn about great literature before they let you mess around with the other stuff.

And yeah, I do mean great and other. I know this will have some of you demanding I turn in my Credentialled Postmodernist badge, but some texts are better than others. They last longer, they impact more, they're Penicillin rather than Cialis, the Periodic Table as opposed to Phlogiston. To my mind, there are certain texts you should have a grounding in if you want to be a culturally literate person.

The problem is, of course, that the idea of their being 'certain texts', a canon, if you will, has become problematic. Harold 'Groper' Bloom's The Western Canon is often held up to ridicule by people who call it a roll-call of dead white men. But I think that's because they couldn't be arsed reading it. He talks positively about Austen and Woolf, Mary Shelley and not one but two Brontës (though how he could choose Emily over Anne is a mystery to me), among other women, and has a good set from the Ancient world as well as Persian and Asian sources. He is weaker on the Orient, I wanted The Tale of Genji at least, but when he sat down to think 'Who has influenced what we think about literature in the West', he genuinely seems to have done so on the basis of the works, not who wrote them.

To me, the idea that we should not privilege some texts over others is ridiculous. No one would argue that there is no difference between a Skoda Octavia and a Bugatti Veyron, or between salad cream and hand-made mayonnaise. It's fine to like and enjoy trashier texts, Skodas and salad cream, but to argue that they should be given the same weight as their opposing numbers is something I cannot agree with.

And the case is more certain with literature than with salad cream. If you only know salad cream, you don't know how delicious aioli is. But, to use an example given, if you are familiar with Harry Potter and not Hamlet, not only do you miss out on Hamlet, but you miss out on the myriad Shakespearean references and jokes within Harry Potter. And while I think it's certainly possible to enjoy Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire if you have no classical education, I suspect it is not possible to do so without a constant feeling that there are certain levels of the text that are passing over your head. Without the cultural literacy that allows you to do so, some authors are wholly unapproachable: Laurence Sterne, Jasper Fforde and the entire Monty Python output, to start with.

Some people have absolutely no urge to cultural literacy, which I can see as a valid choice, but it cuts you off from a lot of reading. I would argue that you cannot say that you are a keen reader or keen consumer of film and television if you are also avowedly against cultural literacy, because it is like saying that you are a biochemist who doesn't believe in valences. However, this could all just be another sign of me becoming an old fogey.

What about you lot? Especially you young folk? Do you still have that frisson of glee I used to have when I uncovered secret references in texts as I read and learned more and more? Or is that so appallingly 20th century that I should just dig out a corset and start worrying about those commies?

On a final pomo note, Happy 50th Birthday, Severus, and Happy 75th Elvis! May you continue to bring joy to your fans for many years! And happy Real Birthday to tnumfive ! You're in good company ;-)

Comments

[melusinahp.livejournal.com]

I am 100% in agreement with you on this one. I got into bitter arguments with certain people on a screenwriting newsgroup I used to frequent. They put forth that any film that had huge box office success was automatically a high quality film because so many people liked it. And I was labeled a pretentious elitist for disagreeing with that. (Apparently people don't really like art films. They just pretend to so they can sound intellectual at parties.)

And the concept of cultural education and how it adds value to the experience of contemporary works is something I'm trying to teach my daughter right now. :D

[astarael02.livejournal.com]

I was just wondering if you could recommend any of the "great literature" in particular? I have been reading almost all the time since I could read, but I didn't do English past GCSE so I have to educate myself, as it were. While I've tried to read all the classics I can find (Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Orwell, Wilde, Bronte, Du Maurier, Eliot, Twain, Nabokov, Dumas etc) I think there are probably huge areas of literature I haven't even realised should be read. I mainly read English and American classics but not much from other countries, for example.

In fact, this question is far too huge and general now I think about it. I'm terribly sorry. Instead, best 5 classics someone should read to enrich how they see the rest of literature? :D
(Now there's a question! Hehe. Pity the poor scientist!)

[brinian.livejournal.com]

Do you still have that frisson of glee I used to have when I uncovered secret references in texts as I read and learned more and more?

Why yes, I do! Although I expect we are of the same generation so it is possibly to be expected. I find the structure of a well-crafted song or paragraph to be utterly delightful and even moreso if it contains a reference that I catch in passing on first hearing/reading and then have to stop and think over to understand completely. Absolute joy.

[niennah.livejournal.com]

I was linked to this post by a friend, hope you don't mind if I butt in with a few points.

I think you're ignoring on some points here, which I'll go through briefly because basically the last century of cultural analysis has already done this. I'm just flagging some key issues. Since you claim to be a postmodernist, I'm sure you know all this already. I just don't understand how you could know it and then ignore it.

1. The Canon
Who gets to choose the "best"? The most popular culture, reflecting the taste of the "masses", has endured a tradition of being academically devalued, devoid of cultural status. I have never yet found a single reason for this other than people, like you, who talk about "high" literature and say "but this is good, and that is bad". The evidence they produce is the exact same as yours: because "high" literature lasts. You don't see a certain problem with that? That people in positions of cultural power choose what "good" literature is, thereby ensuring that it is taught academically and in schools, allowing it to be read and reread, ensuring that it lasts? It doesn't last just because it is "good", it lasts because certain people say it is good, and the people who say it are people in positions of cultural power. It is important to interrogate how and why that cultural power is wielded, and to what end; it is naive to think that it is just in order to make sure people read good books. Cultural power occurs at certain intersections of class, race and gender. It is eternally struggling to maintain itself. This is why modernist writers felt embattled and besieged by the popular; this is why they saw the masses as threatening. (This is why people like Yeats supported eugenics and why DH Lawrence suggested gassing the lower classes in the Crystal Palace.) Power is and always should be contested, and the power to fix "taste" in literature is not exempt from struggle, nor should it ever be.

Arthur Conan Doyle and PG Wodehouse are interesting in this regard: both were considered low literature at the time of their publication and are now considered classics. Conan Doyle refused to see "the masses" as indistinguishable and threatening--Holmes' ability to read distinct and unique aspects of people's lives from their clothing and demeanour was a political strategy on Conan Doyle's part to specifically counter the idea that people from the working class were indistinguishable; PG Wodehouse made literature out of slang. It does make you wonder what we might write off now as non-literature--and why we do so--which might be very much valued in the future.

2. Taste and Power
No one would argue that there is no difference between a Skoda Octavia and a Bugatti Veyron, or between salad cream and hand-made mayonnaise. It's fine to like and enjoy trashier texts, Skodas and salad cream, but to argue that they should be given the same weight as their opposing numbers is something I cannot agree with. - You might notice some issues here. The Skoda Octavia is an affordable family car; the Bugatti Veyron is an expensive sports car. Salad cream is affordable and easily available; hand-made mayonnaise is expensive to buy and time-consuming to make. Your parallels echo my point above: the expensive stuff, the "good" stuff, is aligned with those who clearly have financial power to purchase it; the "not good" stuff is for people without such power. So here, again, "taste" and power are clearly aligned. I think here it is important to remember that a Bugatti Veyron cannot fulfil the same function as a Skoda Octavia, so if I'm looking for a family car with room for the kids and some luggage, then the Veyron is actually not as good. You can't fix the meaning of "good" without answering the question, "for whom and for what purpose?".

(tbc, as I am apparently tl;dr.)

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

I am of two minds about this question. On the one had, I do get that "frisson of glee' whenever I notice high-cultural references in contemporary texts. I also can't read anything without contextualizing it historically, and I'm never going to be the kind of person who can forget who the author was and when he or she lived.

The problem is always the imposition of a single canon. I'm afraid I'll miss something. I'm relatively well-read, I guess, in the Western canon, sort of. At least I know the Hebrew scriptures and much of the NT pretty well. I read Rashi every week, and I read St. Augustine for school, and I taught Maimonides (ha! three pages ahead of the students, in translation, so lame.) I did a couple of courses on Japanese history so I've read some of the major works of Japanese literature. I put myself through a year or so of reading all the 19th century British novels I'd ever heard were important.

It's so difficult to get every joke and to set aside one culture's great works as "not mine" when everything seems to get pulled in somewhere and everyone is connected.

This is where fannishness serves people. When you throw yourself into a single, perhaps completely inadequate, work of fiction or cinema or whatever, and plumb whatever depths it has, or should have had--you can be pulled into all sorts of directions.