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

[catsintheattic.livejournal.com]

I have two perspectives on this subject. On one hand, cultural literacy is important, and there is a lot of art that exists because it's referential - it exists in the whole context of what came before, opposes some of its predecessors and aligns with others. This is why many of us work so hard to write something that is original, because even in fanfic there is a history, and writing in 2010 means that you know the fanfic-canon of the years before. This is how tropes and cliches develop, in art just as in fanfic.

On the other hand, art and literature, in particular when they are canonised, have a tendency to inflict a manual on you, how they "should" be read. I'm friends with an art historian, and last summer, I heard him comment on the sculpture. The sculpture was about a woman at her moment of greatest distress (ready to throw herself off a cliff), and he criticised that her posture was too beautiful, that sculptures showing distress had to be twisted - like all great sculptures of people in distress. It struck me hard that he obviously had a code of how to read art, that he was looking for signs almost like an interpreter of a language. Whereas I found enough reasons for her to be just as beautiful as she was sculptured, because a woman at the point of killing herself and trying to look beautiful is an even better on women's role in society than a woman at the point of killing herself and looking distressed. In other words: code is helpful, but it can also be a hindrance.

So, cultural literacy can be both: it gives us a language of signs and references to use and to quote to others who know it. And it can take away our freedom when it becomes too rigid, too much of a corset. It has the potential for both, and this is what I find interesting: to be aware of the code and then to use it and adjust to it or to break it consciously.

[wivern.livejournal.com]

and he criticised that her posture was too beautiful, that sculptures showing distress had to be twisted - like all great sculptures of people in distress.

It distresses me that this man is an Art Historian, I hope he isn't teaching. As someone who has studied art history myself I find that attitude anathema and frankly stupid. Sadly Education doesn't necessarily educate a person. *g*

[catsintheattic.livejournal.com]

I read your comment this morning and it kind of hit me in the face. I then decided to wait a little while instead of posting my first gut reaction and let it sit for a whole day. Re-reading what you wrote, I still find it more insulting than entertaining. But at least now I'm able to tell you this without insulting you back.

I'll try to explain what bothers me: We don't known each other. And yet you insult my friend to my face by calling him stupid, by expressing your hopes that he doesn't teach and by concluding that Education doesn't necessarily educate a person, offering me a grin. I assume that you thought it to be funny. I don't share this perspective.

I share your perspective that his approach towards interpreting the sculpture had been somewhat narrow, and I would have been fine had you worded it in a less hurtful way.

I can't imagine that you tried to be insulting on purpose, and maybe I'm over-reacting, but I needed to get this off my chest. Thank you for hearing me out.

Best regards,
Cats

[(Anonymous)]

I apologise if you found my comment insulting I didn't intend to be hurtful, not did I intent to be entertaining.

Can I just point out I find that I said I find his attitude as indicated by the comment quoted 'stupid' not the person. How could I, I don't know him.

Again I intended no insult and clearly worded my comment badly.

[wivern.livejournal.com]

Sorry this was me I forget to sign in.

Apologies again.

[catsintheattic.livejournal.com]

Thank you for explaining and for your fast answer. And apologies accepted.

Yes, I registered that you said "attitude". Maybe I was a little too thin-skinned. I'm sorry if I've been too harsh or generalising in my comment.

I hoped that this would turn out to be one of those situations that simply result from wording and/or understanding something the wrong way. I'm glad that it turned out to be just that. Things like that can happen.

I didn't think that you intended to be hurtful and I'm glad that we were able to clear this up so fast. No harsh feelings necessary.

Thank you again.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I think the 'manual' concept is an outmoded one, though. One of the reasons I make a point of saying that I like postmodernism as well as canon texts is that, since the mid 20th century, I don't think that you can make a legitimate case for 'X must be Y' anymore.

You're right that for much of history, art and literature were both taught in a way that gave you 'for distress, show twisted', or, in the language of theatre, 'for evil, show justice being meted out at the end'. The problem with this has always been that those ways of reading texts weren't about the texts (whether the text is a novel, play, sculpture, painting ...), they were really about the genres and people wanting to construct rules from them.

Great texts have always broken the rules. At the end of King Lear, Regan and Goneril are dead, but so is the virtuous Cordelia. There is no justice. Donatello's Mary Magdalene is tension filled and anguished and not the least bit beautiful, she doesn't even have an ointment jar, as Renaissance Magdalenes 'should', but she's brilliant (just as your composed despairing woman sounds brilliant, for myself, at the blackest moments, I always make jokes).

The big problem with the whole X means Y way of thinking about canon works is that it builds a prescriptive and proscriptive language out of texts that are really all about buidling fresh languages. Canon texts become canon texts because they build, or rebuild, the way that we think about literature or art. For the English canon, Gilgamesh tells us about the basics of story through the world of kings; The Canterbury Tales tells us that story can be about ordinary people as much as kings; Joyce's Ulysses shows us that you can take a story about kings and remake it for an ordinary man and lose nothing. Each of these things revolutionised the way we thought, and what we could do afterwards.

You're right that this is often badly taught: even when I was at school we had some teachers who wanted to push us into the corset you describe. But I think that this is a failure of teaching, perhaps even a political push to constrain and conform, rather than something that naturally arises from the study of the canon.

Looked at in themselves, canonical texts challenge and inspire, giving us access to language that makes other texts richer and more rewarding, while helping to give you the foundation that let you tackle anything. They're the sports bra, rather than the corset, if you will ;-)