Sometimes it’s worth shielding childhood recollections from rediscovery. I learned this the hard way this evening.
Ease of access to the books and music that lit one’s youth is (mostly) a good thing, until one discovers that one’s taste way back when was, not to put too fine a point on it, shite. Generally I feel confident of sharing my youthful musical enthusiasms, because they aren’t shite. I still have the vinyl of Master of Puppets lurking around the place somewhere. Other things, alas, are best left remembered. Limewire-generated rediscovery renders them distinctly un-awesome, and leaves me wondering if my good picks back then were down to dumb luck, and that my musical (and other) taste really is woeful.
See, I just downloaded a song from c 1985. I remembered the song as being pretty good at the time. Let’s just say I’m glad I played it with my headset on so that no-one else in the building had to experience it. What the Hell was I thinking? I suppose I could resurrect it as a ‘guilty iPod pleasure’, but, well…
I didn’t grow up with ‘culture’ as such, so had to work out what I thought was good without much Pierre Bourdieu type input from my ‘betters’. It used to be possible to avoid having one’s taste defined from above, at least as a child. This is something I think Bourdieu got wrong, but that’s by the by. It’s no longer possible now, at least not in the developed world. In those circumstances, a fair bit of hit and miss was probably inevitable.
Then there’s the opposite effect, when shitty bits of the past come back and have somehow painted themselves in rosy hues. It’s a funny thing, nostalgia. Bites at the oddest times and then wears out its welcome. I’ll remember something with an odd sense of deja vu and it turns out to be unpleasant. Dammit, I want to have good-nostalgia-only like some of my friends! Ever had that happen to you? You get nostalgia over something you’d have cheerfully burnt to the ground at the time (a school, perhaps) and your here-and-now mind suggests variations on the old saw what does not kill me makes me stronger.
Glib responses suggest this is the getting of wisdom, that the first reaction was the wrong one. I’m not sure I buy that: some things are just rubbish, and distance doesn’t make them any better.
3 Comments
Okay, so what was it? Surely not the fine Twisted Sister or Quiet Riot? No matter what they say, Ozzie Osbournes Bark at the Moon has one good track.
I feel much the same way with the original Star Trek series, and the original Battlestar Gallactica is also better remembered than relived.
Try downloading some of the old TV shows (especially humour). I find a similar sort of a pattern — it’s surprising how much some things have aged. I was watching the Young Ones a while ago, and it seems exceptionally corny now, whereas other things, like the Hitchhikers Guide to the Gallaxy, seem to have held up really well.
This is something I think Bourdieu got wrong
.
Bourdieu didn’t really say that Skeptic. He merely used extensive empirical data to demonstrate that there’s a correllation between one’s socio-economic history and circumstances and various matters of taste and posture. From the type carpets one might buy to how one regards oneself politically.
.
His view of culture was that there was simply a general and restricted field of consumption. The latter requires some kind of cultivation. France is a place that Paglia somewhat hyperbolously described as being without any popular culture.
.
In the English speaking world there are restricted fields of production that have nothing to do with ‘high culture’ as such. Like hip-hop specialists who search for Soleside releases or enthusiasts of Psychobilly (my own teen tragedy).
.
So called ‘high culture’ is a bit of a misnomer that seems to stem from some false assumptions about the Aristo past. Ultimately the films of, say, Tarkovsky, or the plays of Samuel Beckett have nothing to do with the competitions between the courts of Charles II and Louis the XIV that are avatars for ‘high culture’ as it is vaguely understood.
.
Instead they’re what Laurie Anderson was talking about when she said: “Hello and welcome to Difficult Listening Hour. Sit bolt upright in that straight-back chair, button that top button and get set for some difficult music.” .
.
Some reckon Metallica’s pretty difficult. ‘Specially if you drank cheap scotch the night before.