Cultural Turnover and The New Selfism

I often think about cultural references that I understand but which younger people do not because the presumed concepts have become history.

For example, yesterday I walked past someone wearing a T shirt with a graphic of John Cleese (as Basil Fawlty) saying "Don't mention the war".
To get the joke you not only have to know the show Fawlty Towers, you also have to understand a raft of context for World War II and the post-war issues between Britan and Germany - itself a mixture of nation regimes and people-to-people matters.

Quite a lot for a one-liner. As a cusp Boomer/GenX, I get it but I doubt many Xers would. What sense would a GenY or GenZ make of it? Well, that's partly the point here, not only that they wouldn't but also they just wouldn't bother with anything not targetted at them anyway.

Obviously this kind of cultural turnover is nothing new - our history is full of them. There are a lot in Shakespeare for example. To get all the jokes you need a well annotated and researched version.
Lewis Carroll is another example. I accidentally found out - via Heston's Feasts - that Turtle Soup was such a Victorian fancy that a cheaper seemalike of Mock Turtle Soup was very common. Common enough for Carroll to have a "Mock Turtle" character and never mention "Turtle Soup" at all. I'd misunderstood and thought he had invented the idea of a "mock" creature.

Note that I do want distinguish between a such historical effect and one based on breadth of knowledge. For example having recently read another Jasper Fforde novel, I'm sure there were plenty of references that I didn't get because I haven't read some of the required areas/genres. Here I can safely dismiss generational cues as Fforde is almost the same age as I am.

So much for the kind of cultural turnover that we can expect to observe as time passes and takes with it morsels of information and its tags. What about the idea that there are similar changes to peoples' general attitudes?

This is something that my partner and I have observed as we get around our lives. While we've noticed it in Perth, I'd be surprised if it isn't a general change throughout much of the Western world.

An example of this change would be the concept of taking a photograph. I had to explain to someone recently that most people now take photos of themselves rather than of other things. To this end, most mobile phones that have cameras also have a small convex reflector next to the lens. I advised how this allows the photographer/photographee to see how they will fit in the frame as they snap themselves from in front of the camera. As this issue involves new gadgets and new technology I note that it correlates well to the younger generations. Us oldies are less likely to want or notice such a feature.

Another example however which has clearly crept in and restrospectively been adopted across the generations is the related idea of where the entertainment is. To people who have shifted into the new mode, they ARE the entertainment - and a professionally created and presented show they attend is merely lucky to be there too.

We were recently at a performance of The Fabulous Flag Sisters in Fremantle and the row of people in front of us, while clearly enjoying the show, only had an awareness of, say 50% of it as the rest of time they were busy facing and talking to each other. I didn't mind, they also took time to interact with the show and added to the festive spirit. But it was miles away from my default attitude of being intent on watching in full the artistry I've paid to see.

I suspect that some of this change is based on economics. With an attitude of affluence, the new mode presumes that their pleasure is paramount and performances can be chosen for their convenience. It will be interesting to see if an economic downturn ever creates a reversal of that trend. Ideally of course there will be no downturn.

It is in combining these two shifts that I think we will see a total change in how culture is structured in society.

It may be that satire will be hardest hit as it seems the form most obviously dependent on commonly shared cultural knowledge. It may be no accident that general satirical sketch comedy has disappeared from television. Even in movies satire has become specialised - e.g. horror spoofs for horror fans etc.
There may never be another Monty Python equivalent because our social patterns have no place for one.

The process of referring to something via its conceptual content will be replaced by literal referencing - what Lucy said about Damien's comment on Susan talking about Zack etc - e.g. via a hyperlink on a blog.

In Literature, the oblique reference may also be doomed unless authors are prepared to provide their own footnotes.
The whole presumption of writer vs reader is going in the blender and may never settle back to how it was. There may need to be a smartening up among those who create in old ways, to counter-balance the supposed dumbing-down of the new. Simply presuming that your audience/readers know what you're on about is a luxury whose time has passed.

Performers who thrive on audience response may find that expecting lasting appreciation from consumers of their content is likely to be fraught with disappointment.

To quote Shakespeare, "O brave new world that has such people in it".

Archivandalism

I finally got around to photographing the various buildings around the city where heritage frontages have been handled with total contempt.
What impresses me the most is how the combination of old and new has been done. And in this regard one can only say that there has been a total disregard applied to the heritage structure.
Some go so far as to put a blank wall directly between the old and new - making it very clear that the piece of original building is only left intact by acquiesing to a rule.
Of course I can only guess that the blame lies with the architects. Certainly it is they who have designed the abominations that now stand like Frankenstein creations - half old and half modern with nothing in common.
Instead the issue maybe the project owners who have forced their hands. As a city dweller I don't really care who it is that is at fault.
I presume that in these cases the root cause is a state/city requirement that the original facades be preserved. Oddly enough, that's not a rule that I see a great value in having. It happens that in each case I find the new part of the building to be quite hideous and lacking in external architectural merit, but that's not the issue here.
l'd rather see the old fronts removed to some kind of public space, a kind of facade museum rather than have these bizarre juxtapositions around.
As it stands the mangled result surely satisfies no-one.
It's tempting to interpret the treatments as defiantly waiting for the silly rule to dropped and allow the destruction of the old facade and let the new building stand as proud successors. But this is fantasy - in reality these buildings are too drab and indifferent to support such a passsionate view.
The proof I think is that every single one of these buildings seems to have no actual character of its own. These are anonymously designed by the slavish for the vaccuous.
In truth, almost no-one in Perth cares about any of this. Perth is a city of the suburbs and most people rarely go into the central city anymore. When Perth folk want to see an interesting city, they travel abroad or east, rather than into their own. The way to find character from here is via the airport.
When I started writing this I was going to remark that some hope might be held in the idea that as long as the facades survive there is some chance that the blank boxes behind them will eventually fall and be replaced with something that at least interacts meaningfully.
But now I think that is a lost cause.
I'm sure that in other cities it would be culturally inconceivable to have created so many zombie street fronts, but this is Perth, a mining boom city with no feeling for its own past - and with faceless (probably remote) building creators and sponsors.
Having thought of the Facade Museum concept, I now consider that to be a far better option. Engineering abilities are now such that I'd be surprised if this wasn't both feasible and a minor expense compared to the scale of the new developments.

The paradox of the scales of human experience

From time to time, usually at a point of reflection I am quietly amazed by the extremes of space and time that comprise different people's worlds.
I'm sitting at the Wellington St bus station in central Perth and gazing across the vacant train tracks to the backside of Northbridge (Perth's night district). It is a barren and bleak view, one of many where Perth shows a complete void of aesthetic value. The buildings are all square and blank blocks - not just the backs of the single-story Northbridge cafe block but also buildings that in other cities would be interesting features (the State Library, the new drama centre).
From here, a stranger would have to take it on faith that Northbridge holds bright lights and good times. Indeed, I have just come from there, browsing shops to kill time. And in one of those shops, which has been there for as long as I've lived in Perth, I had a touch of the other sense - a small feature, such as a ventilation grate or a small built in shelf - and could imagine touching it much as I might have 30 years ago while also killing time. Suddenly the wide open sparse cityscape contracts to a long time connection to a repeated moment.
And I think to myself that all cities are full of these anonymous (and let's face it, unimportant) rendezvous points.
I make a lousy tourist I think. I care little for the great vistas and famous landmarks that people travel the world to photograph themselves in front of.
Instead when I travel I find myself wondering about all the little spaces that exist where ever I go. And I wonder which of them have no meaning and which are the home of someone's perspective.
In the same way that a data analyst learns to ignore obvious numbers and seek meaning in the mass of the mundane, so I look for notable ordinary things where ever I go.
When you visit a place it is often hard to know which features are historic and which were only put in place last week.
When my bus goes through the retirement settlements, sometimes the passengers have struggled to reach the bus and struggle to get on board. For them, time and space have contracted to the stage where walking - at all - and making one visit to the shops is a major event. Elsewhere on the planet some guy is preparing to trek solo to the South Pole - a major event that he has planned for years, sold his assets to fund and which his entire life will revolve around. Are these experiences equivalent. I think so. I think all earnest human endeavours that don't harm others are worthy.
It's possible that neither of these people could get through a performance of Tristan und Isolde.
The concept of human achievement is a paradox. How can it be that one person's time wasted is another's great achievement?