Yes … it really does seem like it’s all too often a case of
It’s too often, all so m’waah, m’waah, luvvie darling, fair-trade, organic, wheaten, wholemeal hair that was ethically and respectfully gathered from the combs of indigenous grandmothers by their good friends, Cressida and Tarquin, whilst integrating into the community in an undiscovered backwater off the poverty-tourism trail they were following on their ‘woke’ trustafarian gap-year working-holiday sojourn to help less techno-socially evolved cultures than their own remain all that they might be, could be, ought to be, should be … or from the hard-worn, cast-off, hand-me-down cloth of the downtrodden proletariat, or inversely oppressed white working classes.
In he early ’80s, when I was living in Camden, Radio 1 did a roadshow at the Lock Market, so, my cousin and I popped along. There were skits being performed … extraordinarily well costumed pieces (unsurprising, given the preponderance of media types in those days) of Henri Matisse Arranges A Still Life, in which a guy walked onto the stage with giant pencil, stood it on its end and walked off again … or Chekov Returns Books To His Publisher, during which a guy wrapped some books with brown paper and string and then handed them to maid before they both walked off.
My cousin and I were pissing ourselves
- because it was just wonderfully meta Absurdism
- because we were the only ones laughing; the audience a) hadn’t a clue what was going on and, more significantly, b) didn’t realise that the joke was on them; all these people who were ‘in the media’ and/or ‘the arts’ and spent heir days name-dropping the people and things they were watching, knew absolutely nothing about them and understood even less — people who … thinking themselves sophisticates and superior to the hoi polloi of their contemporaries … would remark dismissively that NW1 was ‘a state of mind, don’t you know’ but, when you observed that, actually, it was more of an état d’esprit … whooosh!.
Some time in the mid/late ’80s to early/mid ’90s, I read about a book that was doing the rounds in the global (wannabe) chic/moneyed set. It was a collection of synopses of all the literature (at least ¹) one ought to have read in order to appear cultured. It was for those who either didn’t have time or the inclination to actually read any of it but found themselves embarrassed by their inability to even follow, let alone take part in, conversations involving those who had — think: that fateful day Ivanka Trump was clearly out of her depth at the EU … that kind of situation.
How vacuous do you have to be to feel the need to fake it to the extent that you’ll cram a book full of book synopses so that you can elbow your way into superficial chitchat with people who quite possibly know no more than you do or … if they do … will then be obliged to squirm with embarrassment on your behalf?
I haven’t read a lot of things that maybe I should have … I only know Doctor Zhivago, by way of Omar Sharif and I refuse, point blank to read War And Peace (Life’s too short) … don’t have a formal training in Art or its history … and cannot bring myself to watch Bergman (too turgid) … but, for somebody of my extremely humble socioeconomic beginnings, I’m surprisingly educated, cultured and know an astounding amount about a not altogether unnoteworthy number of things … because I actually took the time to read things, listen to stuff, go to museums and art galleries, concerts (even operas), explored both the classical and the contemporary, studied and learned about and discussed a lot of stuff with others who knew more than me and got myself an education. I’m no genius myself, but I’m bright enough to know that, if I want to talk to people about stuff, I need to know about it, not try and fake it.
Far too much ‘art’ and ‘literature’ is venerated and swooned and fawned over by people who don’t like or understand it but, because they’re ignorant and/or insecure, they don’t have the courage to stand up say “I don’t get it” … or even “No, that’s just rubbish” ²
… what if they make a fool of themselves in doing so?
So, you end up with
Or Series 1 episode 3 (the one where they go to the performance by Brian’s former collaborator ‘Vulva’)
It’s all just so Nathan Barley, combined with the nepotism that comes with having gone to RADA, dahling … or Goldsmith’s/St Martins, sweetie.
But you have to put up with it, because … like your friend …if you want to get anywhere, you have to gain the favour of those with money and/or influence — Toulouse-Lautrec was right: if you’re gonna prostitute yourself, you might as well learn from the pros.
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¹ Maybe other things too, but I can’t remember to that degree these days.
² I think the best comment on it all saw was at an exhibition at the Tate Modern when it opened … the very first exhibit in the particular exhibition that was on: a case full of sweet/biscuit/cake/burger/pie/pastie/etc. wrappers, bits of paper, softdrinks cans, etc. … literally litter the artist had found in the streets and chucked in a pile. My girlfriend was outraged because it was ‘rubbish’ … whereas I couldn’t help but laugh ³. Really, we should’ve turned around and walked out again, in honour of the artist’s message, but there were some things I wanted to see by other artists specifically, so …
³ Although I found her disgusted observation that “Even some of your stuff is better than this” rather damning with faint praise — she let the façade down there.
