(apologies beforehand, but this is pretty long—in fact, it’s almost double the length of one of my usual installments. turns out i had a lot to say here, i’m afraid.)
i was commenting to a blog entry by beyond that got me thinking about pop culture references.
there’ve been a few blog entries in the past few months that i’ve seen that discussed quotations from TV shows or movies, such as beyond’s, and they all touch on something that i’ve been meaning to address—for a while.
the most casual reading of a lot of classical literature shows that the writers were fond of using imagery and language from previous works, works with which they knew their audiences would be familiar: the literature that they considered “the classics”. one such touchstone is of course the bible: so many of our figures of speech, idioms and the like are drawn from that fertile, fertile ground. if i say to you that a man was a veritable samson, you would recognize the reference to the biblical figure—and perhaps wonder if like samson, that man has his own delilah, waiting to cut his hair and rob him of his strength. or if i say that another man faced a terrible trial but faced it with the patience of job, you recognize that pillar of patience, and perhaps wonder if his trial too will have its reward. or if i remark that a woman has the sagacity of solomon, you are familiar with the tale of his pronouncement that a child should be cut in half, knowing that the true mother would object and prefer the child be given to the other woman rather than be killed.
the bible is the touchstone of western literature. in a very real way, it all begins with the bible.
but at the same time, those aren’t the only sources from the writers of days past draw: shakespeare and others were never afraid to refer to classic mythology. even in the tragedy romeo and juliet, a simple description refers to phoebus, the roman name by which the greek deity apollo was known. it’s a relatively minor description (i don’t recall the act/scene citation off-hand; i believe it’s during juliet’s balcony scene), which itself highlights to me the degree to which shakespeare expected his audience to recognize such references.
IOW: these things were the common lexicon, if you will, of the audience of the day. everyone understood it, everyone knew the references. they were part of the language of everyday life—the language of the common man.
but they no longer really are—at least, not to the extent they once were. not nowadays, anyway.
you might well be wondering what all of this has to do with pop culture—i’m getting to that.
i’m reminded of a conversation i had w/ my siblings when we were all younger. my sister was in high school, while my brother and i were younger. he and i were—as we often did—having a conversation largely consisting of quotations from films and TV shows. she observed that this was to her sad, that it was impossible to have a conversation with us w/out being conversant with those references.
now, we can talk about the merits of whether a person should or should not be steeped in pop culture ‘til the cows come home, but that’s a separate and for my purposes entirely unrelated issue.
there’s a kind of snobbery in the halls of literary criticism—or at least was when i was still studying it back in college—that favors references of an older vintage. i suppose in their view, the passage of time vets a given source as being worthy of reference or not.
i think that’s tragic.
sure, i can reel off the shakespearean citations if i really need to—but to whom would i make them but other lit buffs and the odd shakespeare freak? no one. at the end of the day, the object of any writer or creator of creative work is to attempt to communicate with the person reading or otherwise experiencing his or her work. if it’s a complete garble, then the writer/artist failed.
but you see, there’s a handy common lexicon already here.
and we call it pop culture.
now, i’ve certainly got my issues with pop culture, but the one thing you cannot say about it is that it’s anything but democratic. things that people like join that shared vocabulary no matter who pooh-poohs it, or indeed, precisely because someone pooh-poohs it. ideas, concepts and things that gain that kind of mindshare are relevant, b/c people see it as engaging in some fashion.
if shakespeare were alive today, he’d probably reference things like star wars. because as the writer he was, he would understand that in order to communicate with people, he must speak their language—which brings me to the subject of william wordsworth.
in 1780, wordsworth and his friend, samuel taylor coleridge, published a collection of their poetry, lyrical ballads. if you don’t count the earlier work by william blake (although most literary critics do), the publication of lyrical ballads kicked off the romantic movement in literature. in the preface thereto, wordsworth famously made an observation which i find highly relevant:
wordsworth quoth:
i write in the language of the common man.
now, on the face of it, this makes sense: there’s no sense writing poetry if it remains opaque and impenetrable to a reader. granted, in his day, that still meant the use of rhyme and meter, which have fallen out of favor these days, but that’s neither here nor there: there’s a second, more important ramification to this statement, i think.
that ramification is simple: the poet is saying that when he writes poetry, he writes in everyday language. in part this is a reaction to the poetry that was common at the time—positively rife with obscure references. but taken with my very favorite wordsworth quotation of all time, it means something more:
wordsworth also quoth:
poetry is the spontaneous overflow of emotion, recollected in tranquility.
taken together, twhat the poet is saying here then is that this overflow of emotion, when recollected in tranquility, expresses itself in the idiom of the day.
i don’t know about you, but i find this fantastically encouraging news. because what it really means, at least IMHO, is that poetry (and by extension, all writing) should be accessible and represent the way the writer him or herself would express an idea, without excessive ornamentation.
so when we use pop culture quotations—such as discussed in the blog entry that sparked this one—are we really doing anything differently than wordsworth or shakespeare themselves did?
i say no.
these things form our collective frame of reference, our shared vocabulary…our common lexicon, as i called it earlier. we express ideas and thoughts in the words that are available to us.
now, here’s the funny thing: wordsworth’s poetry was, as i said earlier, a reaction to the poetry that was prevalent in his day. but were i to write something that depended meaningfully upon references to his poetry, how many people would pick up on those references? hell, i don’t think that i would myself, and i don’t know how many people could say that they would. if you would, then i commend you for being better versed (if you’ll forgive the pun) in wordsworth’s poetry than i am.
but if, like me, you wouldn’t, then i say this. there’s a saying: “it’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools.” the meaning of that is pretty clear: if the craftsman’s work is not good, then the blame lies with the craftsman. in the same way, a writer (and again, i mean this to apply to all creative endeavors, not merely writing) must take care in composing a work to ensure that it really does communicate to a reader/viewer the writer’s intent.
and yes, that means, of necessity, using the common lexicon. and yes, that means pop culture.
so what’s your view of pop culture? is it a modern-day analogue to mythology and classic literature in that way? or do i really need to get some caffeine and reverse my cranial-rectal inversion? or perhaps i’m near the point but not inside the bullseye? comment and let me know. :>
ed
