the cultural elitists
The conversation starts off innocently:
“We don’t own a television.”
Good for you. I admire that. As a tv addict, I know how all-consuming television can be. Unfortunately, any conversation that starts off with that sentence usually devolves in about three seconds.
“We’re so much better than you. We’re smarter, more cultured and just better people all around. Our shit smells like roses and the sun always shines on our home.”
At least that’s what’s implied most of the time. Most of the no-tv people I’ve met are evangelical about it. They preach, they rant, they try to convert you. They want to save you. Even if you don’t want to be saved.
The cultural elitism doesn’t stop with the people who choose not to own a television at all. There are twice as many people who actually have tvs in their home, but only use the “idiot box” to watch PBS or The History Channel. And they’ll tell you that in no uncertain terms while they wrinkle their nose in disgust at the thought viewing anything else.
“Oh, Muffy and I only watch educational shows or public television. Everything else is just dreadful. We just don’t understand people who watch those – what do you call them? – oh yes, sitcoms. The bane of society, I tell you.” Meanwhile, the guy knows damn well that you watch not only sitcoms, but cartoons, reality shows and late night movies with gratuitous sex and violence. He’s talking at you, not to you.
I don’t like being made to feel as if I have to defend my choice to watch World’s Wildest Car Chases or Cheaters . When the discussion about any of this comes up, anyone who says to me “I’ve never seen a single episode of any of those shows and I’m proud of that” is automatically labeled a prick. You’re purposefully insulting me in an elitist sort of way. You are better than me because you watch eight hours of Law and Order a week but you don’t watch anything on FOX? Please.
This isn’t exclusive to tv watching. There are musical elitists, book snobs, movie purists. They will scoff at your album collection, laugh at your bookshelf and recoil in horror at your DVD purchases. They will think less of you if own any romance novels. Never mind that you have a PhD, you spend ten hours a week volunteering at the homeless shelter and you take in stray cats. You’re a lower class of human being because you own the Skid Row box set. You’ll be the scourge of the next MENSA meeting when word gets out about your Harlequin collection.
I love television. We have four people and five tvs in this house. Every tv has a cable box attached, with about 500 channels at our fingertips. Do we watch them all? Hardly. Do we watch tv constantly? No. But in the mind of a cultural elitist, we are neanderthals who stare at the screen every night for eight hours or more, drooling, stuffing our face with chips and beer, and lowering our IQ by five points an hour. Smart people don’t watch Ninja Warrior. Intelligent people don’t even know what G4 is. Good, honest citizens have their remotes (if they have tv at all) programmed to skip over any channel that doesn’t have a scroll on the bottom begging you for cash. Of course, those public channels are turned off during the day, and their kid has never even heard of Barney or Arthur. Their kid is better than yours.
I am a cultural swamp, according to the elitists. Even though the majority of our television viewing takes place on the History Channel, my love of COPS negates that. Even though my book shelf contains the entire works of Shakespeare and Poe and there’s a whole section dedicated to the literature of western civilization (I was an English major, you know), somewhere in my trove of reading material is a worn copy of Flowers in the Attic and if that doesn’t let me out of the culture club right there, the ten shelves of comic books and graphic novels will, or the fact that while I have the entire Transmetropolitan collection right next to my copy of Ulysses, the Transmet collection is more dog eared than Joyce.
The music snobs can be even worse. You make a list of your favorite songs and they come out of the woodwork to inform you that your list is shit because there’s no Beatles, no classical music. You try to explain that it’s your list, your favorite songs, but the snob doesn’t care because he can’t understand why his favorite music isn’t everyone’s favorite music. His is the only opinion that matters and until you get some of that High Fidelity indie music on your list, you’re nothing but a corporate whore and you suck, man.
You know what? I like things that you think are crap. I’m listening to My Chemical Romance right now and I know you are pointing and laughing, but I don’t care. I’ve read Flowers in the Attic about twenty times. Not only do I watch COPS religiously, but I liked Wife Swap. I’ve never seen Gone with the Wind. But I’ve seen Tromeo and Juliet ten times. It won’t matter to you that I have an extensive theater collection on both DVD and CD. My love of Les Miz means nothing because the next song on my iPod after Master of the House is by a band called Anal Cunt. So if I like what you like, I’m in your little club. Until you find out that I also like what you don’t. And then not only am I out, but I’m ridiculed, pointed at and told that I’m not worthy of breathing the same air as you.
If you want to be a snob about the things you find entertaining, that’s your prerogative. But the minute you start unleashing your tirade of thinly veiled insults at me, I will turn you off like a bad tv show. You are the bane of my existence.
I just thought you should know.
Thank you so much for writing this.
I watch a ton of television — way more than almost anyone I know — and I get a lot of shit for it. “I’ve got better things to do than laze around on the couch for hours,” they say. Some claim, “There’s nothing good on TV these days, anyway.” Still others go the elitist route, asserting that I have awful taste just because I happen to enjoy 30 Rock and House as well as American Idol.
Well, you know what? Fuck you. Really. I’ll watch what I like, thankyouverymuch. I’m glad that you spend your evenings crocheting or reading The New Yorker or holding your weekly book club meeting or having wine and cheese gatherings or volunteering at your local soup kitchen or curing cancer or taking part in some such worldly, worthwhile pursuit — really, I am — but leave me to my own devices, will you? Don’t judge me because I like to relax on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thurdsay nights by turning on my beloved boob tube and being entertained. Don’t dismiss my opinions on music as invalid because I watch Ryan, Randy, Kara, Paula, and Simon on Tuesdays along with tens of millions of the nation’s unwashed masses. And most of all, don’t tell me that I should be doing _____ instead of “wasting [my] life” watching television. I enjoy it immensely. If you enjoy whatever it is you do with your life, who the hell am I to tell you otherwise?
Do these people really exist, though? These people who are above having a television, or above TV fiction or whatnot? They need to be shown a copy of “Everything Bad Is Good For You,” if so, but, really, in my age group, I just don’t see these people. At least not in Montreal. Maybe old ladies, or something.
As a bit of a self-confessed cultural elitist, it’s not about thinking people are _stupid_ when they like “bad” stuff, it’s that they are… well, honestly, as turned around as it sounds, it’s because they’re pretentious. Like, the actual definiton of pretentious, not the popular idea of what it means now where people think pretentious means “elitist dickwad.” When someone tells me that, say, My Chemical Romance is the best emo band of all time, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and a scowl rolls across my face. How ignorant, I think. As much as I am loathe to admit it, I know a lot about the development of the “emo” movement and remember back when it wasn’t about looking like a space cadet. I remember when it was just a bunch of kids in the midwest singing about girls with crummy voices and crummier guitars. I remember further back when it was a cathartic offshoot of 80s hardcore punk, with DC bands like Rites Of Spring were inventing it. I remember bumming around in high school listening to bands like Mineral and The Ataris and Sunny Day Real Estate and Jets To Brazil and Alkaline Trio and Pedro The Lion and, fuck, anyone on Jade Tree, really.
Or, when people say that Green Day is the best punk band ever? Have these people heard Black Flag, or The Ramones, for Christ’s sake, or anything? Have they even heard the (vastly superior imo) Green Day of 1995, or only the Green Day of current-day? Are they aware of punk’s history?This is the problem with people without “taste.” THEY, in fact, are the pretentious ones. You know them. The ones who “like all music except country. And techno. And rap.” I can’t HELP it if I think you’re a fucking idiot for saying that.
I mean, what do you fucking know about “techno,” huh? Are you aware of its growth, and how far it reaches? Have you listened to Kraftwerk? How about anything from the Detroit Techno or Chicago House scenes? Are you aware of their cultural relevance and how they brought communities together in incredibly troubled times for both cities?
Or country. Fuck, I hate to hear this. Do you think all country music sounds like Garth Brooks? Really? Are you aware of its incredibly close ties to blues and folk music, which are probably incredibly closely tied to whatever music you ignorantly consider “the best music— better than country”? Have you heard Lovesick Blues by Hank Williams? Listen to that fucking song and TELL me it’s not one of the most beautiful pieces ever recorded.
And, fuck. I don’t even want to get started on the brutal “I hate rap” thing. It’s usually thinly-veiled racism when people say it, anyway. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a million more times: rap is probably the most important musical movement of the past 25 years. Show me a non-rap act that plays with the English language like Wu-Tang did, or Nas on Illmatic, or B.I.G. on Ready To Die. Rappers make up words? Yeah, they do. You know who else fucking made up words? CLASSICAL FUCKING POETS. You know who else? FUCKING SHAKESPEARE. Why don’t you think they’re lazy hacks?
So, in the end, the cultural elitist is often someone whose hobby is the history and anthropology of a certain part of popular culture. When you tell us we’re pretentious, or that we’re up our own assholes, then you proceed to tell us that the best guitarist of all time is Jimmy Page, how the fuck are we supposed to react? I mean, yeah, the fucking guy’s good, but he’s good at that one use of the guitar. It ignores those innovators who came before him in the days of blues and folk and country and even the rock of the 50s. It ignores the entire cultural underground of non-arena rock music. It ignores metal. It ignores jazz. It ignores noise and experimental work.
I don’t want to be lumped in with the person who shuts themself off from the world of popular culture and judges it based on their own shut-in, uninformed values. I, the “cultural elitist,” am the opposite: I have embraced it far more than most have, and I have sucked it hungrily into every pore. I’ve researched. I’ve listened. I’ve compared, contrasted, juxtaposed. I’ve visited, explored. I’ve created; deconstructed; sampled, recontextualized and mashed up. I’ve understood. I’ve failed to understand. I’ve strived to understand. And to have that shot down by someone whose idea of a good time is a derivative also-ran band whose cultural relevance can be measured only by records sold and plays on top 40 or, even worse, “alternative” radio? THAT’S fucked up.
Of course, I can think of one example of the other kind of elitist that I see a lot of: the videogame cloistered elitist. The one who only likes “art games.” They are just like the idiot who only watches PBS. Perhaps worse. “Oh, you play sports games? Yuck. Why not just go outside?” Or, “what’s that, Halo? God, how boring. Play something that’s relevant.” They’re pretentious and hypocritical. They want games to be art— but what do they know about art?! They can’t say SHIT until they read Walter Benjamin. These are people whose favourite artists are Picasso, or Da Vinci, or Banksy— the Maddens, Haloes and Gearses of War of the art world. But I digress.
I am running out of steam, but I could go on the same rant about visual art (I hate when people think that Banksy is the best street artist, at the expense of a LOT of other far more relevant stuff), or film (when people hate on horror because all they’ve ever seen is Nighmare On Elm Street and a trailer for Saw, it drives me INSANE), or beer (you have no idea how many Canadians ignorantly say American beer sucks, without ever having tried Dogfish Head or Sierra Nevada Pale Pale), or whiskey (you only drink Scotch? Really? Have you HEARD of bourbon? Rye?), or cars (there’s more to a great vehicle than a 600hp motor). The anti-elitist is, in most cases I can remember from my own life, far more ignorant and pretentious than the elitist.
Maybe the difference is that I never get mad because people LIKE something. There’s validity in liking something. The thing that drives me mad is liking something to the exclusion of something else, or assuming that one certain thing is intrinsically better than another without fully exploring that other thing. It’s okay to like John Mayer. Not my cup of tea, but I respect that some people dig it. When someone wishes they’d play more John Mayer on the radio and less 50 Cent, I can even appreciate that. Preference is normal. But saying that there should be more rock and less rap, period? Ugh. No. No, there shouldn’t. If someone is “non-elitist” and eager to expand their horizons, fine. It’s shutting things off and dismissing them that isn’t cool to someone who HAS committed time and energy and interest and curiosity to those very things.
So, yeah. I’m a cultural elitist. I’m the good kind. Don’t lump me, and us, in with the poisonous self-cloistering egomaniacs.
Jeez, that was even longer than I thought it was going to be. :)
Obviously, you’ve done your research, and it seems that you’ve amassed quite a mental compendium of media/pop culture knowledge. But most people haven’t put the time in to experience everything, and they’re just happy to like what they like without worrying about anything else. Sure, “ignorance is bliss” applies here, but I figure, let them be. I mean, I’ll admit it: I love rock music, and I really don’t listen to country, techno, or rap/hip-hop at all. I haven’t really tried to get deep into the wonderful world of rap, but I have a few albums from guys like Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, and Eminem on my iPod. I haven’t heard stuff from Nas, Wu-Tang, and plenty of other rap artists, but there’s enough rock music to keep me occupied. In other words, I’m okay with being ignorant about certain genres of music.
All I’m saying is this: all of this crap comes down to opinion. Who are you (or who is anybody) to tell me that [insert artist here] is objectively better than [insert one of my favorite artists here]? And more to the point, why does it matter? It’s okay if you want to try and introduce me to new things, to say things like, “If you’re a fan of _____, then you’ll probably enjoy _____ too,” but don’t belittle me because of what I like and don’t like. Personally, I think Green Day (from Kerplunk to 21st Century Breakdown, not just their newer stuff) is better than The Ramones. I mean, I like The Ramones, and I appreciate them as punk pioneers, but I like Green Day’s music better. Does that make me a mongoloid without taste in your eyes?
Finally, to touch on your first point, yes, I have plenty of personal experience with people who tell me I watch way too much TV, and that the time I spend in front of the box could be better utilized doing other things. Fuck ‘em.
I am totally in agreement that it comes down to opinion, and my issue isn’t with ignorance in and of itself. I’m ignorant of plenty of things; it’d be pretentious if I didn’t think so. That’s the differentiation that I need to draw: ignorance vs. pretentiousness (or pretension. I can never remember what’s a word and what isn’t).
Ignorance: Lack of knowledge about something.
Pretentiousness: Feigning knowledge, while maintaining actual ignorance.
In essence, I have nothing but respect for someone who likes what they like and is willing to cop to it. You like John Mayer and you like Green Day. I’m not big on John Mayer, personally, and I can’t really get behind new Green Day, but do I think you have bad taste? Fuck no. Taste isn’t quantifiable. It’s personal and of equal value, no matter who you are.
What I hate is, when it comes down to it, hate itself. If you said “I like Green Day, but the Ramones suck” I’d be very suspect unless I was secure you’d actually LISTENED to the Ramones, you know? If you had, that’s awesome! If you’d only heard Blitzkrieg Bop, though, and you said they suck, I’d be frustrated. I find a lot of anti-elitists, as well as some elitists, will do this awful, pretentious, dismissive thing. It’s even worse with the “big 3” I mentioned before… hating “country, rap, and techno” (it’s always those 3, or some combination) is just pretentious and bad-ignorant.
I hope that wordspew makes a bit more sense now. In essence: I don’t hate on those who like things I don’t like (in fact, I love talking to people with tastes different than mine, because I learn more about why I like what I like when people challenge me). I just hate on people who hate on things they don’t understand. And, I hate when people hate on me because I did, in fact, make the effort to learn more about that which I enjoy so much. Basically, I hate the word “elitist” because it carries this incredibly anti-intellectual bias within it.
